Cosmologic philosophy:multiworld quantum theories? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 22, 2017, 01:40 (2642 days ago) @ David Turell

Another review article covering and questioning the various approaches to the strange finding in quantum research and theory:

https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy?utm_source=Aeon+New...

"But experiments in quantum physics have been obstinately silent on what it means. All we can do is develop hunches, intuitions and, yes, cherished ideas. Of these, the survey offered no fewer than 11 to choose from (as well as ‘other’ and ‘none’).

"The most popular (supported by 42 per cent of the very small sample) was basically the view put forward by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and their colleagues in the early days of quantum theory. Today it is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Maybe you haven’t heard of the Copenhagen Interpretation either. But in third place (18 per cent) was the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), and I suspect you do know something about that, since the MWI is the one with all the glamour and publicity. It tells us that we have multiple selves, living other lives in other universes, quite possibly doing all the things that we dream of but will never achieve (or never dare).

"We should resist not just because MWI is unlikely to be true, or even because, since no one knows how to test it, the idea is perhaps not truly scientific at all. Those are valid criticisms, but the main reason we should hold out is that it is incoherent, both philosophically and logically.

"Despite its shaky foundations, quantum mechanics is extraordinarily successful. In fact you’d be hard pushed to find a more successful scientific theory. It can predict all kinds of phenomena with amazing precision, from the colours of grass and sky to the transparency of glass, the way enzymes work and how the Sun shines.

***

"We are left with what’s called the Measurement Problem, which really comes down to this: between the rainbow-smear of probabilities in our equations and the matter-of-fact determinacy of everything we can actually measure, what on Earth is going on?

" The dominant view, the Copenhagen Interpretation, just shrugs and accepts wavefunction collapse as an additional ingredient of the theory, a clumsy fudge that we don’t understand but which we seem forced to make do with, at least for now.

***

"And then there’s the Many Worlds option – though its proponents, who include heavyweights such as Stephen Hawking and the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, are oddly reluctant to concede that their preferred view admits of any rivals. As far as they are concerned, the MWI is the only way of taking quantum theory seriously.
***

"What are these parallel worlds like? In the ‘multiverse’ of the Many Worlds view, says Tegmark, ‘all possible states exist at every instant’. That’s quite an ambiguous statement, since it might either mean all states that could evolve from some initial configuration, or all imaginable arrangements of all particles. But, either way, we face some nonsensical implications. You see, the MWI does some radical stuff to you and me.

"‘The act of making a decision,’ says Tegmark – a ‘decision’ here being interchangeable with an experiment or measurement – ‘causes a person to split into multiple copies.’ Brian Greene, another prominent MWI advocate, tells us gleefully that ‘each copy is you’. In other words, you just need to broaden your mind beyond your parochial idea of what ‘you’ means. Each of these individuals has its own consciousness, and so each believes he or she is ‘you’ – but the real ‘you’ is their sum total. This means that Greene and Tegmark don’t support the MWI at all – it’s only these particular copies (and presumably some others) who do.
***

"The conceit of ‘multiple selves’ isn’t at all what the MWI, taken at face value, is proposing. On the contrary, it is dismantling the whole notion of selfhood – it is denying any real meaning of ‘you’ at all.

***

"That its supporters refuse to engage in any depth with the questions the MWI poses about the ontology and autonomy of self is lamentable. But this is (speaking as an ex-physicist) very much a physicist’s blind spot: a failure to recognise – or perhaps to care – that problems arising at a level beyond that of the fundamental, abstract theory can be anything more than a minor inconvenience.

"If the MWI were supported by some sound science, we would have to deal with it – and to do so with more seriousness than the merry invention of Doppelgängers to measure both quantum states of a photon. But it is not. It is grounded in a half-baked philosophical argument about a preference to simplify the axioms. Until Many Worlders can take seriously the philosophical implications of their vision, it’s not clear why their colleagues, or the rest of us, should demur from the judgment of the philosopher of science Robert Crease that the MWI is ‘one of the most implausible and unrealistic ideas in the history of science’. Here, after all, is a theory that seems to allow everything conceivable to happen."

Comment: Very long essay. Many other objections are presented. Superposition and particle connections across the universe have other more reasonable theories to cover them, i.e., Kastner's transactional postulate. The Copenhagen convention is simply shut up and calculate, but it works. Why invent shadow worlds ad nauseum, explaining nothing?