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The question is whether there is anything better. To go back to my original question, EY appears not to have heard of QBism, RQM, and other interpretations that aren't mentioned in The Fabric of Reality.
Comment author:qmotus
12 October 2016 08:55:19PM
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Guess I'll have to read that paper and see how much of it I can understand. Just at a glance, it seems that in the end they propose one of the modified theories like GRW interpretation might be the right way forward. I guess that's possible, but how seriously should we take those when we have no empirical reasons to prefer them?
I guess that's possible, but how seriously should we take those when we have no empirical reasons to prefer them?
Doesn' that rebound on the argument for MWI?
Sincere and consistent instrumentalists may exist, but I think they are rare. What is much more common is for people to compartmentalise, to take and irrealist or instrumetalist stance about things that make them feel uncomfortable, while remaining cheerfully realist about other things.
At the end of the day, being able to predict phenomena isn’t that exciting.
People generally do science because they want to find out about the world. And “rationaists”, internet atheists and so on generally do have ontological commitments, to the non-existence of gods and ghosts, some view about whether or not we are ina matrix and so on.
Comment author:qmotus
13 October 2016 02:34:07PM
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I'm certainly not an instrumentalist. But the argument that MWI supporters (and some critics, like Penrose) generally make, and which I've found persuasive, is that MWI is simply what you get if you take quantum mechanics at face value. Theories like GRW have modifications to the well-established formalism that we, as far as I know, have no empirical confirmation of.
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Comments (32)
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?
We've already got a number of problems with MW -- see Dowker and Kent's paper.
The question is whether there is anything better. To go back to my original question, EY appears not to have heard of QBism, RQM, and other interpretations that aren't mentioned in The Fabric of Reality.
Guess I'll have to read that paper and see how much of it I can understand. Just at a glance, it seems that in the end they propose one of the modified theories like GRW interpretation might be the right way forward. I guess that's possible, but how seriously should we take those when we have no empirical reasons to prefer them?
Doesn' that rebound on the argument for MWI?
Sincere and consistent instrumentalists may exist, but I think they are rare. What is much more common is for people to compartmentalise, to take and irrealist or instrumetalist stance about things that make them feel uncomfortable, while remaining cheerfully realist about other things.
At the end of the day, being able to predict phenomena isn’t that exciting. People generally do science because they want to find out about the world. And “rationaists”, internet atheists and so on generally do have ontological commitments, to the non-existence of gods and ghosts, some view about whether or not we are ina matrix and so on.
I'm certainly not an instrumentalist. But the argument that MWI supporters (and some critics, like Penrose) generally make, and which I've found persuasive, is that MWI is simply what you get if you take quantum mechanics at face value. Theories like GRW have modifications to the well-established formalism that we, as far as I know, have no empirical confirmation of.
There are modified theories, there is no unequivocal "face value".