The Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics: an endorsement to Idealism

[Adur Alkain]

I find that the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, quite popular among professional physicists these days, constitutes a great endorsement to idealism. Not in a direct way, obviously, since this is definitely a materialistic interpretation. But it's so obviously absurd that I find there is no better case for idealism to be found. If materialists can't come up with something better than this nonsense, idealism must be true!

I realized this with special clarity while I was watching this talk by well-known physicist Sean Carroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRLDatmbgA&t=1905s

Actually, I found the incredible absurdity of that talk so inspiring that I made a video response, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfkJqhr9fv8

If you find my way of talking is too slow and boring, you can read the "idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics" I posted here as an "essay submission". It's basically the same idea, and it was all inspired by that talk by Sean Carroll. So, even if I disagree with his materialistic views I have to acknowledge my debt to this man... at least he is trying to understand what quantum mechanics is saying about reality! And he isn't afraid of embracing radical and apparently "crazy" ideas, which I find refreshing.

[Claudio Chianese]

What I find quite funny is that contemporary MWI proponents, like Carroll, are hardcore materialists, but Everett himself was quite a weird guy, reported to have had a firm belief in his own quantum immortality. That belief was so strong it actually motivated his daughter Liz to take her own life in order to reunite with him.

[Adur Alkain]

On Friday, 1 March 2019 17:08:09 UTC+1, Claudio Chianese wrote:

What I find quite funny is that contemporary MWI proponents, like Carroll, are hardcore materialists, but Everett himself was quite a weird guy, reported to have had a firm belief in his own quantum immortality. That belief was so strong it actually motivated his daughter Liz to take her own life in order to reunite with him.

Wow, I never heard that story before! Well, Everett's theory is definitely weird. Thanks for sharing!

[Claudio Chianese]

He was definitely a genius and a visionary, if he was to propose his theory today skeptics would come out of the woodwork to bash him. I feel MWI was adopted in desperation, just like another inflationary theory, eternal inflation, was adopted in cosmology to make sense of fine tuning without resorting to intelligent design. On the same note, one of the great theorists behind eternal inflation, Andrei Linde, is sympathetic to the idea of mind as fundamental. 

[Jason Barr]

I’ll explain why the Many-World interpretation is silly. Ok

The Decoherence denies wave-function collapse, but there’s lots of good evidence of wave-function collapse. Here’s one that’s particularly powerful:

https://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899

Physicists captured the collapse of the wave-function in slow motion using weak-measurements.

The MWI says that it just really really looks like that’s what’s happening, but it’s not. There’s really some hidden mechanism that only makes it appear so, but there’s really a fantastic amount of different worlds which we have no access to, and that there is 0 evidence for, which branch off. The problem is that we can take any data and deny it using this logic. You think you are reading this on a device right now? No. It only seems that way, there’s really a secret mechanism making it seem that way when it’s really not. You think the striking a match produces fire? No. It only appears that it does, when really there’s some hidden mechanism and something else is going on. Just trust me, take it on faith...

This is simply to deny reality without good reason. Wave-function collapse is still our best explanation for what’s going on.

Also, you cannot derive the Born rule (which is essential to quantum theory) under the MWI. The Born rule says you can calculate the probability of what the separate results will be, and the probability of each becoming the actual result. However, in the MWI, the branching entails all the different possibilities are equally real. This means you cannot even derive the Born rule under the MWI. Sean Carrol, concedes this a hurdle for him:

“As an MWI proponent... I am very quick to admit that there are potentially quite good objections to the MWI... Despite my efforts and those of others, it’s certainly possible that we don’t have the right understanding of probability in the theory, or why it’s a theory of probability at all. Similarly, despite the efforts of Zurek and others, we still don’t have an absolutely airtight understanding of why see apparent collapses into certain states and not others.” - Physicist Sean Carrol

It is simpler just to say that collapse happens. If it is only “apparent” then you need all these secret mechanisms there’s no evidence for to explain it away. There’s no need for this elaborate theory of Many-Worlds, it’s useless. MWI enthusiasts might be able to derive the Born rule some day, but only by using extremely ad hoc and unnatural modifications.

“Everettian Quantum Theory is essentially useless as a scientific theory... Unless, for example, it can explain why we should expect to observe the Born rule to have been very well confirmed statistically. Evidently, Everettians cannot give an explanation that says that all observers in the multiverse will observe confirmation of the Born rule, or that very probably all observers will observe confirmation of the Born rule. On the contrary, many observers in an Everettian multiverse will definitely experience convincing disconfirmation of the Born rule.” - Physicist Adrien Kent

All this to deny wave-function collapse and the special role for the observer.

The MWI is not the simplest explanation (despite the fact Schrodinger’s equation is never violated in it), and it exists only the deny what the experiments are telling us. All these newer made-up interpretations of Quantum Mechanics are superfluous:

“There is only one new quantum mechanical framework that was discovered in the mid 1920s and that has superseded classical physics (i.e. the old framework of physics that describes the state of Nature as ‘objectively existing even in the absence of observations’) and it doesn't leave any room for multiple ‘interpretations’. The word ‘interpretation’ has been actively coined and used only by those who tried to deny quantum mechanics, its validity, or its completeness – in one way or another. To talk about ‘interpretations’ doesn’t mean to do detailed work in quantum mechanics; it means to deny the theory.”- Physicist Lubos Motl

It gets worse.

The MWI interpretation suffers from the Preferred Basis Problem. Basically, if the MWI is true then the Schrodinger equation pretty much has to explain the universe, but that does not explain why we observe things at the macroscopic level to be classical:

“The core basis problem is that the robust enduring states specified by environmental decoherence effects are essentially Gaussian wave packets that form continua of non-orthogonal states... But these eigenstates do not enjoy the locality and quasi-classicality properties of the states defined by decoherence effects, and hence are not satisfactory preferred basis states. This core problem needs to be addressed and resolved before any Many Worlds-type interpretation can be said to exist.” - Physicist Henry Stapp

Again, you would need very generous ad hoc postulates.

In summary, the MWI is useless, riddled with problems, and these problems cannot be solved it seems without irrational ad hoc modifications. It, thus, should be discarded.

[Jason Barr]

I’ll check out your video, but the Copenhagen Interpretation is still the best one. Add a littl von Neumann/ Gaswami splash, and you get Idealism.

[Arthur W]

One thing I'll say about Copenhagen is that, as best as I can understand it, it displays some humility and honesty regarding the limits of what one can definitively say about "reality" in terms of what QM has to offer perceptually. In a way, the whole so-called "shut-up and calculate" attitude, Feynman etc. is a reflection of that. It neither has an ontology nor pretends to.

Everett and many worlds is simply insane IMHO, an opinion admittedly based on entirely non-mathematical, 2nd hand accounts of the interpretation. 

[Adur Alkain]

Wow, Jason, I'm impressed!

In contrast to yours, my understanding of quantum mechanics is superficial and vague at best... but I think I get the general idea! :)