Basically, collapse postulates are a lot more complicated—because they require you to figure out a reason why the wavefunction suddenly goes to zero at a point, when there’s no reason even to suspect that it does.
Your first statement seems like an appeal to authority, so I won’t even bother asking you to justify it.
As for the Eliezer’s point, it seems misguided to me, as I originally said. I do not need to worry about any of these imaginary violations, because I don’t postulate collapse as a testable mechanism of quantum measurement, only as a mathematical tool wholly described by the Born rule.
The rule, unfortunately, is a black box in any interpretation, despite many claims to the contrary. Adding MWI on top of it without testable consequences increases complexity without providing any benefits except emotional.
Once there is a viable model of the Born rule (one that predicts more than the “shut up and calculate” approach does), the issue would have to definitely be revisited, until then the MWI is a fake explanation.
Your first statement seems like an appeal to authority, so I won’t even bother asking you to justify it.
Not an argument at all, actually—just a clarification. I wasn’t sure if you were using Schrodinger’s equation as a synonym for the many worlds interpretation or not.
I’m not sure what the difference would be between postulating collapse and just using it mathematically. As you point out, you can use the Born rules to determine whatever you need to know regardless of your view on many worlds.
Adding MWI on top of it without testable consequences increases complexity without providing any benefits except emotional.
This is our point of disagreement. The links in my last comments point to a few of the reasons many worlds is strictly simpler than collapse. We aren’t adding MWI on; we’re refusing to add on an explanation of why all but one of those worlds is annihilated. We agree, I think, that the simpler explanation is the one we should use, at least until a complete theory of physics is proposed.
I guess it is indeed our point of disagreement. The orthodox approach does not add an explanation to a construct it never used to begin with. It’s the MWI proponents who misinterpret it and then state that their approach is “simpler”, whereas it just piles a bunch of untestable mumbo-jumbo on exactly the same mathematical model. But it looks like we reached an impasse, so best leave it off, I suppose, contrary to any kind of rational approach.
If you buy Schrodinger’s equation, you get Many Worlds. Even opponents of Many Worlds agree on that.
The advantage to Many Worlds comes from the improbability of the collapse postulate, which, as Eliezer puts it, would (if true) be
Basically, collapse postulates are a lot more complicated—because they require you to figure out a reason why the wavefunction suddenly goes to zero at a point, when there’s no reason even to suspect that it does.
Your first statement seems like an appeal to authority, so I won’t even bother asking you to justify it.
As for the Eliezer’s point, it seems misguided to me, as I originally said. I do not need to worry about any of these imaginary violations, because I don’t postulate collapse as a testable mechanism of quantum measurement, only as a mathematical tool wholly described by the Born rule.
The rule, unfortunately, is a black box in any interpretation, despite many claims to the contrary. Adding MWI on top of it without testable consequences increases complexity without providing any benefits except emotional.
Once there is a viable model of the Born rule (one that predicts more than the “shut up and calculate” approach does), the issue would have to definitely be revisited, until then the MWI is a fake explanation.
Not an argument at all, actually—just a clarification. I wasn’t sure if you were using Schrodinger’s equation as a synonym for the many worlds interpretation or not.
I’m not sure what the difference would be between postulating collapse and just using it mathematically. As you point out, you can use the Born rules to determine whatever you need to know regardless of your view on many worlds.
This is our point of disagreement. The links in my last comments point to a few of the reasons many worlds is strictly simpler than collapse. We aren’t adding MWI on; we’re refusing to add on an explanation of why all but one of those worlds is annihilated. We agree, I think, that the simpler explanation is the one we should use, at least until a complete theory of physics is proposed.
I guess it is indeed our point of disagreement. The orthodox approach does not add an explanation to a construct it never used to begin with. It’s the MWI proponents who misinterpret it and then state that their approach is “simpler”, whereas it just piles a bunch of untestable mumbo-jumbo on exactly the same mathematical model. But it looks like we reached an impasse, so best leave it off, I suppose, contrary to any kind of rational approach.