A modest proposal

[John Clark]

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

John K Clark

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 4:28 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

It's been tried:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/90QNXd9Q9bk/vbvGBDB_EssJ

Jason 

[Bruce Kellett]

Jason, thanks for posting this discussion from times before I joined the 'everything' list. So rolling down the other comments in the discussion, I see that Jacques Mallah actually made a good point, even if in a rather aggressive way. His final comment was:

 There is only one reason to commit suicide and it is the same as
without QM: if your life is so bad that you would rather not exist, commit
suicide; otherwise don't.  For indeed, in those branches you would cease
to exist, while the branches with the lottery winner would gain nothing.

The sensible thing in this comment is the observation that with faith in MWI, you are already all of your copies, so you already have won the lottery on that branch. Killing yourself on this branch is not actually going to have any effect (except the non-monetary effect of relieving your current depressive state).

Bruce

[Lawrence Crowell]

This is essentially a form of the quantum suicide argument. I would not try this myself, for MWI is as far as I can see just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

* Computational Quantum Mechanics

  http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mijp1/teaching/3rd_year_CQM/index.shtml

@philipthrift 

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 10:32:42 PM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

MMI is the same as MWI:  Worlds/Mundos. :)

[Brent Meeker]

That's the plot of one of the stories in Colin Bruce's book "Schroedinger's Rabbits". 

One of the problems is that the way the Poweball numbers come up is not directly quantum randomness.  It may be determined by the amplification of some random quantum events in the past.  But how far in the past.  You don't want it to be so far in the past that it can be causally correlated with your decision to set up the suicide machine. Of course t'Hooft claims they are all causally determined.

Brent

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[Philip Thrift]

Gerard ’t Hooft on the future of quantum mechanics

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20170711a/full/

T HOOFT: I do not believe that we have to live with the many-worlds interpretation. Indeed, it would be a stupendous number of parallel worlds, which are only there because physicists couldn’t decide which of them is real.

In practice, quantum mechanics merely gives predictions with probabilities attached. This should be considered as a normal and quite acceptable feature of predictions made by science: different possible outcomes with different probabilities. In the world that is familiar to us, we always have such a situation when we make predictions. Thus the question remains: What is the reality described by quantum theories? I claim that we can attribute the fact that our predictions come with probability distributions to the fact that not all relevant data for the predictions are known to us, in particular important features of the initial state.

@philipthrift

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 11:19:43 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

That's the plot of one of the stories in Colin Bruce's book "Schroedinger's Rabbits". 

One of the problems is that the way the Poweball numbers come up is not directly quantum randomness.  It may be determined by the amplification of some random quantum events in the past.  But how far in the past.  You don't want it to be so far in the past that it can be causally correlated with your decision to set up the suicide machine. Of course t'Hooft claims they are all causally determined.

Brent

This points to an objection to MWI. Quantum superpositions splitting in MWI, or somewhat equivalently the fluctuation/localization of a decoherent event, can be amplified. In the case of this quantum suicide argument the lottery ticket numbers assigned may have a quantum basis going back in time. Within MWI this means the world split long before the winning ticket was announced. This has some similarity to Wheeler's delayed choice experiment. This means the splitting of the world is not a local process and we then have a question as to what are the prior probabilities for this splitting if we can't localize this event? 

There is some sort of duality I think between local quantum fields and causal physics vs the nonlocality of quantum states. The only causal quantum field that may be intrinsically nonlocal is gravitation. Gravitation as emergent from quantum entanglements is likely a nonlocal quantum field. This duality then maybe be expressed as

UV quantum gravity states = IR quantum field states

which is a way of stating the Einstein field equation. UV means high energy near the Planck scale and IR means much lower energy say a billion times LHC energy and lower. The UV quantum gravity states are nonlocal while the IR quantum field states are local, or should it be said localizable. 

LC

 

On 9/13/2019 2:27 PM, John Clark wrote:

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 5:51 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This points to an objection to MWI. Quantum superpositions splitting in MWI, or somewhat equivalently the fluctuation/localization of a decoherent event, can be amplified. In the case of this quantum suicide argument the lottery ticket numbers assigned may have a quantum basis going back in time. Within MWI this means the world split long before the winning ticket was announced. 

I don't see how that follows. All observers in the multiverse will say the odds you will win the lottery tomorrow are one in 80 million, but if you won today all observers in the multiverse will say that the odds you will win the lottery were one in 80 million but somebody had to win and it happened to be you. Most observers in the multiverse are looking at a losing ticket today but you are not because you arranged things so that a losing ticket causes you to stop existing, so you only exist in universes where you're filthy rich. The universes where you didn't win still exist but you are no longer in them. No backward causality is needed.  

As for me... I think Many Worlds is probably more or less correct, but I wouldn't stake my life on it.  

 John K Clark

[Philip Thrift]

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 5:36:45 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

As for me... I think Many Worlds is probably more or less correct, 

 John K Clark

More (or less) correct than correct that what?

@philipthrift 

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 5:36:45 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

Yet, that classical probability for a winning ticket is determined by some quantum superposition of states that give a probability for a ticket to be printed with some set of numbers, or for some probability of tickets being distributed in some way. So this rather strict classical probability is due to some single or maybe multiple quantum probabilities for various outcomes. In performing this quantum suicide experiment one is forcing the situation in something similar to a Wheeler delayed choice experiment. The question is then how is this classical probability for a winning lottery ticket tied to an outcome of a quantum decoherence, or maybe a multiple set of them? Also as with the Wheeler delayed choice experiment, there is a reduction of states prior to the occurrence of the particle on a screen, and with this suicide experiment there is a quantum outcome prior to the final experimental end that demolishes the appearance of superposition. How is that localized?  Or is it localized in some way? 

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 9/13/2019 11:53 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Gerard ’t Hooft on the future of quantum mechanics

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20170711a/full/

T HOOFT: I do not believe that we have to live with the many-worlds interpretation. Indeed, it would be a stupendous number of parallel worlds, which are only there because physicists couldn’t decide which of them is real.

In practice, quantum mechanics merely gives predictions with probabilities attached. This should be considered as a normal and quite acceptable feature of predictions made by science: different possible outcomes with different probabilities. In the world that is familiar to us, we always have such a situation when we make predictions.

That's the position of Roland Omnes'.   He says QM is a probabilistic theory, so it predicts probabilities. What did we expect?

Thus the question remains: What is the reality described by quantum theories? I claim that we can attribute the fact that our predictions come with probability distributions to the fact that not all relevant data for the predictions are known to us, in particular important features of the initial state.

The trouble with that is it's a hidden variable theory, so it has to be non-local.  That leads to t'Hooft's super-determinism.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

There is a "stochastic processes / probability theory" for QM experimental observations, but it is of an "extended" kind, e.g.

Quantum Mechanical versus Stochastic Processes in Path Integration

https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00510

By using path integrals, the stochastic process associated to the time evolution of the quantum probability density is formally rewritten in terms of a stochastic differential equation, given by Newton's equation of motion with an additional multiplicative stochastic force. However, the term playing the role of the stochastic force is defined by a non-positive-definite probability functional, providing a clear example of the negative* (or "extended") probabilities characteristic of quantum mechanics.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_probability

   https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4767

cf. Quantum Dynamics without the Wave Function - https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0610204

@philipthrift

Sean Carroll and Gerard ’t Hooft are probability (extended or not) eliminativists.

MWI is really a superdeterministic theory. Every branch in the MW branching - if followed - is deterministic.

@philipthrift

 

[John Clark]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:28 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> that classical probability for a winning ticket is determined by some quantum superposition of states that give a probability for a ticket to be printed with some set of numbers, or for some probability of tickets being distributed in some way.

The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way, but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way. Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

 

> In performing this quantum suicide experiment one is forcing the situation in something similar to a Wheeler delayed choice experiment.

I don't see the analogy at all. Regardless of if you perform the quantum suicide experiment or not every possible lottery ticket was printed, and you bought every possible lottery ticket, and every possible number was picked as the winning number. The past is not changed but the future is changed depending on if you performed the experiment, if you do then in the future there is no universe in the multiverse where you're looking at a losing ticket, if you don't do the experiment then there is; but the past is the same in both cases. 

So the multiverse contains 2 very general types of "you", universes where you decide to do the experiment and always end up looking at a winning ticket (a universe for every possible winning number), and universes where you decide not to do the experiment and always end up looking at numbers most of which are losing numbers. But in either case I don't see why backward causality is needed.

> with this suicide experiment there is a quantum outcome prior to the final experimental end that demolishes the appearance of superposition. How is that localized?  

By just looking at the lottery ticket. Normally there would be far more versions of you looking at a losing ticket than a winning one, but in the suicide experiment there are not as many versions of you but all of them are looking at a winning ticket. 

I can think of an interesting variation on the suicide experiment. I decide to do it but I offer you a side bet and give you a thousand to one odds that I have the winning ticket; if my ticket loses I will give you a thousand dollars if I win you only have to give me one dollar. The logical thing for both of us is to make the bet (if we make the big assumption that Many Worlds is true), you calculate that there is only one chance in 80 million of me winning so you know you are almost certain to win a thousand dollars, and I calculate I will win an additional dollar with absolute certainty to go with my vast lottery winnings. Yes in most universes my estate will owe you a thousand dollars but I no longer exist in them so I have no use for that money. It's a win win bet.

 John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 3:27:41 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:28 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> that classical probability for a winning ticket is determined by some quantum superposition of states that give a probability for a ticket to be printed with some set of numbers, or for some probability of tickets being distributed in some way.

The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way, but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way. Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

The Schödinger equation says nothing of the sort. It is not a Charlie Parker "anything goes" system. It just tells how probability amplitudes that define a state or wave in a Fourier sum evolves with time. With large scale systems there are massive levels of decoherence and ensuing entanglement shifts. It would be argued there are some MWI splittings that may play a role in determining the lottery number on the winning ticket, but there is no way this can at all be localized or identified.

As for below the Wheeler Delayed Choice experiment in the MWI setting a measurement of whether the electron went through a slit is performed after it has passed. This would mean that a measurement at time T sets whether the electron was in a slit at time t < T. We can say the measurement is localized at time T, but in MWI we have to say the splitting of the world wave function began at t. 

This quantum suicide experiment might be argued to do something similar. If I choose to go through with it I then select a world path I observe at a time after the actual splitting happens. This leads to an ambiguity over where one defines the localization of states in a measurement. The advantage of MWI is that it is not local and this nonlocality may work well in quantum gravity.

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 9/14/2019 1:27 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:28 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> that classical probability for a winning ticket is determined by some quantum superposition of states that give a probability for a ticket to be printed with some set of numbers, or for some probability of tickets being distributed in some way.

The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way,

It predicts that at some point well before the number is picked, at time at which quantum level effects can be amplified to different ball selections.  That would not be the case nano-seconds before the pick, or milliseconds before, and maybe not hours before.

but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way.

Only if you and the powerball are not influenced by that the same random quantum events that got amplified to determine the ball AND to determine your choice of number.

Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

 

> In performing this quantum suicide experiment one is forcing the situation in something similar to a Wheeler delayed choice experiment.

I don't see the analogy at all. Regardless of if you perform the quantum suicide experiment or not every possible lottery ticket was printed, and you bought every possible lottery ticket, and every possible number was picked as the winning number. The past is not changed but the future is changed depending on if you performed the experiment, if you do then in the future there is no universe in the multiverse where you're looking at a losing ticket, if you don't do the experiment then there is; but the past is the same in both cases. 

So the multiverse contains 2 very general types of "you", universes where you decide to do the experiment and always end up looking at a winning ticket (a universe for every possible winning number), and universes where you decide not to do the experiment and always end up looking at numbers most of which are losing numbers. But in either case I don't see why backward causality is needed.

> with this suicide experiment there is a quantum outcome prior to the final experimental end that demolishes the appearance of superposition. How is that localized?  

By just looking at the lottery ticket. Normally there would be far more versions of you looking at a losing ticket than a winning one, but in the suicide experiment there are not as many versions of you but all of them are looking at a winning ticket.

I can think of an interesting variation on the suicide experiment. I decide to do it but I offer you a side bet and give you a thousand to one odds that I have the winning ticket; if my ticket loses I will give you a thousand dollars if I win you only have to give me one dollar. The logical thing for both of us is to make the bet (if we make the big assumption that Many Worlds is true), you calculate that there is only one chance in 80 million of me winning so you know you are almost certain to win a thousand dollars, and I calculate I will win an additional dollar with absolute certainty to go with my vast lottery winnings. Yes in most universes my estate will owe you a thousand dollars but I no longer exist in them so I have no use for that money. It's a win win bet.

But as Mallah points out, all you are doing is pruning those of your future lives in which you don't win the lottery.  That's rational if your life has negative net value in those branches, but it's not increasing the value of the branches in which you do win the lottery.

Brent

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 7:13:02 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 9/14/2019 1:27 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:28 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> that classical probability for a winning ticket is determined by some quantum superposition of states that give a probability for a ticket to be printed with some set of numbers, or for some probability of tickets being distributed in some way.

The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way,

It predicts that at some point well before the number is picked, at time at which quantum level effects can be amplified to different ball selections.  That would not be the case nano-seconds before the pick, or milliseconds before, and maybe not hours before.

That is the point, and quantum interpretations have these dubious issues. Copenhagen has problems with defining what is meant by the partition of quantum and classical domains. Maybe this is a manifestation of the subjectivity inherent in entropy, where classicality is a change in information available to a local observer. With MWI there is the more complete nonlocality, which means there is an uncertainty in the meaning of a locality to a splitting of worlds. QuBism simply says a decoherent event or measurement is a Bayesian update, where this is a change in local information content, but it forces this as a determinant by a local processor or mind. That leads to a sort of solipsism; quantum outcomes have no objective basis.  

It may well be that these problems in total are telling us something. I am not at all concerned with whether any quantum interpretation is "true" and others "false," so much as I find it curious we have an apparent need for these and whether these are connected to the Born rule, or the decidability of the Born rule. Quantum interpretations also seems to play with some sort of dualism between locality and quantum nonlocality.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:18 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way, but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way. Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

> The Schödinger equation says nothing of the sort.

It says when an electron moves from point A to point B it can do so by any path, although some paths are more likely than others.

 

> It is not a Charlie Parker "anything goes" system. It just tells how probability amplitudes that define a state or wave in a Fourier sum evolves with time. [...] It would be argued there are some MWI splittings that may play a role in determining the lottery number on the winning ticket, but there is no way this can at all be localized or identified.

The Schödinger Equation says the wave function is a direct representation of reality, and the Many World's people say that too, they say that's all that is needed. I admit it doesn't seem that way because when we observe an electron hitting a photographic plate we don't see a wave function and we don't see a large blob we see a small localized spot at a definite place. So some people concluded that Schödinger's Equation wasn't enough and they tacked on a lot of extra stuff about it collapsing when a observation is made, something the equation itself doesn't even hint at. Many Worlds says the extra stuff is unnecessary and Schödinger's Equation is all that is needed.

When you observe a electron, in other words when you become entangled with the electron, in still other words when both you and the electron have the same quantum wave function, there is a connection between the "you "system and the "electron" system. That combined you-electron system obeys Schödinger's Equation and the system smoothly evolves into a entangled state, a superposition of every place the electron could have been and you observing the electron at that location.

But rather than say the combined you-electron system having evolved into a superposition of all possible states Many World's says it evolves into every possible observer. We don't end up with one observer who has many ideas where the electron was seen, instead we end up with many worlds each with an observer in it with a single definite idea of where the electron was seen.  

 

> As for below the Wheeler Delayed Choice experiment in the MWI setting a measurement of whether the electron went through a slit is performed after it has passed.

Many Worlds can explain delayed choice without invoking backward causality. The photon hits a half silvered mirror so 50% of the time the photon takes path A and 50% of the time it takes path B. At the end of each path is a detector which destroys the photon and sends the information on which path the photon took to a physical memory system of some sort that, just like everything else, must obey Schödinger's Equation.

Many Worlds says if there is a change the universe splits and in this case the only difference is a change in the physical memory,  in one universe the memory is it going through path A and the other it remembers it going throughpath B. But if you then use quantum erasure then the physical state of the memory is no longer different, they are in the exact same state, so there is no longer any difference between the 2 universes, so they merge back together. But now the single universe seems to have indications the photon followed path A only and indications it followed path B only and this can cause interference bands. 

John K Clark 

[spudb...@aol.com]

If we've got a hard to limit, Set, then more or less, is 'good enough for government work!' 

Also, shall I invoke the old notion of an infinite universe, or even (by our standards) near, infinite? It does the same thing that MWI does, and doesn't require quantum mechanics. 

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[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 9:50:18 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:18 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way, but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way. Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

> The Schödinger equation says nothing of the sort.

It says when an electron moves from point A to point B it can do so by any path, although some paths are more likely than others.

Technically there is no electron on a path. These paths are calculation devices and their ontological status is uncertain.

 

 

> It is not a Charlie Parker "anything goes" system. It just tells how probability amplitudes that define a state or wave in a Fourier sum evolves with time. [...] It would be argued there are some MWI splittings that may play a role in determining the lottery number on the winning ticket, but there is no way this can at all be localized or identified.

The Schödinger Equation says the wave function is a direct representation of reality, and the Many World's people say that too, they say that's all that is needed. I admit it doesn't seem that way because when we observe an electron hitting a photographic plate we don't see a wave function and we don't see a large blob we see a small localized spot at a definite place. So some people concluded that Schödinger's Equation wasn't enough and they tacked on a lot of extra stuff about it collapsing when a observation is made, something the equation itself doesn't even hint at. Many Worlds says the extra stuff is unnecessary and Schödinger's Equation is all that is needed.

When you observe a electron, in other words when you become entangled with the electron, in still other words when both you and the electron have the same quantum wave function, there is a connection between the "you "system and the "electron" system. That combined you-electron system obeys Schödinger's Equation and the system smoothly evolves into a entangled state, a superposition of every place the electron could have been and you observing the electron at that location.

But rather than say the combined you-electron system having evolved into a superposition of all possible states Many World's says it evolves into every possible observer. We don't end up with one observer who has many ideas where the electron was seen, instead we end up with many worlds each with an observer in it with a single definite idea of where the electron was seen.  

 

> As for below the Wheeler Delayed Choice experiment in the MWI setting a measurement of whether the electron went through a slit is performed after it has passed.

Many Worlds can explain delayed choice without invoking backward causality.

My point is not to argue for some retrocausality, for that is ruled out by the non-signalling theorem. My point is with the ambiguity with where states are localized.

The measurement is some entanglement of a system with a large number of quantum modes with a system that has few modes or degrees of freedom. The elementary approach is to assign some measurement state or needle state. But really the entanglement is far more complex and it is a partial entanglement that spreads through many other states that compose the measurement system or reservoir. 

LC

[Bruno Marchal]

On 13 Sep 2019, at 23:27, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

The problem is that the probability is higher to get mad and believe you did get the winning lottery, when the bullet did not kill you. But in principle this works, yet, not in any practical sense. Because il all worlds where the bullet go through your brain, you survive there too. You would need a self-annihilating deice which is infallible, and that cannot exist. We survive no matter what. Perfect self-annihilation works only in thought experience, and are used only in theoretical reasoning.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

Yes, mechanism (and Everett QM) leads to what is called “open individualism”, the idea or understanding that there is only one person, and we are all that person, but in different context/situation.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Sep 2019, at 05:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

There is no MWI axioms. MWI is just usual quantum mechanics where the collapse postulate has been thrown out. (And no need to take the word “worlds” too much seriously: it is more relative states or histories. With mechanism, they are all already emulated just in virtue of 2+2=4 & Co.

So, yes, the MWI is used all the time. The collapse is used for personal consumption only, and is, in Everett-QM or in Mechanist philosophy of mind, a first person experience.

Bruno

* Computational Quantum Mechanics

  http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mijp1/teaching/3rd_year_CQM/index.shtml

@philipthrift 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Sep 2019, at 08:53, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gerard ’t Hooft on the future of quantum mechanics

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20170711a/full/

T HOOFT: I do not believe that we have to live with the many-worlds interpretation. Indeed, it would be a stupendous number of parallel worlds, which are only there because physicists couldn’t decide which of them is real.

In practice, quantum mechanics merely gives predictions with probabilities attached. This should be considered as a normal and quite acceptable feature of predictions made by science: different possible outcomes with different probabilities. In the world that is familiar to us, we always have such a situation when we make predictions. Thus the question remains: What is the reality described by quantum theories? I claim that we can attribute the fact that our predictions come with probability distributions to the fact that not all relevant data for the predictions are known to us, in particular important features of the initial state.

Up to now, the simplest assumption, is that it is “just” elementary arithmetic seen from inside, or the universal dovetailer seen by a self-aware person run by its infinitely many programs in arithmetic. This predicted qualitatively the MW, and the math shows that it predicts also the quantum logical formalism.

T Hooft’s problem is that he seems to believe that a physical world is a “real” things, made of atoms, etc.

Bruno

@philipthrift

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 11:19:43 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

That's the plot of one of the stories in Colin Bruce's book "Schroedinger's Rabbits". 

One of the problems is that the way the Poweball numbers come up is not directly quantum randomness.  It may be determined by the amplification of some random quantum events in the past.  But how far in the past.  You don't want it to be so far in the past that it can be causally correlated with your decision to set up the suicide machine. Of course t'Hooft claims they are all causally determined.

Brent

On 9/13/2019 2:27 PM, John Clark wrote:

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Sep 2019, at 20:53, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 11:08:31 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 9/13/2019 11:53 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Gerard ’t Hooft on the future of quantum mechanics

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20170711a/full/

T HOOFT: I do not believe that we have to live with the many-worlds interpretation. Indeed, it would be a stupendous number of parallel worlds, which are only there because physicists couldn’t decide which of them is real.

In practice, quantum mechanics merely gives predictions with probabilities attached. This should be considered as a normal and quite acceptable feature of predictions made by science: different possible outcomes with different probabilities. In the world that is familiar to us, we always have such a situation when we make predictions.

That's the position of Roland Omnes'.   He says QM is a probabilistic theory, so it predicts probabilities. What did we expect?

Some realm on which those probabilities can make sense.

Thus the question remains: What is the reality described by quantum theories? I claim that we can attribute the fact that our predictions come with probability distributions to the fact that not all relevant data for the predictions are known to us, in particular important features of the initial state.

The trouble with that is it's a hidden variable theory, so it has to be non-local.  That leads to t'Hooft's super-determinism.

Indeed.

Brent

 

There is a "stochastic processes / probability theory" for QM experimental observations, but it is of an "extended" kind, e.g.

Quantum Mechanical versus Stochastic Processes in Path Integration

https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00510

By using path integrals, the stochastic process associated to the time evolution of the quantum probability density is formally rewritten in terms of a stochastic differential equation, given by Newton's equation of motion with an additional multiplicative stochastic force. However, the term playing the role of the stochastic force is defined by a non-positive-definite probability functional, providing a clear example of the negative* (or "extended") probabilities characteristic of quantum mechanics.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_probability

   https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4767

cf. Quantum Dynamics without the Wave Function - https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0610204

@philipthrift

Sean Carroll and Gerard ’t Hooft are probability (extended or not) eliminativists.

MWI is really a superdeterministic theory. Every branch in the MW branching - if followed - is deterministic.

I don’t think so. QM, like Mechanism is deterministic, and in the case of QM, the many-world is all you need to avoid super-determinism (which is close to non sense to me).

Bruno

@philipthrift

 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Sep 2019, at 16:49, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 7:18 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>The Schrodinger wave equation says the ticket is printed in every possible way and the winning number is picked in every possible way, but that's not all you yourself are also a quantum object so you interact with the ticket in every possible way. Some interactions result in great wealth, some result in no profit, and some result in oblivion as in the suicide scenario.    

> The Schödinger equation says nothing of the sort.

It says when an electron moves from point A to point B it can do so by any path, although some paths are more likely than others.

 

> It is not a Charlie Parker "anything goes" system. It just tells how probability amplitudes that define a state or wave in a Fourier sum evolves with time. [...] It would be argued there are some MWI splittings that may play a role in determining the lottery number on the winning ticket, but there is no way this can at all be localized or identified.

The Schödinger Equation says the wave function is a direct representation of reality, and the Many World's people say that too, they say that's all that is needed. I admit it doesn't seem that way because when we observe an electron hitting a photographic plate we don't see a wave function and we don't see a large blob we see a small localized spot at a definite place. So some people concluded that Schödinger's Equation wasn't enough and they tacked on a lot of extra stuff about it collapsing when a observation is made, something the equation itself doesn't even hint at. Many Worlds says the extra stuff is unnecessary and Schödinger's Equation is all that is needed.

When you observe a electron, in other words when you become entangled with the electron, in still other words when both you and the electron have the same quantum wave function, there is a connection between the "you "system and the "electron" system. That combined you-electron system obeys Schödinger's Equation and the system smoothly evolves into a entangled state, a superposition of every place the electron could have been and you observing the electron at that location.

But rather than say the combined you-electron system having evolved into a superposition of all possible states Many World's says it evolves into every possible observer. We don't end up with one observer who has many ideas where the electron was seen, instead we end up with many worlds each with an observer in it with a single definite idea of where the electron was seen.  

 

> As for below the Wheeler Delayed Choice experiment in the MWI setting a measurement of whether the electron went through a slit is performed after it has passed.

Many Worlds can explain delayed choice without invoking backward causality.

Oh! Nice! But that contradicts your idea that the MWI remains a non local theory. Because the argument to show that delayed choice can be done without backward causality will show that Many Worlds explains the violation of Bell’s inequality without FTL action at a distance.

Bruno

The photon hits a half silvered mirror so 50% of the time the photon takes path A and 50% of the time it takes path B. At the end of each path is a detector which destroys the photon and sends the information on which path the photon took to a physical memory system of some sort that, just like everything else, must obey Schödinger's Equation.

Many Worlds says if there is a change the universe splits and in this case the only difference is a change in the physical memory,  in one universe the memory is it going through path A and the other it remembers it going throughpath B. But if you then use quantum erasure then the physical state of the memory is no longer different, they are in the exact same state, so there is no longer any difference between the 2 universes, so they merge back together. But now the single universe seems to have indications the photon followed path A only and indications it followed path B only and this can cause interference bands. 

John K Clark 

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[Brent Meeker]

On 9/17/2019 6:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 14 Sep 2019, at 05:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

There is no MWI axioms. MWI is just usual quantum mechanics where the collapse postulate has been thrown out. (And no need to take the word “worlds” too much seriously: it is more relative states or histories. With mechanism, they are all already emulated just in virtue of 2+2=4 & Co.

When MWI throws out the collapse postulate it loses the connection with results and records.  It struggles to recover that and resorts to equally questionable methods, such as averaging over the environment, to connect with experiment.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 8:25 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 13 Sep 2019, at 23:27, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to find out once and for all if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, and as a side effect make you rich. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the next drawing of the winning number is at 11pm tonight. Then make a simple machine that will monitor the internet and pull the trigger on a 44 magnum aimed at your head at exactly 11.01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. If Many Worlds is correct your subjective experience can only be that at 11.01pm, despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you, a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. After that as you fly on your private jet to your private island you can contemplate the fact that you are the only person in the world who knows the true nature of reality and knows it with absolute certainty. And it only cost you a few hundred dollars to make the machine, the most expensive part being the gun itself.

Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point,  your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess; somebody else will have to clean up the thousands of itty bitty bits of brain splattered all over the room, it's their problem not yours.

The problem is that the probability is higher to get mad and believe you did get the winning lottery, when the bullet did not kill you. But in principle this works, yet, not in any practical sense. Because il all worlds where the bullet go through your brain, you survive there too. You would need a self-annihilating deice which is infallible, and that cannot exist. We survive no matter what. Perfect self-annihilation works only in thought experience, and are used only in theoretical reasoning.

 Perhaps it could work for an uploaded brain.  Pause the VM in the case your numbers don't come up.  But then you need to ensure no one in that branch ever unpauses it, which is the real difficulty.

Jason

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 8:32:48 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 14 Sep 2019, at 05:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

There is no MWI axioms. MWI is just usual quantum mechanics where the collapse postulate has been thrown out. (And no need to take the word “worlds” too much seriously: it is more relative states or histories. With mechanism, they are all already emulated just in virtue of 2+2=4 & Co.

So, yes, the MWI is used all the time. The collapse is used for personal consumption only, and is, in Everett-QM or in Mechanist philosophy of mind, a first person experience.

Bruno

MWI says a decoherent event or measurement induces an observer to be "frame dragged" along various eigen-branches, where only one is experienced at each case. This is not QM per se, but rather an auxiliary physical axiom.

LC 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Sep 2019, at 20:08, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 9/17/2019 6:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 14 Sep 2019, at 05:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 6:25:43 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

as far as I can see [MWI is] just an auxiliary set of physical axioms one can work with in various ways. I have no idea whether there really are 10^{200} versions of me splashed across the type III multiverse.

LC

 

Are there any programs using "MWI axioms" in any computational QM programming* to do materials science, chemistry, cosmology, etc. that give them an edge over other methods in terms of making better predictions?

If not, MMI is a waste of time, and pseudoscience.

There is no MWI axioms. MWI is just usual quantum mechanics where the collapse postulate has been thrown out. (And no need to take the word “worlds” too much seriously: it is more relative states or histories. With mechanism, they are all already emulated just in virtue of 2+2=4 & Co.

When MWI throws out the collapse postulate it loses the connection with results and records. 

That would be like saying that Mechanism has to be false, because it cannot answer where I will feel to be after a duplication. That is not valid.

It struggles to recover that and resorts to equally questionable methods, such as averaging over the environment, to connect with experiment.

I disagree with this. Gleason theorem justify the unicity of the measure, and Everett reduces “correctly” the quantum indeterminacy as a mechanist self-localisation of some sort. Then the decoherence theory gives a prominent role to the environment, like mechanism gives a prominent role to the structure of observable consistent continuations.

Difficulties remain, sure, both in QM and M, but it seems to me that the non-collapse poison is less fatal than assuming a collapse in QM, especially that it confirms Mechanism.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

Even the impossibility I think. The branches made up a tree of computations with all inputs possible. So, unless you have tools capable of making a number disappear, you will always feel like if someone unpaused it from your personal perspective. At least with M, with QM, it is perhaps slightly less obvious ...

Bruno

Jason

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