On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 8:30 PM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 11:26 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> *> Then do you suppose that the number of branches corresponds to the >> probability?* >> > > With a few caveats, which I spelled out previously, you already know I > do. I said a few days ago: > > "*If Everett is right and every change no matter how small causes the > universe to split, then there must be some changes to my brain that are so > small (one neutron in one neuron moving one Planck length to the left ) > that they cause no change in conscious experience and do not degrade the > memory of being John K Clark yesterday. Therefore there must be an > astronomical number to an astronomical power of John K Clarks all living in > different, very very slightly different, worlds. The number would be HUGE > but it would still be finite, so the number of John K Clarks that see you > flip a fair coin and come up heads 5 times in a row must be twice as large > as the number of times he sees you do it 6 times, but there would still be > a few that see him do it 100 times, maybe 1000 or even more*." > That seems a bit confused. The JKCs you seem to be talking about are independent of the Schrodinger equation, even independent of the coin tossing experiment. Why would this very large number of JKCs all indulge in a frenzy of coin tossing at the same time? I suspect that you are trying to get at some idea of probability as self-locating uncertainty -- after all these coin tosses, the JKC is uncertain as to which copy he is, which world he is in. But that works only if the copies are generated in the actual quantum coin tossing experiment -- they can't be pre-existing because then the idea doesn't work -- there is no causal connection between the experiments and the copies. The issue then is how the Schrodinger equation generates all these copies. After all, for a series of experiments with only two possible outcomes for each trial, the Schrodinger equation generates only two copies per trial. There is no source of a very large number of copies; and no way in which those copies could be generated in the proportions required by the Born rule. The Born rule is independent of the Schrodinger equation. 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/CAFxXSLQRxvoQ9bLSxzVHvjL%3DjPS9NewL90LTPqDmXuccL1e0%3DA%40mail.gmail.com.
