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Comment author:MrMind
10 October 2016 07:18:33AM
2 points
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In the Sequence, Eliezer made a strong case for the realist interpretation of QM (neo-Everettian many worlds), based on decoherence and Occam's razor.
He then, in another point of the Sequence, tied that problem with interesting questions about anthropic probability (the infamous anthropic trilemma), and that cemented MWI as the preferred way to think about QM here.
On the other hand, I think we are still missing the big picture about quantum mechanics: ER = EPR, categorical quantum mechanics, QBism etc. all points us to interesting unexplored directions.
Comment author:MrMind
11 October 2016 01:29:40PM
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0 points
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My idea is more on the line of "in the future we are going to grasp a conceptual frame that would make sense of all interpretations" (or explain them away) rather than pointing to a specific interpretation.
Comment author:qmotus
11 October 2016 10:00:55PM
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1 point
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If it doesn't fundamentally change quantum mechanics as a theory, is the picture likely to turn out fundamentally different from MWI? Roger Penrose, a vocal MWI critic, seems to wholeheartedly agree that QM implies MWI; it's just that he thinks that this means the theory is wrong. David Deutsch, I believe, has said that he's not certain that quantum mechanics is correct; but any modification of the theory, according to him, is unlikely to do away with the parallel universes.
QBism, too, seems to me to essentially accept the MWI picture as the underlying ontology, but then says that we should only care about the worlds that we actually observe (Sean Carroll has presented criticism similar to this, and mentioned that it sounds more like therapy to him), although it could be that I've misunderstood something.
If it doesn't fundamentally change quantum mechanics as a theory, is the picture likely to turn out fundamentally different from MWI?
CI/OR is a different picture to MWI, yet neither change QM as a number-crunching theory. You have hit on the fundamental problems of empiricism: the correct interpretation of a data is underdetermined by data, and interpretations can differ radically with small changes in data or no changes in data.
Comment author:qmotus
12 October 2016 08:57:14PM
0 points
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I'm not sure what you mean by OR, but if it refers to Penrose's interpretation (my guess, because it sounds like Orch-OR), then I believe that it indeed changes QM as a theory.
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Comments (32)
In the Sequence, Eliezer made a strong case for the realist interpretation of QM (neo-Everettian many worlds), based on decoherence and Occam's razor. He then, in another point of the Sequence, tied that problem with interesting questions about anthropic probability (the infamous anthropic trilemma), and that cemented MWI as the preferred way to think about QM here.
On the other hand, I think we are still missing the big picture about quantum mechanics: ER = EPR, categorical quantum mechanics, QBism etc. all points us to interesting unexplored directions.
Do you think that we're likely to find something in those directions that would give a reason to prefer some other interpretation than MWI?
My idea is more on the line of "in the future we are going to grasp a conceptual frame that would make sense of all interpretations" (or explain them away) rather than pointing to a specific interpretation.
If it doesn't fundamentally change quantum mechanics as a theory, is the picture likely to turn out fundamentally different from MWI? Roger Penrose, a vocal MWI critic, seems to wholeheartedly agree that QM implies MWI; it's just that he thinks that this means the theory is wrong. David Deutsch, I believe, has said that he's not certain that quantum mechanics is correct; but any modification of the theory, according to him, is unlikely to do away with the parallel universes.
QBism, too, seems to me to essentially accept the MWI picture as the underlying ontology, but then says that we should only care about the worlds that we actually observe (Sean Carroll has presented criticism similar to this, and mentioned that it sounds more like therapy to him), although it could be that I've misunderstood something.
CI/OR is a different picture to MWI, yet neither change QM as a number-crunching theory. You have hit on the fundamental problems of empiricism: the correct interpretation of a data is underdetermined by data, and interpretations can differ radically with small changes in data or no changes in data.
I'm not sure what you mean by OR, but if it refers to Penrose's interpretation (my guess, because it sounds like Orch-OR), then I believe that it indeed changes QM as a theory.