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A comment on Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Quantum Weirdness. Parent comment

Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by TheOtherHobbes on Friday October 21, 2022 @11:38AM (#33289161)
You don't think postulating an unknown number of extra universes with a very poorly defined relationship with each other qualifies as an extra assumption?
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by pdonis on Friday October 21, 2022 @12:32PM (#33289922)
The MWI does not postulate extra universes, although that pop science description is unfortunately common even though it is wrong. The MWI just says that the one universe that exists is actually very, very different from what we perceive. (To be clear, I'm not saying this correct description makes the MWI any more palatable. I am just clarifying exactly what kind of unpalatableness the MWI requires.)
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by ryeights on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:20PM (#33291311)
Can you elaborate on this? The Wikipedia page for MWI says

>The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are most likely an uncountably infinite number of universes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by pdonis on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:35PM (#33291493)
One should not be trying to learn physics from Wikipedia, particularly not for something as complicated as QM, even more particularly not for an aspect of QM as contentious as the MWI.

The MWI says that there is one single universal wave function, which evolves in time by unitary evolution forever. That is one universe, not an infinity of them. It is just one universe that is nothing like what we think we perceive.

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by jamiek88 on Saturday October 22, 2022 @02:55AM (#33296132)
Your last paragraph is verbatim gonna be the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ of my space cult.

Wanna join? You can be number 2 thus have second dibs at the buffet.

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by GoblinSlayer on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:33PM (#33291463)
Those worlds are states in superposition, the term "world" is an allegory to help people understand that those states don't interact due to linearity of the Schrodinger equation, because not all properties of linearity are obvious.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by d_tr on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:42PM (#33291574)
Not the parent, but I 'd say this amounts to how you define a "universe". There is a single wavefunction which says that one "copy" of you observes result A and another "copy" observes result B. Using the phrase "many universes" implies that these two scenarios are considered as "different universes". I personally do not like this phrase and find it misleading.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung on Friday October 21, 2022 @03:34PM (#33292151)
You are all the "copies", and, under certain conditions, can experience all their observations. Think of yourself more as an aspect of a multifaceted being experiencing the universe through you.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by pdonis on Friday October 21, 2022 @05:17PM (#33293138)
> under certain conditions, can experience all their observations

What conditions are these?

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung on Saturday October 22, 2022 @01:08AM (#33295793)
Practice lucid dreaming, so you can maintain a semi-awake meditative state. Practice remembering your dreams -some of them are memories from other aspects like you, others are your subconscious communicating through symbols and situations. Practice asking questions, dreaming, and remembering. Practice reaching the semi-awake meditative state from the awakened end of your day. Realize, what you think of as your body, is the 4D sensory organ of your hyperdimensional self, maintain meditative state, and open your other eyes. The effect is a lot like the collage view of regular stereoscopic vision, except out of the immediate overton-window of aspects of yourself similar enough to you.

Getting to that point can take several years. A quicker option seem to be drugs, based on conversations I had with friends, but I never wanted to artificially taint my perception, so I did it the hard way. My findings are that while there is no fate, there exist enough aspects in universes similar enough to yours, but perhaps chronically shifted, that you can learn from their mistakes. This is known as instinct, "guardian angels", premonition, deja-vue, etc. Good luck.

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by stubish on Saturday October 22, 2022 @10:40PM (#33304093)
If you can receive information from alternative universes, experiments can be devised to prove this, and would indeed answer a great many questions in quantum physics. Physicists and others interested in the field would be extremely grateful. As would cogitative scientists and statisticians, who would need to adjust their experimentally demonstrated explanations for instinct, "guardian angels", premonitions, deja-vue etc.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by olddustytrail on Friday October 21, 2022 @03:04PM (#33291832)
Let's say we generally subscribed to the flat earth theory. But that causes many problems with our actual measurements. So someone proposes the "many earths" theory, where there are many flat earths connected at different angles.

If you could travel between these many earths, you could even end up in one - let's call this mythical land "Australia" - where South was up!

Sounds a bit crazy but some people believe it could really exist.

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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by GoblinSlayer on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:29PM (#33291409)
We perceived flat earth and geocentrism, so not the first time. I can recommend quantum electrodynamics to people who are too attached to corpuscular paradigm.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by kgwgk on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:59PM (#33291774)
"The MWI" is not one thing. There are many-people saying many-things about those many-worls.
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Re:Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Qua... by d_tr on Friday October 21, 2022 @02:13PM (#33291205)
It is the other way around. The universes are there when you solve the equations, and you can either let them be or keep only one by invoking the collapse.

The collapse amounts to just setting some terms to zero.

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