Tim Maudlin - Many Worlds of Quantum Theory

Quantum theory is very strange. No act is wholly sure. Everything works by probabilities, described by a wave function. But what is a wavefunction? One theory is that every possibility is in fact a real world of sorts. This is the Many Worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett and what it claims boggles the brain. You can't imagine how many worlds there would be.



Tim Maudlin is a philosopher of science and a Professor of Philosophy at New York University.


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[hemant]

I'm sure there is a universe where Robert make videos on how to pick up girls 😂

[Majesties]

Multiply everything he said about Schroedinger's cat being alive or dead by nine...

[junevandermark]

Quantum physics is the study of nature. Quantum psychics is the flighty human imagination ... allowed to go wild.

[MikeWiest]

Maudlin is the best. 💪🏻Thank goodness at least one champion is pointing out the incoherence of this many worlds fad, by whatever name you call it.

[ujogmfw]

Now that’s a guy I would love to sit down and talk to! Maybe over a beer 🍺?

[ellengran]

We once had natural religions = we lived in nature, learned from nature and made stories about the evolution of life and stories about the forces regulating life and the universe. Many believed life was made by «ancestors» - which science has proven right (the story of evolution). Many believed life was s balance between two opposite forces (which science has proven to be right in some ways). We believed the dreamtime and real-time coexcist, just like science today say quantum (where «everything» is possible) and the old classic physics (where the future is «predictable») coexcist.

[card]

Well, cats have 9 lives, hence 90% is alive, problem solved! 😹

[bluelotus]

The point is: where does all the worldly bio-abio-diversity sprout from?

[Rudi]

Was he inspired by Hilary Putnam or the other way around? Putnam‘s „probability would be meaningless“ argument against Many Worlds was brought up by his text „A Philosopher looks at Quantum Mechanics (Again)“

[KipIngram]

You know, foundational discussions like this would make a lot more sense to me if they revolved around the Dirac equation (quantum field theory), which we believe is actually right, instead of Schrodinger's equation, which is just an approximation applicable to non-relativistic situations.

[saniyagamer-xdoq]

Only John von Neumann interpretation solve the measurements problem
But materialist don't like words consiesness observer effect

[sedenions]

Do an infinite amount of worlds exist where the curbs are studded by spikes? Or does this go against a certain breed of 'law'?

[richardmarcus]

Many worlds, lol. As far as that cat crap goes... If the cat dies, so does the observer. End of experiment. There is now an entirely irradiated 'world' of dead cats in boxes next to dead researchers... and that decoherence crap keeps us from ever giving them a proper burial.

[jamesruscheinski]

Quantum wave function measured into many worlds over time, with an observer able to see one world at a time?

[DavidPellerinmaison]

Couldn't agree more with this gentleman...For what it is worth!

[eric]

Schrodinger's cat teaches us that some of the mathematics of quantum mechanics does not translate into physical reality.,

[jamesruscheinski]

Quantum wave function has non-local information of energy amplitudes and frequencies in the future, which time measures into local information of particle(s) at every moment in the present?

[mintakan]

The Copenhagen interpretation talks in terms of the probability of "collapsing" to a certain result. With MW interpretation, I'm still left with the problem of "what is the probability 'I' wind up in a certain world". Am I missing something here?

[odiupickusclone-]

In summary : it's all balderdash...I am saying this all along...

[susanmaddison]

The "probability" is no mystery, as far as I can tell; it's the probability of finding yourself, after the observation, in a world in which it came out that particular way.