Date: 5/19/2006 From: tegmark@... To: Michael@...
Hi Michael, Thanks for your message and kind words. Alas, I'm too swamped by various deadlines right now to respond in detail to your MWI questions or accept your intriguing trading offer. As you know, I'm a strong supported of Everett's MWI. My opinions are well summarized in the two articles at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett.html <http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett.html> and http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/quantum.html <http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/quantum.html> . > I claimed Hugh Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation > offers the following advantages over the Copenhagen > Interpretation. > > 1. It more simply and more naturally resolves the > paradox of wave-particle duality. I agree. > 2. It justifies the anthropic principle. I agree, but only partially, since Level III adds nothing new over Level II - see http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.html <http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.html> > 4. It automatically generates Feynman's sum-over-histories. > The Copenhagen interpretation does not generate > Feynman's sum-over-histories. > > 5. In other interpretations Feynman's sum-over-histories is > a mere mathematical quirk, because in these interpretations > every path is not really taken. I don't quite agree here, since many of these histories are far from semiclassical "parallel universes". > 6. It simply explains Schrodinger's Cat paradox. Certainly. > 7. It returns Quantum Mechanics to a deterministic theory. > God does not play dice. By doing this, it makes > Quantum Mechanics more compatible with relativity > which along with all other scientific theories are a > deterministic theory. Agreed. > 8. It eliminates the problem of trying defining what exactly > constitutes "measurement." Agreed. > 9. It eliminates Von Neumann's boundary problem: where > to draw the line between the micro world where Quantum > Mechanics works, and the Macro world where it doesn't. Agreed. > 10. It eliminates the special place for an observer and > human consciousness. Agreed. > 11. It restores objective reality to the universe between > measurements. Yes. > It seems Einstein's main objection with Quantum mechanics > had to do with the Copenhagen Interpretation and not the > theory itself. I agree. Best wishes, ;-) -------------------------------------- Prof. Max Tegmark Dept. of Physics, MIT --- In [email protected], "SteveW" <eugnostos2000@...> wrote: > > Hello. A good book which supports the Consciousness Causes Collapse Paradigm is Amit Goswami's The Self-Aware Universe. Reductive Materialists have given it a lot of flak because they say that it cannot be falsified, and hence is philosophy and not science. But the same thing can be said about the Many Worlds scenario which a majority of reductive materialist scientists love, for no other reason than that it preserves strong objectivity and treats consciousness as insignificant. > Steve
