From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jul 04 2003 - 09:57:27 MDT
Robin writes
> Damien's critic is right; reproducing the Born probabilities is a serious
> problem with many worlds. In a stochastic reduction theory, you can just
> posit the probabilities; you haven't explained them, but at least they
> don't contradict anything. In many worlds, you have a straightforward way
> to calculate probabilities, namely counting worlds, that gives a
> *different* answer, which is a much more serious problem. You can deal
> with this problem by positing an infinity of "minds" per "world", which
> then split during measurements due to some unknown process. Or you can
> state decision theory axioms that declare that we do not care about
> counting worlds. Neither of these is very satisfactory in my opinion.
>
> My solution (published this month in Foundations of Physics) is described
> at http://hanson.gmu.edu/mangledworlds.html .
Is there a problem with this URL? It doesn't work for me.
Brett also wrote
> [Lee wrote]
> One difference [using MWI] is that if you had integrated these latest
> findings into your emotional responses, then when a friend says that his
> brother has died after a terrible bout with cancer, you are properly
> sympathetic. But if his brother died from having been struck by
> a meteorite, you merely console your friend by reinforcing his
> knowledge that this was a fluke, and that his brother is doing
> well in almost all the other solar systems and universes.
Really? Is this a standard version of the MWI?
Whereas yes, improbable worlds are rare, I hasten to add that
it's not (yet?) standard to extrapolate to how one should feel
about it 8^D.
> (I am not really familiar with Many World's and regard it
> with a degree of scepticism that verges on outright suspicion).
> But are you saying that in alternative universes under MW's a
> meteorite strike can happen or not but that cancer is a given
> in all of them? This seems pretty bizarre.
As Damien said, the cancer will probably turn out to be in
hindsight more inevitable that we judge the meteorite to be.
This means that from a set of initial conditions that you
probably ought to identify with---that is, a collection of
world containing a recognizable Brett Paatsch and his friend---
then the development of the cancer occurs in a larger share
than does the freak accident.
Lee
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