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VAuroch comments on Open thread, Nov. 10 - Nov. 16, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 10 November 2014 08:32AM

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Comment author: VAuroch 13 November 2014 11:10:47AM *  0 points [-]

I don't think it's mind-killed. It's possible to reject the premise of the Bell inequality by rejecting counterfactual definiteness, and this is a small but substantial minority view. MWI then takes this a step further and reject factual definiteness, but this is not the standard way in which it's presented, so someone who has issues with the notion of "Alice makes a decision 'of her own free choice', unaffected by events in her past light cone" but has never encountered the descriptions of MWI which mention factual and counterfactual definiteness, can justifiably believe that contrary to appearances, some hidden-variable or superdeterminist theory must be true.

I speak from personal experience, here. Up until about a year ago, I held two beliefs that I recognized were in defiance of the standard scientific conclusions, both on logical grounds. One was belief in hidden variable theories of quantum physics; the other was belief that the Big Crunch theory must be correct, rather than the Big Chill (on counter-anthropic grounds; a Big Chill universe would be the last of all universes, and that we should happen to live in the last universe, which happens to be well-tuned for life, strains credulity). Upon realizing that MWI solved the problems that led me to hidden-variable theories, and also removed the necessity for an infinite succession of universes, thus reconciling the logical non-exceptionalist argument and the Big Chill data, I switched to believing in MWI.