The main reason many-worlds never got traction is that it doesn’t make a testable prediction.
I am not sure that it is possible to interpret this sentence without admitting to what amounts to Eliezer’s position. In other words, for this to be either right or wrong, Eliezer has to be right.
This sentence is most plausibly unpacked as assuming that the Copenhagen Interpretation and MWI are consistent with all findings, and that pride of place is naturally given to the first interpretation that makes predictions no other interpretation has. Science may not be wrong to, in general and as a heuristic, only accept new theories that make better predictions than the old. After all, even creationism or magic faerieism can be molded to be consistent with all known observations, whatever they are.
Eliezer simply asserts that MWI is simpler. He appeals to the Occam’s razor heuristic, not the “new testable predictions” one, as reason for the reader to accept MWI. (If you caught it, MWI is making a prediction—that no quantum superposition will be too small to cause a result interpreted as a collapse under CI—but that’s relatively small potatoes, since MWI is succeeding where CI is agnostic. However, that testable position isn’t the point here, the non-socially scientific criteria of theoretical simplicity is.)
Eliezer says: MWI is better that CI under Occam’s razor. You say: scientists care about subsequent theories having superior testable positions, not their being simpler under Occam’s razor.
Eliezer may reply: OK, there is good reason for science to work like that, since theoretically more complicated theories can always be just as predictive as previously discovered simpler ones by cheating and stealing their results, plus adding complexity, while never being more predictive. However, there is good reason to believe in the theoretically superior theory. (Perhaps he might add: also if you look closely CI is doing the cheating by looking at MWI to see when to declare a superposition.)
Ultimately, you have failed to dispute that MWI is simpler or that it is superior, and your offering a sociological explanation (CI’s coming before MWI) for why CI may be more broadly accepted despite theoretical inferiority does not engage Eliezer’s points in opposition, it shows the strength of one particular argument that assumes his point: CI is accepted only because it came before MWI.
I am not sure that it is possible to interpret this sentence without admitting to what amounts to Eliezer’s position. In other words, for this to be either right or wrong, Eliezer has to be right.
This sentence is most plausibly unpacked as assuming that the Copenhagen Interpretation and MWI are consistent with all findings, and that pride of place is naturally given to the first interpretation that makes predictions no other interpretation has. Science may not be wrong to, in general and as a heuristic, only accept new theories that make better predictions than the old. After all, even creationism or magic faerieism can be molded to be consistent with all known observations, whatever they are.
Eliezer simply asserts that MWI is simpler. He appeals to the Occam’s razor heuristic, not the “new testable predictions” one, as reason for the reader to accept MWI. (If you caught it, MWI is making a prediction—that no quantum superposition will be too small to cause a result interpreted as a collapse under CI—but that’s relatively small potatoes, since MWI is succeeding where CI is agnostic. However, that testable position isn’t the point here, the non-socially scientific criteria of theoretical simplicity is.)
Eliezer says: MWI is better that CI under Occam’s razor. You say: scientists care about subsequent theories having superior testable positions, not their being simpler under Occam’s razor.
Eliezer may reply: OK, there is good reason for science to work like that, since theoretically more complicated theories can always be just as predictive as previously discovered simpler ones by cheating and stealing their results, plus adding complexity, while never being more predictive. However, there is good reason to believe in the theoretically superior theory. (Perhaps he might add: also if you look closely CI is doing the cheating by looking at MWI to see when to declare a superposition.)
Ultimately, you have failed to dispute that MWI is simpler or that it is superior, and your offering a sociological explanation (CI’s coming before MWI) for why CI may be more broadly accepted despite theoretical inferiority does not engage Eliezer’s points in opposition, it shows the strength of one particular argument that assumes his point: CI is accepted only because it came before MWI.