You are arguing a strawman. Many-worlds is contended only conceptually correct, in the same way classical illusions of our billiard ball world are conceptually correct. Obviously, quantum mechanics is technically imprecise, and there is likely another conceptual picture that gives the more accurate layer of description of reality, in the same way as classical physics is technically imprecise, and quantum mechanics serves as a shift in perspective allowing to fix some of its imprecision (theories of relativity working on the same problem on the other end, and quantum relativity on both).
Reductionist analysis is not about getting to the bottom of things (it’s pretty bad at that), but about moving between levels, finding simple patterns at the lower levels and using knowledge about them to reach conclusions at the higher levels.
Many-worlds is contended only conceptually correct, in the same way classical illusions of our billiard ball world are conceptually correct.
Upon reading Collapse Postulates, or If Many-Worlds Had Come First, I would say that Eliezer_Yudkowsky is not merely arguing this correct a la “billiard ball world”. Quote from the latter article:
Imagine an alternate Earth, where the very first physicist to discover entanglement and superposition, said, “Holy flaming monkeys, there’s a zillion other Earths out there!”
Also, we hang on to the billiard ball view only where we know it conincides with the QM view, as we know that “billiard balls”, as a theory, is false. Thus, any predictions derived from it would be suspect unless also derived from QM. None of this seems to me to concide with Elizer_Yudkowsky’s view on Many-Worlds.
Summary: I disagree that Mitchell_Porter is arguing a strawman. Also, I have a question: What value do you see in Many-Worlds merely as a concept?
You are arguing a strawman. Many-worlds is contended only conceptually correct, in the same way classical illusions of our billiard ball world are conceptually correct. Obviously, quantum mechanics is technically imprecise, and there is likely another conceptual picture that gives the more accurate layer of description of reality, in the same way as classical physics is technically imprecise, and quantum mechanics serves as a shift in perspective allowing to fix some of its imprecision (theories of relativity working on the same problem on the other end, and quantum relativity on both).
Reductionist analysis is not about getting to the bottom of things (it’s pretty bad at that), but about moving between levels, finding simple patterns at the lower levels and using knowledge about them to reach conclusions at the higher levels.
Do you think that some theories are more than merely conceptually correct? Can you unpact “conceptually” for us?
Upon reading Collapse Postulates, or If Many-Worlds Had Come First, I would say that Eliezer_Yudkowsky is not merely arguing this correct a la “billiard ball world”. Quote from the latter article:
Also, we hang on to the billiard ball view only where we know it conincides with the QM view, as we know that “billiard balls”, as a theory, is false. Thus, any predictions derived from it would be suspect unless also derived from QM. None of this seems to me to concide with Elizer_Yudkowsky’s view on Many-Worlds.
Summary: I disagree that Mitchell_Porter is arguing a strawman. Also, I have a question: What value do you see in Many-Worlds merely as a concept?