Well you are citing a HIGHLY unscientific and invalid poll.
For instance this:
“Amongst the “Yes, I think MWI is true” crowd listed are Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Gell-Mann and Hawking recorded reservations with the name “many-worlds”, but not with the theory’s content. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg is also mentioned as a many-worlder, although the suggestion is not when the poll was conducted, presumably before 1988 (when Feynman died). The only “No, I don’t accept MWI” named is Penrose.”
Gell-Mann does not support Many Worlds and he never did, he is a proponent of something called Consistent Histories.
Stephen Hawking is not a supporter of MWI either, it was taken out of context in a interview, he has later cleared this up.
I have personally asked Steven Weinberg and he says he has changed his position due to the probability issue, he actualy mentions this in a interview from earlier this year, but more importanty in his most recent paper from somewhere around Sept-Oct.
The author of that FAQ has an almost religious view of MWI, he is still weekly updating the wiki site and it seems his best arguments are an appeal to authority, which I’ve just shown is a false authority as they do not share his views.
Even David Deutsch, the strongest proponent of MWI, admits that he estimates that less than 5% of those working on quantum foundations accepts Many Worlds and within that group there are atleast 10 different “many worlds” views that are at odds with each other.
As for the Born Rule paper, well I have certainly never heard of it before, if it indeed was a vaid derivation of Born Rule within a Many Worlds context I am pretty sure it would be huge news within the foundations community, which it has not.
It is listed with a “wavefunction collapse” tag, so I doubt he is talking about Many Worlds.
By now it looks as though you don’t have much good evidence for your claim that “the vast majority who think these issues through definitely reject MWI”.
Please read that link you just posted, it supports my statement 100%.
Also take a look at the “talk section” and you will see that there are several people criticizing the biased presentation of MWI’s popularity, eventhough it clearly says the vast majority rejects MWI. so it’s even wose than presented.
Next time read your own sources before using them to advocate for your own position.
Also the fact that there are several people who consider MWI to be a nice mental model to use while doing physics, but ultimately not the fundamental representation of reality, these people will often vote “yes”.
This is the reason for Tegmark sometimes starting his presentations by taking a poll of the audience and then go on to say “now out of those who support MWI, how many believe these worlds REALLY exists and this represents reality?”
Then usually quite a few takes their hands down and no longer should be counted as “pro-MWI”, Martin Gardner explains this somewhat in the link you gave above...
Lastly there are yet 2 more factors affecting these results, when a proponent of MWI decides to take a poll, it is highly likely that his audience is not a nonbiased random sample of the physics community, it’s highly likely that other MWI sympathizers show up to his talk because they already share his views.
This is why it’s always emphasized that it is a “highly unscientific poll”
Last but not least you’ve got to realize that there are somewhere around 10 different Many worlds interpretations and 5 different Many Minds interpretations, all of these people would say “yes” when asked “do you support MWI?” when in reality they are not in agreement on very important details at all...
I am skeptical. There have been surveys and the MWI came out pretty well. The Born rule Wikipedia page has this citation for a derivation from decision theory: Armando V.D.B. Assis (2011). On the nature of a’kak and the emergence of the Born rule. Annalen der Physik, 2011.
Well you are citing a HIGHLY unscientific and invalid poll.
For instance this:
Gell-Mann does not support Many Worlds and he never did, he is a proponent of something called Consistent Histories. Stephen Hawking is not a supporter of MWI either, it was taken out of context in a interview, he has later cleared this up. I have personally asked Steven Weinberg and he says he has changed his position due to the probability issue, he actualy mentions this in a interview from earlier this year, but more importanty in his most recent paper from somewhere around Sept-Oct.
The author of that FAQ has an almost religious view of MWI, he is still weekly updating the wiki site and it seems his best arguments are an appeal to authority, which I’ve just shown is a false authority as they do not share his views.
Even David Deutsch, the strongest proponent of MWI, admits that he estimates that less than 5% of those working on quantum foundations accepts Many Worlds and within that group there are atleast 10 different “many worlds” views that are at odds with each other.
As for the Born Rule paper, well I have certainly never heard of it before, if it indeed was a vaid derivation of Born Rule within a Many Worlds context I am pretty sure it would be huge news within the foundations community, which it has not. It is listed with a “wavefunction collapse” tag, so I doubt he is talking about Many Worlds.
More polls on the topic are listed here.
By now it looks as though you don’t have much good evidence for your claim that “the vast majority who think these issues through definitely reject MWI”.
Please read that link you just posted, it supports my statement 100%. Also take a look at the “talk section” and you will see that there are several people criticizing the biased presentation of MWI’s popularity, eventhough it clearly says the vast majority rejects MWI. so it’s even wose than presented. Next time read your own sources before using them to advocate for your own position.
Also the fact that there are several people who consider MWI to be a nice mental model to use while doing physics, but ultimately not the fundamental representation of reality, these people will often vote “yes”. This is the reason for Tegmark sometimes starting his presentations by taking a poll of the audience and then go on to say “now out of those who support MWI, how many believe these worlds REALLY exists and this represents reality?” Then usually quite a few takes their hands down and no longer should be counted as “pro-MWI”, Martin Gardner explains this somewhat in the link you gave above...
Lastly there are yet 2 more factors affecting these results, when a proponent of MWI decides to take a poll, it is highly likely that his audience is not a nonbiased random sample of the physics community, it’s highly likely that other MWI sympathizers show up to his talk because they already share his views. This is why it’s always emphasized that it is a “highly unscientific poll”
Last but not least you’ve got to realize that there are somewhere around 10 different Many worlds interpretations and 5 different Many Minds interpretations, all of these people would say “yes” when asked “do you support MWI?” when in reality they are not in agreement on very important details at all...