the big bang theory~ how did we get here?

[MorpheusSandman]

Maybe they are not morons, just find thinking hard work, and, instead, choose just to live in an average unthinking way. Why change if they are happy? The Ancient Sceptics suggested living with the conditions you find, because nothing is sure, might as well take the easy path; so your "morons" are taking up an intellectual position that is difficult to argue against, albeit unthinkingly.

In general, I wouldn't ask someone to change if they're happy, only if they are making decisions to further that happiness based on their ignorance that affects others. Sadly, this is pretty much how politics and human societies operate. The people who vote are the often the ones most ignorant about the issues, the facts, and how what they're doing affects others. Plus, if someone is ignorant, it's best advised they don't go around talking about that something like they aren't ignorant. Humans being social animals means it's hard for one to be ignorant and happy without either one affecting others.

I don't see that... what about inner demons, or just not knowing where true comfort lies?

I think we're talking two different things; I just meant people can choose to believe something is true/untrue because it's comfortable/uncomfortable. This doesn't guarantee that they will always be comfortable, never face inner demons, etc., it simply means they will choose not to add to their discomforts. So, eg, one might choose to believe in an afterlife because it's a comforting thought, but this doesn't make the notion of an afterlife true, nor does it mean that person will be completely comfortable when it's their time to die.

[mal4mac]

I think we're talking two different things; I just meant people can choose to believe something is true/untrue because it's comfortable/uncomfortable. This doesn't guarantee that they will always be comfortable, never face inner demons, etc., it simply means they will choose not to add to their discomforts. So, eg, one might choose to believe in an afterlife because it's a comforting thought, but this doesn't make the notion of an afterlife true, nor does it mean that person will be completely comfortable when it's their time to die.

Can one choose to believe in something? I'd like to believe in an afterlife, but I'm too skeptical. If there is a difference of opinion like MW/Copenhagen I find it more comfortable not to adopt any position.

[cafolini]

Can one choose to believe in something? I'd like to believe in an afterlife, but I'm too skeptical. If there is a difference of opinion like MW/Copenhagen I find it more comfortable not to adopt any position.

I don't think you have to adopt any position at all, except the recognition of the Mystery we are. That's not enough to give up your skepticism, but it is enough not to postulate it as necessary either, which I accept you do not do.
Let's see. It's 9 AM here and all's well. Have fun. God bless you.

[MorpheusSandman]

Can one choose to believe in something?

Well, I guess that would depend on whether you think one can "choose" anything (ie, the question of free-will). I don't know if we consciously "choose" to believe something the way, eg, you might look in your fridge and "choose" to drink milk as opposed to water. Beliefs are more of an unconscious, cumulative thing. EG, I can't pick a singular moment where I went "OK, I choose to believe MW is most likely true," it just slowly seemed more and more true the more I researched QM.

If there is a difference of opinion like MW/Copenhagen I find it more comfortable not to adopt any position.

You can find a difference of opinion on any matter if you look hard enough. There are people who deny the holocaust, think the Earth is 6000 years old, that evolution is a myth, etc. These aren't differences of opinions, they're differences in how people attain and logically process facts. Similar with MW/Copenhagen, all of the evidence out there favors MW. Those who choose to reject it do so because they don't like what it implies, not because they don't think what it claims is most likely to be true. It's a bit like how some look at many of the things evolution implies--ie, that we're no different than other animals, that we were not "created," that morality is not objective but a bi-product of social evolution, etc.--and reject it because of that; they don't reject it because the evidence isn't overwhelmingly in favor of it, and that's a horrible way to arrive at true beliefs.

[mal4mac]

... with MW/Copenhagen, all of the evidence out there favors MW. Those who choose to reject it do so because they don't like what it implies, not because they don't think what it claims is most likely to be true.

Well that's what you say, but I can't believe that most professional quantum physicists are denying the truth simply because they don't like the implications. I mean the implications are not all that dislikeable, anyway. Why didn't the atomic physicists deny the possibility of an atom bomb... now there's a case where you might think dis-likeability would have made them ignore the truth! But just because they think a multitude of universes seems a bit excessive, at first sight, they aren't going to deny the truth!

So to an "outsider", and even with a physics degree I count myself as an outsider, it can only look like you are tub thumping for your favourite interpretation. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't see you having any success in persuading anyone in this thread that MW is *the* true description of reality. Even if you did, it's the wrong tack! You need to do what Eddington did with GR, he moved heaven & earth to perform the eclipse experiment that persuaded (just about) all physicists that GR was correct, and the public (me, YesNo, et. al.) then followed along in admiring GR as a great theory. So why not devote all the energy you put into these threads into devising an experiment that shows MW to be the one true theory? Or if you think the evidence is already there, why not devote your time to convincing the doubting physicists, those are the ones who will raise you to special status if you succeed! Not me and YesNo.

[MorpheusSandman]

Well that's what you say, but I can't believe that most professional quantum physicists are denying the truth simply because they don't like the implications.

Most of them aren't denying it, at least depending on who you ask. The largest poll done had a result of 58% of 72 leading cosmologists saying they believed MW was true, only 18% rejected it, and the other 26% were either in the "not sure" or "no opinion" camp. Now, that poll is "controversial" in that it's unclear just how representative it is of the actual majority view but, AFAIK, no better/larger one has been done. Most others commenting on it are just going off their own experience. At worst we could say it's unclear how "accepted" it is. However, I don't know why you'd find it surprising that scientists are human too and would have trouble letting go of their previous assumptions (more on this later).

I mean the implications are not all that dislikeable, anyway.

What's unlikable about it is that there's no (apparent) way to "contact/confirm" these other worlds even if the interp is true. It also implies (again, depending on whom you ask; the issue is a bit more complicated than some like YesNo make it out to be) that we have no free-will, since everything that can happen does happen in one world or another. When you "make a decision" all that's really happening are the particles that make you up are "going one way" in the world you experience now and yet they also "went the other way" in another world you aren't experiencing (actually, this is a gross simplification and leads to misunderstandings of the interp, but to explain it more accurately would require much more time/space/info). That's a very unpleasant thought to many, essentially taking away any sense of "specialty" that we humans felt we had as a life-form. It also has to do with the fact that Copenhagen came first and got very entrenched in the literature, and even scientists are not quick to let go of their metaphysical assumptions, especially for something as counter-intuitive as MW.

So to an "outsider", and even with a physics degree I count myself as an outsider, it can only look like you are tub thumping for your favourite interpretation. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't see you having any success in persuading anyone in this thread that MW is *the* true description of reality. Even if you did, it's the wrong tack! You need to do what Eddington did with GR, he moved heaven & earth to perform the eclipse experiment that persuaded (just about) all physicists that GR was correct, and the public (me, YesNo, et. al.) then followed along in admiring GR as a great theory. So why not devote all the energy you put into these threads into devising an experiment that shows MW to be the one true theory? Or if you think the evidence is already there, why not devote your time to convincing the doubting physicists, those are the ones who will raise you to special status if you succeed! Not me and YesNo.

Perhaps I'm "tubthumping" to an extent, but you won't find anything I've claimed to be untrue. Plus, go back to less than a year ago and you'll find that I was very much on the fence on this issue. It took me reading a lot into it to realize that it was the best interpretation by, like, a whole lot. Even now, though, I'm not insisting that MW HAS to be true, what I'm saying is that, thus far, all the evidence is in favor of MW and it is by far the most likely answer.

The problem with "proving" MW is that there's nothing really like Eddington's eclipse experiment that can be done; ie, there's no ONE experiment that can prove MW since what it's claiming--that QP works all the way down and that there's no "split" between the quantum and classic worlds--can only really be falsified, not confirmed. If the theory is true, then what we'd expect to find was that all objects (including us) would be in superposition, and, thus far, all objects we're capable of putting in superposition have indeed been shown to be in superposition. See this extract:

Time and again, we’ve managed to show that larger and larger objects can be in multiple states, using the double slit experiment or variations of it. At last check, the double slit experiment was successfully preformed on C60F48, which has fully 108 atoms, or 2,424 protons, neutrons, and electrons. The entire molecule (actually, thousands of them) actually interfered with itself, demonstrating the ability to be in multiple states.

Which raises the question: what’s the damn problem? Everything that can be tested has demonstrated quantum superposition, so why not just extend that to “everything obeys the same quantum mechanical laws, including superposition.”? Why not indeed?

One may be tempted to say “the physics at small scales is just different!”. Fair enough. However, there are no physical laws that work differently on different scales. For example, at very small scales water acts like honey, and to swim you need to use things like flagella. At the other end of the scale (our scale) water behaves… like water, and things like fins and flippers suddenly work really well, but flagella don’t. However, the same physical laws (specifically, the Navier-Stokes equation) govern everything.

More generally, all laws apply at all scales, it’s just a question of degree. Relativity works at all velocities, but you don’t notice the weird effects until you’re moving really fast. What we call “Newton’s laws” are just an approximation that work at low speeds.

If the Copenhagen “size argument” (that larger objects somehow have different laws) holds up, it’ll be the first of its kind.

You may also be interested in reading this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/q8/many_worlds_one_best_guess/ which is a longer, more thorough synopsis of why MW is the "best guess" we have, and it also proposes some theories about why it's not even more widely accepted than it is. I think one thing it doesn't mention is that there are a lot of physicists that just don't care. There's now a very common group of physicists that just say "shut up and calculate" without worrying about the implications of what interp is right. As Cioran has mentioned before, this wasn't good enough for someone like Einstein, who was as much a natural philosopher as he was a scientist (and he did not support Copenhagen; though Einstein proposed hidden variables, which was ruled out by Bell's Theorem shortly after Einstein's death). Einstein wanted to know "the truth," and a lot of modern scientists don't care, since "the truth" wouldn't really impact their ability to use quantum calculations for practical (ie, engineering) purposes. Regardless, here's a good extract from that article:

When we turn our attention to macroscopic phenomena, our sight is obscured. We cannot experiment on the wavefunction of a human in the way that we can experiment on the wavefunction of a hydrogen atom. In no case can you actually read off the wavefunction with a little quantum scanner. But in the case of, say, a human, the size of the entire organism defeats our ability to perform precise calculations or precise experiments—we cannot confirm that the quantum equations are being obeyed in precise detail.

We know that phenomena commonly thought of as "quantum" do not just disappear when many microscopic objects are aggregated. Lasers put out a flood of coherent photons, rather than, say, doing something completely different. Atoms have the chemical characteristics that quantum theory says they should, enabling them to aggregate into the stable molecules making up a human.

So in one sense, we have a great deal of evidence that quantum laws are aggregating to the macroscopic level without too much difference. Bulk chemistry still works.

But we cannot directly verify that the particles making up a human, have an aggregate wavefunction that behaves exactly the way the simplest quantum laws say. Oh, we know that molecules and atoms don't disintegrate, we know that macroscopic mirrors still reflect from the middle. We can get many high-level predictions from the assumption that the microscopic and the macroscopic are governed by the same laws, and every prediction tested has come true.

But if someone were to claim that the macroscopic quantum picture, differs from the microscopic one, in some as-yet-untestable detail—something that only shows up at the unmeasurable 20th decimal place of microscopic interactions, but aggregates into something bigger for macroscopic interactions—well, we can't prove they're wrong. It is Occam's Razor that says, "There are zillions of new fundamental laws you could postulate in the 20th decimal place; why are you even thinking about this one?"

FWIW, I'm not a physicist myself, so I have no hope of convincing any scientist of authority that MW is the best interp. In fact, I haven't formally studied science since high school. I'm just an interested amateur. I look to those much smarter than myself to tell me how reality works, and I try my hardest to cross-check what they say against what other smart people say that disagree. MW is one of those cases where I eventually realized there were no good arguments against what it's fundamentally claiming. Those that do argue against it seem to be arguing wholly against what it implies, not what against it claims. EG, you can read over this long thread, and if you know anything about MW you will immediately understand that the vast majority of objections being made are not objections to what MW is actually claiming; the MW proponents in that thread are having to repeatedly point this out, just as I have done for YesNo in this thread and others.

This is not to say that MW has no problems/is a perfect interp. Right now, the biggest issue with MW is: "where do the Born probabilities come from?" There is no definitive answer to this right now, but there are many interesting possibilities, one of which is given here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/py/the_born_probabilities/ However, to me, and I suspect to all MW proponents, this "problem" is infinitely smaller than the problems facing Copenhagen. Copenhagen literally seems to contradict everything else we know about how reality functions, and there are no explanations for why this is ("shut up and calculate" started precisely because nobody could figure out why it was). Put another way, the problems Copenhagen create are completely absurd and contrary to everything else we know; while with MW we have one major question that is irksome, but it certainly doesn't overturn everything else about reality.

[Cioran]

Posts like these are why I stopped bothering with this site long ago, and only ocasionally check in for a hoot. Whether it's a discussion of art, literature, creative writing, philosophy or science, the dum dums and trolls always dominate. Also, the software here is horrible. When you try to use quick reply or advanced reply, you are always automatically scrolled to the top, as you are trying to reply to something lower in the reply field. Terrible incompetence in whoever runs this site.

I read the links you posted. I just didn't agree with them.

Why should anyone care whether you agree with them or not, since you have repeatedly demonstrated that you don't even understand what MW says? Also, I do not believe when you say you read the links I gave. Sorry.

Furthermore, I don't think MW even delivers on its promise of determinacy and locality ...

Of course it does! Just another example of how you don't understand it at all.

... because it seems from our own experience that we have some freedom and are not determined.

Holy ... mackeral! So, for you, determinism is the opposite of free will?

Hint: It's not.

PAP is more puzzling because there is at least a double slit experiment that lends it some credibility. MW seems like a way to deny that those double slit experiments are anything more than illusions.

Of course, wholly wrong again. MW explains the otherwise inexplicaable two-slit experiment.

I agree with cafolini and mal4mac.

Who cares?

[MorpheusSandman]

When you try to use quick reply or advanced reply, you are always automatically scrolled to the top, as you are trying to reply to something lower in the reply field.

Really? This site doesn't do that for me. That said, I agree there are some trolls and dum-dums around here, but that's true of almost every forum... certainly every free/non-invite forum.

So, for you, determinism is the opposite of free will?

Hint: It's not.

This depends on how one defines "free will." I think determinism opposes ontological free-will, but not subjective free-will (meaning that our ignorance of deterministic processes is identical, in terms of our subjective experience, to actual free will).

[The Kid]

a) by a single detonator as big as a bang
or

c) was it by god 's power and the garden of eden syndrome ?

This is a really long thread and I'm not going to read most of the response. But I do want to say that I understand these two proposals (a) and (c) to be the exact same. I mean the big bang suggests a sudden creation, as do the biblical creation stories. The difference is the biblical stories take it further along the road of creation, so God creates everything a little more quickly in those stories.

Does it really matter that it was instant or gradual? I'm just happy it got created.

[cafolini]

Posts like these are why I stopped bothering with this site long ago, and only ocasionally check in for a hoot. Whether it's a discussion of art, literature, creative writing, philosophy or science, the dum dums and trolls always dominate. Also, the software here is horrible. When you try to use quick reply or advanced reply, you are always automatically scrolled to the top, as you are trying to reply to something lower in the reply field. Terrible incompetence in whoever runs this site.



Why should anyone care whether you agree with them or not, since you have repeatedly demonstrated that you don't even understand what MW says? Also, I do not believe when you say you read the links I gave. Sorry.



Of course it does! Just another example of how you don't understand it at all.




Holy ... mackeral! So, for you, determinism is the opposite of free will?

Hint: It's not.



Of course, wholly wrong again. MW explains the otherwise inexplicaable two-slit experiment.



Who cares?

Fermi's slit is and remains theoretical.
Yours, instead, is a completely symmetrical boomerang. When you fart, the two streams come back. Watch out.

[YesNo]

We experience exactly what MW predicts we would experience if MW is true.

MW predicts that we cannot verify these other worlds. Since Roland Omnes has shown that logically we are not required to accept MW--one world would do just fine as far as QM is concerned--MW is an interpretation driven by a metaphysics that wants determinism. It will go after determinism even when uncertainty is what the evidence presents.

It's the latter that makes Copenhagen and all other SW interpretations "more complex" because they have to propose that there's *something* out there we don't know that can account for the discrepancies, and they're assuming these additional complexities without a stitch of evidence and, in fact, with all the evidence against them.

There are no hidden variables. So Copenhagen is not assuming there's something out there. It is MW that is making the assumption there are many worlds out there to explain the uncertainty which violates its metaphysics.

Completely, ***-backwards wrong. Occam's razor would favor any simple initial equation that leads to a complex outcome, not a complex initial equation that leads to a simpler outcome. In fact, where you start is really all that matters, because it's the probability of the initial assumption that's in question. Anything that happens as a consequence of it is completely irrelevant to its probability of being true. The MW themselves do not violate Occam's Razor because they are not a part of the initial equation.

MW is similar to the original Anthropic Principle that Brandon Carter proposed and mal4mac cited elsewhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

In both cases, one is faced with a situation where it looks like some choice was made. To remove choice, because it is metaphysically unacceptable, all possibilities have to be available so choice is not needed. In Carter's case, he came up with the existence of a multiverse where every possible initial condition generates its own universe. Then he can argue that we just happen to be living in the universe that allows us to exist. In the MW case, every possible choice has to be part of a new world. That allows MW to describe choice as not a choice.

The many worlds are primary, not the weakening of the wave function. Because the wave function is linear it allows one, with sufficient hand-waving, to assume that there might be a way to get those many worlds into the mathematics describing QM.

Why is it an extraordinary claim? Actual freedom is indistinguishable from an illusion created by our ignorance of deterministic processes. What in the world is "extraordinary" about claiming we are ignorant of deterministic processes?

The reason it is extraordinary is that we experience ourselves making choices. No matter how influenced we are in those choices, we experience them as choices. No one should give up their experience without evidence. That is not the scientific way. But that is what MW wants us to do.

MW makes the extraordinary claim, violating our experience (evidence), that any choice we make is an illusion and expects us to accept that claim without evidence. Why? Because its adherents believe in a deterministic metaphysics that not only QM contradicts, but their own experience contradicts as well.

1. You don't want to believe you don't have free will

It is not a belief, but an experience. We also act purposefully. If you have evidence to counter that, please present your extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim. Without that evidence, I would have to go with the evidence of my own experience.

2. You don't want to believe that you're just as subject to the "multiple states" that all particles are.

I am not interested in believing anything one way or the other in this context. We are all subject to QM.

3. You want to believe you're "special" and that consciousness is "special" and whatever.

I don't know what you mean by "special". From my perspective, consciousness is involved with any choice. It doesn't make me special to have consciousness.

4. To justify these things you want/don't want to believe, you argue against MW by arguing against the many worlds themselves, which don't matter at all.

Again, I am not interested in believing anything in this context. I need evidence and argument. Nothing else will convince me.

Basically, it's gross anthropomorphic bias that prevents you from believing MW and blinds you to all the problems of Copenhagen. You are not being lead by the evidence or by the actual claims being made, you're being lead by what you want to be true. It's the worst kind of Santa Clause syndrome; ignore all the problems created by the notion of a fat man flying around the world in a night delivering presents to children because, after all, it's a comforting thought that makes you feel good.

MW looks to me like a Hail Mary pass by a reactionary metaphysics that got caught in a desperate position with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It is looking for any way out so it doesn't lose the game. That it has to postulate the existence of many worlds to get out of its mess only further convinces me that the underlying metaphysics is wrong.

[MorpheusSandman]

YesNo, I normally don't say this about other human beings, because, perhaps despite all the evidence to the contrary, I'm an optimist; but the evidence staring me right in the face that you are completely and utterly hopeless. You don't understand MW, you don't want to understand MW, every argument you make against MW has absolutely nothing to do with what MW is claiming, every argument you make just reveals your metaphysical biases that is leading you to reject something before you even understand it. Cioran and I have tried to explain to you what MW is actually claiming 1,000,000 ways from Sunday, and you still don't get it.

It's remarkable how dense you are, and at some point I have to conclude one of a few options: either you're an intentional troll, who actually DOES understand what we're saying but is only posting to cause trouble because you're a bored, sad, lonely human being; or you're intellectually incapable of understanding MW to begin with; or you're not getting it because your metaphysical biases is not allowing you to get it because you unconsciously don't want to, since getting it may require you to actually formulate arguments that you are incapable of making. Perhaps it's the optimist in me that has me leaning towards the third option. But in no thread where this has been discussed have you yet to form an argument against what MW is actually claiming.

But, despite all the evidence of the utter futility of this, I'll respond anyway.

MW predicts that we cannot verify these other worlds. Since Roland Omnes has shown that logically we are not required to accept MW--one world would do just fine as far as QM is concerned--MW is an interpretation driven by a metaphysics that wants determinism. It will go after determinism even when uncertainty is what the evidence presents.

MW explains why we can not experience these other worlds, because we split along with the particles being observed. WE are in a state of superposition just like particles are. I don't know what you mean by "logically required to accept MW." What would a logical argument be that would REQUIRE one to accept any interpretation of anything? One world "does just fine" if you have no problem with all of the conflicts and nonsense that those one world interpretations creates with everything else we know about physics, and if you have no problem violating occam's razor and assuming things happen for no reason by inexplicable magic. And, no, for the billionth time, MW is an interpretation driven by what the experiments (those done by placing increasingly large objects in superposition) and theories (Bell's Theory against hidden variables) are telling us; that QM works all the way down, there are no micro/macro splits, no hidden variables, no wavefunction collapse.

There are no hidden variables. So Copenhagen is not assuming there's something out there. It is MW that is making the assumption there are many worlds out there to explain the uncertainty which violates its metaphysics.

If CI is not assuming hidden variables, then explain all of the conflicts that CI creates with everything else we know about physics: why do we have two different laws for large objects and small ones? Where is this split? What causes the wavefunction to collapse how it does and why? How is it that particles can affect each other at great distances at thousands of times faster than the speed of light? Unless you can answer these questions, CI is NOT a good interpretation.

And, for the billionth and first time, MW is not assuming there are many worlds out there, MW is assuming quantum physics works all the way down. Assuming QP works all the way down gives us many worlds as a consequence. The many worlds are a consequence, not an assumption. Please try to understand that.

MW is similar to the original Anthropic Principle that Brandon Carter proposed and mal4mac cited elsewhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

In both cases, one is faced with a situation where it looks like some choice was made. To remove choice, because it is metaphysically unacceptable, all possibilities have to be available so choice is not needed. In Carter's case, he came up with the existence of a multiverse where every possible initial condition generates its own universe. Then he can argue that we just happen to be living in the universe that allows us to exist. In the MW case, every possible choice has to be part of a new world. That allows MW to describe choice as not a choice.

The many worlds are primary, not the weakening of the wave function. Because the wave function is linear it allows one, with sufficient hand-waving, to assume that there might be a way to get those many worlds into the mathematics describing QM.

WTF does this have to do with my post about how MW doesn't violate Occam's Razor? All of this is literally a string of non-sequitors. "the many worlds are primary, not the weakening of the wave function," WHAT IN THE CATFUNKING BLOODY CARCASS OF A RAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!!! I also have no clue what you mean by the wavefunction being linear and allowing many worlds with hand waving. What part about "If QP works all the way down you get MW" don't you understand?

The reason it is extraordinary is that we experience ourselves making choices. No matter how influenced we are in those choices, we experience them as choices. No one should give up their experience without evidence. That is not the scientific way. But that is what MW wants us to do.

I asked you a question you did not answer: what would make this distinguishable from us feeling like we make choices because we are ignorant of deterministic processes? How would we tell the difference? It is not an extraordinary claim to say we are ignorant of deterministic processes. If I were to flip a coin, physics determines how it will land, but my finite brain cannot calculate the physics necessary to know how it will land, so my ignorance creates the 50/50 probability of the coin toss. Choices are similar; if I'm ignorant of the deterministic processes going on in my brain, then my feeling of "choice" would be identical to that ignorance. I feel a "choice" because I am "ignorant" of determinism is the same thing of the coin toss being 50/50 because I'm ignorant of the deterministic physics. This is not an extraordinary claim because it equally matches what we experience AND has support by the fact that we know we ARE ignorant of such processes outside our brains.

expects us to accept that claim without evidence. Why?

Because MW has evidence in the fact that every object we're capable of placing in superposition has been found to be in superposition, and it works with everything else we know about physics, and it doesn't propose any additional things that violate Occam's Razor and other scientific laws.

It is not a belief, but an experience.

You experience the sun moving across the sky. You experience standing on a flat Earth. How is "free will" any different from those experiences?

I am not interested in believing anything one way or the other in this context. We are all subject to QM.

Actually, not according to CI! If you believe Copenhagen, then you must believe we are not subject to the same QM laws as particles. It's MW that says that humans are as much a part of the system as what they're observing.

I don't know what you mean by "special". From my perspective, consciousness is involved with any choice. It doesn't make me special to have consciousness.

Sure it does, it makes you "special" in that you are more than the particles that make you up and you are "special" in that you are not subject to the same laws. If you believe Copenhagen, you believe that. The fact that you don't know you believe that goes to show how you have no f'ing clue what we're talking about.

I need evidence and argument. Nothing else will convince me.

We've given you the evidence. MW claims that everything at all levels are obeying the laws of QM. So far, all the experiments we've done on placing larger objects in superposition confirm this. So far, no experiments violate this. That means the evidence favors MW. MW says there are no micro/macro splits, no hidden variables, and, therefore, no wavefunction collapse. If you believe in the collapse then you have to believe there are hidden variables or SOMETHING that is causing quantum laws to violate every law we have on the macro level. You can not accept the wavefunction collapse and then just hand-wave every problem this creates with everything else we know about physics, not when we have an interpretation out there that DOES NOT have those problems and is compatible both with all the math and the experiments to date.

MW looks to me

Yes, it looks to you. I'm glad you phrased it that way. It looks to you like this, BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO F'ING CLUE WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. That we've gone several threads now without you presenting one argument against what MW is actually claiming is proof of this. Funnily enough, there actually ARE arguments to be made against MW. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE LEGITIMATE ARGUMENTS ARE!

[MorpheusSandman]

You know what, YesNo, just ignore the last post. I'm going to make this very simple and explain exactly what's being discussed here:

Copenhagen: The wavefunction collapses on observation to a particle. CI conflicts with everything we know about macro physics: it is non-local, indeterministic, non-realism, conflicts with General Relativity, and assumes things like the backward flow of time. The only way to resolve these conflicts is to assume that there are hidden variables (ruled out by Bell's Thoerem), or some kind of split between micro/macro worlds, even though no split has been found. Now, to accept Copenhagen you have to come up with some plausible reason for why quantum laws and macro laws are in such conflict. Specifically, the fact that we have two different sets of laws for two levels implies that there is some "split" between these levels. In fact, that's the whole point of the wavefunction "collapse," that the wave "collapses" to the single world of deterministic particles that we experience. It's stating that this "collapse" is only happening at the micro levels, not the macro levels, and you need to explain why that is. What's more, why does the wavefunction collapse how it does? Why is it when you have a probability distribution does a wave suddenly become ONE thing rather than the OTHER?

Many Worlds: It assumes one thing: QP works all the way down, ie, everything is obeying QP. This means that everything from the micro to macro level is in superposition. <- That is what MW is claiming. Those two claims are supported by every experiment done so far, meaning that increasingly large objects have been shown to be in superposition. If increasingly large objects are in superposition, THERE IS NO WAVEFUNCTION COLLAPSE, and if there is no collapse, you get many worlds. What's more, this interpretation works with everything else we know about physics. You don't have to explain why there is such a conflict between the micro and macro worlds.

THAT is what we're dealing with. Now, you need to explain to me why Copenhagen is MORE LIKELY given what both are claiming and given the current state of the evidence. I don't want to hear anything about "metaphysics" or "choice" or "free-will" or "determinism," I want you to actually look at what both interps are claiming, look at the evidence, and explain to me why CI explains it better than MW. I will respond to nothing else from you except that.

[YesNo]

Funnily enough, there actually ARE arguments to be made against MW. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE LEGITIMATE ARGUMENTS ARE!

I'll respond later today in more detail when I get time, but what are those legitimate arguments that you see against MW that I don't?

[MorpheusSandman]

but what are those legitimate arguments that you see against MW that I don't?

All of the predictive power of QM comes from the Born Rule. These probabilities make sense in the framework of Copenhagen, but not in MW (or rather: MW can't derive them). Even MW proponents admit this is a serious problem, and there are various theories out there about it, but it's far from a settled issue. Yudkowsky details the problem as well as one possible solution here that was proposed by Robin Hanson here. Cioran may have some additional information about this.