From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Mar 07 2009 - 16:11:28 MST
--- On Sat, 3/7/09, Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I can remember that you have claimed that "probability
> is a model of belief, not of reality ", but that
> won't convince me that you have asserted a true
> statement. And if I am understanding the model of the
> Many-Worlds hypothesis that you are expounding, I'm not
> sure that it's the standard version. The one that I
> prefer goes like this:
> "The state vector does not collapse. What you are
> interpreting as the collapse of the state vector is the
> bifurcation of the wave state into discrete
> 'segments'."
There seems to be many interpretations of many-worlds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
It seems that Everett did not imagine splitting universes. Rather, he includes the observer in the quantum equation, so that making an observation (an event that is asymmetric with regard to time) has no special status in a physics that is otherwise symmetric with regard to time. It seems illogical to me the need to reintroduce a probabilistic interpretation in terms of splitting universes after we have just eliminated the fundamental role of probability in physics. I agree with Einstein. Many-worlds (not Everett's term) is indistinguishable from the case of a single universe with a definite quantum state that is not known to the observers within that universe (as if it could be known).
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
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