Maybe some variation of CI involves collapse, but strictly-speaking bare bone CI does not require it. This is typically not discussed by supporters of other interpretations. Even Sean Carroll says according to CI the world follows two distinct rules, one when you are not looking, a different one when you are making a measurement (collapse). However, that is not necessarily CI. For example, as PBR shows, there is only one rule in CI, which describes the behavior of actions. By rejecting “the view from nowhere”, there is no sense in examining how the world behaves when it’s not affecting the perspective center. Here the wavefuntion is epistemic rather than ontic. There is no physical collapse needed.
Can you explain how you end up with fewer assumptions?
Under your terminology, I believe I can formulate MWI epistemically with the same number of assumptions, and if formalized I think MWI comes out slightly simpler.
Because MWI needs perspective-independent objectivity, that it is meaningful to describe reality with “a view from nowhere”, as the universal wave function does. So it needs to accept the postulate in Step 3. CI could (and I argue should) do without. No matter how commonly accepted it is, Step 3 is still an assumption.
Maybe some variation of CI involves collapse, but strictly-speaking bare bone CI does not require it. This is typically not discussed by supporters of other interpretations. Even Sean Carroll says according to CI the world follows two distinct rules, one when you are not looking, a different one when you are making a measurement (collapse). However, that is not necessarily CI. For example, as PBR shows, there is only one rule in CI, which describes the behavior of actions. By rejecting “the view from nowhere”, there is no sense in examining how the world behaves when it’s not affecting the perspective center. Here the wavefuntion is epistemic rather than ontic. There is no physical collapse needed.
Can you explain how you end up with fewer assumptions?
Under your terminology, I believe I can formulate MWI epistemically with the same number of assumptions, and if formalized I think MWI comes out slightly simpler.
Because MWI needs perspective-independent objectivity, that it is meaningful to describe reality with “a view from nowhere”, as the universal wave function does. So it needs to accept the postulate in Step 3. CI could (and I argue should) do without. No matter how commonly accepted it is, Step 3 is still an assumption.
I deny that MWI requires that. In fact, all three of your postulates are incoherent, and I believe in a form of MWI that doesn’t require any of them.
Fair enough.