Quantum Theory and The Many Worlds Theory

[Cioran]

More from Frank Tipler: Many Worlds is not only EASILY TESTABLE, it is an essential idea for many areas of biology, physics and engineering.

Tipler on the Many Worlds, fwiw:

I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels: not just atoms, but also humans are quantum mechanical objects. So if the MWI is actually false, then quantum mechanics must also be false at some level of complexity. All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well.

[YesNo]

I'm still reading Tipler's article, but your comment that Many Worlds being "easily testable" makes me wonder how such a test would be done.

I don't trust Tipler's statement that you quote: "All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well." Nor the idea that MWI is "not an option". Here is the Wikipedia article on Tipler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler

[Cioran]

I'm still reading Tipler's article, but your comment that Many Worlds being "easily testable" makes me wonder how such a test would be done.

I don't trust Tipler's statement that you quote: "All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well." Nor the idea that MWI is "not an option". Here is the Wikipedia article on Tipler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler

Classic ad hominen attack.

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again. And I have pointed out your confusion over and over, and you have not met these points. I suggest you educate yourself more fully on these ideas and then comment on them. There is a huge literature on the Many Worlds in the academic/scientific/mathematical community, by people other than Tipler who have less controversial ideas on other matters. You can find deep technical papers, and papers more geared toward laymen, all over the Internet. That you would Google Tipler and try to find something personally to discredit him is not just classic ad hom, but demonstrates to me that you have no interest in actually learning about this subject and, like so many Internet interlocutors, you are primarily interested in defending a view you hold because you want to doggedly stick to what you believe whether there are good grounds for your beliefs or not. This is not a discussion. It's a game of one-upmanship.

Tipler's ideas on the Omega Point are of course wholly irrelevant to the validity of Many Worlds. This is a useless discussion. A typically retarded Internet discussion

ETA: Just to be specific, let's identify your implied ad hom. It is, after all, clearly why you made the Wiki link. It is this:

Frank Jennings Tipler (born February 1, 1947) is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University.[2] Tipler has authored books and papers on the Omega Point, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead. Some have argued that it is pseudoscience.

So obviously this "resurrection of the dead" bit and "pseudoscience" bit got you all hot and bothered. Yet what about the fact that Tipler is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane? Are his professional credentials irrelevant? Of course, his professional credentials don't make his ideas right, any more than his more irreverant ideas make him wrong. All of this is classic ad hom.

Can you address the substance of his discussion on how Many Worlds solves the problem of quantum non-locality and indeterminism, or not? I expect not. I also expect you never read his book on the Omega Point, and indeed never even heard of Tipler, until you Googled him. So you also have no idea on whether his ideas on the Omega Point have any validity or not, obviously! But all it takes is a quick link cherry-picked up from Google to try to discredit someone in order to support ideas you have no grasp of anyway.

Disgusting.

[mal4mac]

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again.

I think you're doing very well in digging into this material YesNo - especially that article about which interpretation physicists believe, and showed the wide variety of views held, some even changing their views. Copenhagen on Monday, MWI on Tuesday,...

Tipler is another fringe figure, like Everett, as comments by serious physicists make plain: "George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline"... Physicist Sean M. Carroll thought Tipler's early work was constructive but that now he has become a "crackpot".

So when Tiper says, "I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels.", how can you trust him? You can spend many years studying Theoretical physics to MSc level to check out his views, or you can look at what mainstream physicists say, and it certainly isn't that MWI is the only necessary theory and not an option! Some of the physics he did, as Sean M. Carroll points out, was constructive, but how can a lay person sort out the constructive from the crackpot?

P.S. Sean M. Carroll and George Ellis really are world-class figures, well worth exploring them on Wikipedia... Carroll has written the most recent MSc level textbook on GR to gain general applause. YesNo, you can get a free online version if you want a challenge...its gentler and clearer than most other texts at that level... Ellis co-authored the classic monograph the Large Scale Structure of Space and Time with Hawking (but that book is *really* tough... if you finish Caroll maybe try it...)

Logical fallacies like ad hominems are synonymous with "illogical arguments" because that's literally what they are

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED, but I think I like the other better, it's just "personal". So an "ad hominem attack" is simply "a personal attack".

[cacian]

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED, but I think I like the other better, it's just "personal". So an "ad hominem attack" is simply "a personal attack".

I thought a fallacy is a false statement and an argument is when two views collide.
They collide because there is no understanding between the interlocutors themselves and not what is actually being said or discussed.
When there is a failure to connect between two standing people there is no understanding from either part and therefore the blame is past on to the argument rather then the argumentees themselves. This is how I see it.
And so there is no fallacy of an argument as such but only misunderstanding of two minds not being able to connect. Failure to connect is what I call it.

[MorpheusSandman]

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED

It's a term from logic, so you really need to quote a dictionary of logic that has categories and sub-categories of fallacies listed. Here's one I found online.

[YesNo]

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again. And I have pointed out your confusion over and over, and you have not met these points. I suggest you educate yourself more fully on these ideas and then comment on them.

I admit that I don't understand these ideas and that's why I find the thread interesting. I'm trying to un-mix things in my mind.

The only reason I mentioned the Wikipedia article is that I thought you were quoting him as an authority. He's doesn't have much authority, but I don't actually care. Regardless of who he is, I'm still trying to make sense out of the ideas in the article he posted. I don't consider the Wikipedia article evidence that he is wrong in the particular article you cited.

Essentially the article says, if you accept MWI, the EPR paradox loses its non-locality and anti-realist features. That's not a surprise claim for an MWI proponent to make. I'm still confused by the argument since it seems to involve the confirmation step as well to make this work. In other words, and I might have this wrong, MWI would always lead one to think that one got the nonlocal answer, even if one didn't, after the experiment was confirmed, but it is only the local answer in the appropriate world. That part I'm still puzzled by because I don't think the confirmation should matter. Of course, I might be completely misunderstanding it.

One thing I've learned from the article is that I didn't understand what the term "realism" meant before. Here's what I think it means based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality:

Local realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the "realistic" assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made. And so be time independent.

I started searching the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy rather than Wikipedia for information. Here's an initial link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Regarding the Tipler article, I've run into two problems:

ONE

With entangled particles separated by great distances where spin up or down is being measured, I realize that there are two outcomes predicted by EPR but there are four worlds involved. We get the following four outcomes:

(up)(up) + (up)(down) + (down)(up) + (down)(down)

Only the ones in red are permitted by QM for the entangled particles since their outcomes are initially entangled to give opposite results. My problem is I don't see what happens to the other two worlds in the final result. How are they eliminated so that MWI agrees with QM results?

TWO

It appears having probabilities that cannot be represented as rational numbers is a problem for MWI based on this comment from Tipler:

Applying the Principle of Indifference to this new set of coefficients yields the BI for the coefficients in the original basis. Continuity in the Hilbert space of wave functions yields the BI for irrational coefficients (although it is a presupposition of the MWI that only coefficients with rational squares are allowed since irrational squares would imply an irrational number of worlds). In particular, the percentage of worlds with the value of a given basis vector is given by the square of the coefficient.

The WMI technique of simulating probabilities in the universe is to assume that the probabilities are represented as rational numbers. They use the Principle of Indifference and take the least common multiple of the denominators of the probabilities and construct the appropriate number of worlds for each outcome. If the probabilities can only be represented as irrational numbers then there is no least common multiple of the denominators since the probabilities cannot be represented in that manner. This is the problem emphasized in bold above.

There are two concerns with this MWI view of probability:

1) Why can't probabilities be represented as irrational numbers in a universe where realism is supposed to be true? Even a 50-50 chance may only be an approximation. One cannot assume for any coin in one's pocket that it has not been irregularly worn enough that the real probability is not something like 50.000000001-49.999999999 or something requiring even infinitely many decimals to correctly represent it. It seems that WMI requires reality to come in rational numbers.

2) Why does MWI think it can get out of problems such as probability, non-locality, or realism by just creating additional worlds whenever it feels like?

[Calidore]

[...]that article about which interpretation physicists believe, and showed the wide variety of views held, some even changing their views. Copenhagen on Monday, MWI on Tuesday,...

Tipler is another fringe figure, like Everett, as comments by serious physicists make plain: "George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline"...

So when Tiper says, "I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels.", how can you trust him? You can spend many years studying Theoretical physics to MSc level to check out his views, or you can look at what mainstream physicists say, and it certainly isn't that MWI is the only necessary theory and not an option! Some of the physics he did, as Sean M. Carroll points out, was constructive, but how can a lay person sort out the constructive from the crackpot?

The above lines I snipped highlight the reason why I don't even try reading this stuff, even though I would in theory find it interesting. It seems this field is almost entirely made up of people who spend their time writing and trying to sell books that point out why everyone else's theory is wrong and mine works, all about things that nobody knows for certain. It seems to be all about being as convincing as possible and recruiting as many believers/followers as possible, and claiming right that way. That's religion, not science.

Can anyone here summarize what's actually known, through verifiable and repeatable experimentation, what we have good reason to believe is true though we haven't quite nailed it down yet, and what's simply speculation that sounded good to someone?

[YesNo]

Can anyone here summarize what's actually known, through verifiable and repeatable experimentation, what we have good reason to believe is true though we haven't quite nailed it down yet, and what's simply speculation that sounded good to someone?

I was hoping someone would have answered this since I'd like to know as well. I look at all of these threads as exercises in expository prose so I'll try to answer the question as an exercise.

There are at least two related puzzles of quantum mechanics that lead to these disagreements and stimulate further research.

First, quantum particles make wavelike interference patterns on a detector even if one sends a single particle through a barrier with two slits in it. Does that mean that a single particle interfered with itself by going through both slits? If one closes one of the slits, the wavelike pattern disappears. If one measures the particle before it hits the detector to see which slit it went through, the wavelike pattern also disappears.

That is the problem of "realism". Realism expects that whatever measurement one gets says something about the particle-wave prior to the measurement. But these experiments make it look as if the particle-wave is either making a choice right when the measurement occurred or the measurement itself forced a state on the particle-wave that it didn't previously have. The evidence shows that scientific realism does not seem to work for quantum-sized particles.

How does one make sense out of that?

On one extreme, the end of realism is just accepted. That is the "anti-realistic" position. On the other extreme, there are some who claim that there are many particles in many worlds, one in the real world and the others in shadow worlds each having a distinct possible value. This claims to restore realism, because each particle would have its value prior to measurement, but it does this in an "unrealistic" way. In the middle are the people who use quantum mechanics for practical purposes only and don't care about the philosophy. They might be called the indifferent, uncommitted, "non-realistic", or "shut up and calculate" engineers.

The second problem carries this measurement issue to two particles that have been "entangled" so that if one particle is ultimately measured to have spin up the other is forced to have spin down. These two particles have been correlated. Now separate the particles across some distance and check to see what their spins are. The experiments show that their spins are still correlated even if they have been separated so far apart that any communication between them to synchronize the results would have to go faster than light. The experiments also show that there are no hidden variables that are shared between these particles to help them determine what the spin of the other particle would be before the measurement occurred.

That is the problem of "localism". Localism expects causality to flow slower than the speed of light, but these entangled particles are determining each others' measurements across distances implying causality to have seemingly instantaneous effects.

So how does that happen?

On one extreme, nonlocalism is just accepted. That's the way things are. On the other, many worlds are set up to avoid this issue in some way that I don't understand. In the middle are the engineers who use quantum mechanics and don't worry about it. They leave it for the theoretical physicists, philosophers or people on forums such as this to sort out.

[mal4mac]

The above lines I snipped highlight the reason why I don't even try reading this stuff, even though I would in theory find it interesting. It seems this field is almost entirely made up of people who spend their time writing and trying to sell books that point out why everyone else's theory is wrong and mine works, all about things that nobody knows for certain. It seems to be all about being as convincing as possible and recruiting as many believers/followers as possible, and claiming right that way. That's religion, not science.

I think it's more about selling books, since Hawking publishers have realised they can get best sellers in this area. To get an easy sell they push interpretations like Many Worlds and Omega Point that are zany and instantly appealing. They are like fairground callers: "Come and see the many universes!", "Live forever!". "Come and see the dead radioactive cat!" For non-scientists the briefest, to the point book, I've seen is:

The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

It's a bit light, and ironic, about "the particle zoo" and "time beginning with the Big Bang", but that's probably a good thing

First, quantum particles make wavelike interference patterns on a detector even if one sends a single particle through a barrier with two slits in it. Does that mean that a single particle interfered with itself by going through both slits? If one closes one of the slits, the wavelike pattern disappears. If one measures the particle before it hits the detector to see which slit it went through, the wavelike pattern also disappears.

That is the problem of "realism". Realism expects that whatever measurement one gets says something about the particle-wave prior to the measurement. But these experiments make it look as if the particle-wave is either making a choice right when the measurement occurred or the measurement itself forced a state on the particle-wave that it didn't previously have. The evidence shows that scientific realism does not seem to work for quantum-sized particles.

How does one make sense out of that?

On one extreme, the end of realism is just accepted. That is the "anti-realistic" position. On the other extreme, there are some who claim that there are many particles in many worlds, one in the real world and the others in shadow worlds each having a distinct possible value. This claims to restore realism, because each particle would have its value prior to measurement, but it does this in an "unrealistic" way. In the middle are the people who use quantum mechanics for practical purposes only and don't care about the philosophy. They might be called the indifferent, uncommitted, "non-realistic", or "shut up and calculate" engineers.

What's the difference between "anti-realistic" and "non-realistic/shut-up and calculate"?

On one extreme, nonlocalism is just accepted. That's the way things are. On the other, many worlds are set up to avoid this issue in some way that I don't understand. In the middle are the engineers who use quantum mechanics and don't worry about it. They leave it for the theoretical physicists, philosophers or people on forums such as this to sort out.

Again, what's the difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and the "pragmatic engineer"? The theoretical physicists, philosophers, and paperback writers, are nowhere near to sorting out these mysteries... they make lots of money by befuddling us all though...

If you want to go deeper than Dawkins, on quantum in particular, then try Feynman's "The Character of Physical Law":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAgcqgDc-YM

The most famous quote in modern physics is at 8:05...

[YesNo]

What's the difference between "anti-realistic" and "non-realistic/shut-up and calculate"?

Again, what's the difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and the "pragmatic engineer"? The theoretical physicists, philosophers, and paperback writers, are nowhere near to sorting out these mysteries... they make lots of money by befuddling us all though...

If you want to go deeper than Dawkins, on quantum in particular, then try Feynman's "The Character of Physical Law":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAgcqgDc-YM

The most famous quote in modern physics is at 8:05...

Most definitely I want to go deeper than Dawkins.

That Feynman lecture was great. He was actually using real chalk and blackboards. His accent and humor were perfect. The mathematical description of interference as the overall intensity not being equal to the sum of the intensities that would occur through each individual hole is something I didn't realize. "Nobody understands quantum mechanics."

After thinking about it, I realize there isn't much difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and a "pragmatic engineer" except the pragmatic engineer tries to pretend that there might be some middle ground on which to avoid the controversy. There probably isn't any.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't know why we're mentioning Dawkins (evolutionary biologist) in a discussion of theoretical quantum physics (he's already admitted his limited knowledge in the field).

[mal4mac]

That Feynman lecture was great...

Yeah. Probably the best way, and certainly the most fun way, to go deeper is "more Feynman". Though, as he says in the lecture, you can't go deeper, only broader. Start with the book of those lectures "The Character of Physical Law", follow it up with his wonderfully light autobiographies, and the popular out-takes from his famous "lectures on physics". Also check out the other lectures on utube - the Horizon interviews are other BBC classics. His full set of "lectures" is quite heavy, it was aimed at top Caltech physics undergraduates and went over their heads several times, but it's worth dipping into. When doing my physics degree we were recommended other textbooks, and to dip into Feynman to *really* understand certain difficult concepts, but not to worry if he lost us now and again - this was good advice. I've browsed a few university physics websites recently and many (of the best), I see, still make that recommendation. After reading all his popular stuff you might want to dive into the third volume of the lectures, which is all on quantum physics. To get into his own seminal work on QED you might attempt his semi-popular book of that name, and then (if you are really keen) his PhD level text book, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, recently republished in Dover. The following site is also interesting, it stresses the use being made of Feynman's approach to QM by one of the most admired educators in the physics community:

http://www.eftaylor.com/quantum.html

Note that, although Feynman didn't mention it in his lectures, he did invent a very popular interpretation of his own:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-Richard...ntum-mechanics

But he's great enough not to feel the need to mention this, it would just confuse the main message: "no one understands..."

[cacian]

YesNo about the center of the universe not in existence it just occurred to me how does one explain the moon phenomena?
In the sense that it increases and decreases.

[YesNo]

I didn't realize Feynman was so accessible, mal4mac. I'll have to read and watch more of this. The Edwin Taylor site looks like it can keep me busy for a while as well.

Regarding Dawkins, MorpheusSandman, I agree he has little to do with this thread. I assume he was introduced because his style seems quite different from Feynman's. From my limited experience with Dawkins, he seems ready to pontificate about stuff he knows little about while Feynman humorously will say things like "We call it a probability amplitude because we don't know what it means."

I don't think a specific center of the universe should exist based on relativity, cacian, but perhaps each inertial frame of reference could be considered a center of the universe at least for the purposes of aligning a coordinate system with that frame of reference.

Here are some links I've found on related subjects in this thread:

1) The Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy has an interesting article on Everett: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-everett/

This provides some history and mentions five modifications to Everett's relative state interpretation of QM that have tried to overcome problems with the original theory. We have only discussed the "many world" modification, but there are also the "Bare Theory", "Many Minds", "Many Histories" and "Relative Facts" modifications. The article makes me wonder if any of these modified theories actually model QM adequately. I previously assumed that Many Worlds did so.

2) Deutsch challenged people to explain where the quantum computer's calculations occurred. Deutsche seemed to think one would have to say they occurred in many worlds. A. M. Steane has a different answer in "A quantum computer only needs one universe": http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/quant-ph/0003084v3.pdf The title says it all, but the body gives the explanation.