On Sat, Jun 22, 2019 at 4:42 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 6/21/2019 12:04 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 4:26 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> To disconfirm MWI you'd have to observe statistics far from the expected >> value, >> > > To make my point more strongly, that is the wrong way round. Observation > of statistics far from the expected value is what would be required to > confirm MWI. The fact that we don't observe such results is the strongest > possible case against MWI! > > > How can that be when MWI predicts that observing statistics far from the > expected value is improbable. > MWI predicts that all sequences exist with unit probability. One can argue that the probability that one will find oneself in a branch that is far from the Born probabilities is low only by assuming that one is located in a branch by selecting from a uniform distribution over all branches -- so that one has equal probability of being in any branch. There is no reason to suppose that any such random selection from a uniform distribution occurs. From the first person point of view, after all, the probability is not known in advance. > which is why Tegmark proposed his machine gun suicide experiment. >> > > Which confirms nothing except that Tegmark believes in MWI. Quantum > suicide cannot convince anyone other than one's self that MWI is true. > > > Exactly why it's not convincing as a thought experiment. > > Everyday experience does not confirm this, since we do not meet people > several hundred years old -- every one dies at their appointed time. The > quantum suicide experiment has been run billions of times, always with null > results. > > > Yes, I have thought this is good evidence against MWI; although these > ancient people would be so rare there might not be even one on most > branches of the world, so I'm not sure it's a decisive argument. > People a million years old would presumably be rare on our branch. But would you not expect a range of people with life spans extended by several tens of years above the average life expectancy? There would be a tailing distribution that extended to much older persons than we currently observe. And why should old persons be the test. Why not any extremely unlikely > event. In your viewpoint the occurence of an unlikely event is evidence > for MWI, while the failure of unusual events to occur is evidence against > MWI. Yet it's a commonplace that unlikely events occur all the time. > Not all unlikely events are governed by quantum probabilities. Most are just due to good old classical chance..... Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQtOwnhBU%2Buv6HK95-fXzMd%3DorudZYZ1sdwqT%2Bh9uOgwA%40mail.gmail.com.
