On 2/5/2025 5:27 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 6:22 PM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
/If all possibilities were realized the wouldn't have
probabilities assigned to them...exactly the problem that arises
in MWI./
*You've forgotten that it's not just an electron that is a quantum
object**and thus part of the Universal Wave Function (UWF), you are
also part of the UWF. There are an astronomical number of branches of
the UWF, perhaps an infinite number, and those branches do not
interact with each other and thus can be interpreted as separate
"worlds". *
So why do you postulate an infinite number of worlds? Most MWI
advocates relate the number to measurement outcomes, of which there are
only a few.
*You the observer are stuck in just one of those branches and thus
lack sufficient information to know if you are in the branch where the
cat is alive or the branch where the cat is dead, you need to open the
box and look in to get that information, before that you do what you
always do when you don't have enough information to be certain, you
work with probabilities.*
Are you claiming that there are no inherently probabilistic events, e.g.
nuclear decay, and it's just a matter of ignorance?
**
*The quantum bomb tester demonstrates it is possible to obtain
information about an object without interacting with it in any way,
the bomb does explode in some branches (a.k.a. worlds) of the UWF but
if you set things up properly you the observer will be in a branch
where the bomb did NOT explode and yet you know for certain the bomb
is working properly and will explode if it detects even one photon.
Many Worlds can easily explain how interaction free measurement could
work, and do so without invoking some sort of ill defined wave
function collapse, by simply acknowledging that all outcomes occur
each in its own independentbranchof the UWF. But the competitors of
Many Worlds struggle to give an intuitive explanation of
how interaction free measurement could possibly work. And this is
important!
*
Single world theories also easily explain how "interaction free"
measurements work. They work probabilistically.
*Years ago in high school physics I was taught a derivation of
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that started from the assumption
that you'd have to use photons to detect something and that would
always disturb what you're looking at, but I now know that derivation
was invalid; it got the right answer but for the wrong reason. The
real reason is due to the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics,
the uncertainty principle is derived from the non-commuting nature of
observable operators, like position and momentum, or energy and time.*
So what? I've known that since sophomore physics.
*I've also heard the “/using photons to detect something disturbs it/”
argument to explain why Maxwell's **Demon does not violate the Second
Law Of Thermodynamics, *
I think that was an argument for the HUP not Landauer's principle. But
so what? Are you just reminiscing?
Brent
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