Re: Many-Worlds and the Origin of Life in the Universe

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:15:38 -0000, Scott H <zinites_page@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Thanks for your reply, John.

On Jul 19, 8:56 am, John Bailey <john_bai...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:25:03 -0700, Scott H <zinites_p...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
1) The attack on Copenhagen Interpretation is a bit of a strawman. The
author constructs a version of the CI which he then attacks.

According to Wikipedia, the Copenhagen Interpretation describes
*nature* as essentially probabilistic. So I don't see how my argument
against CI is a strawman.

From your essay:
"When exactly does the wavefunction collapse? Does it happen when the
results of the measurement are magnified to an observable scale, or
when the light waves from the measuring apparatus reach the eyes? Or
maybe the information has to enter the brain, but then does it
collapse in the visual or the motor cortex? The Copenhagen
interpretation does not give satisfactory answers to these questions."

Your rhetorical questions demand an excessively extreme interpretation
of the Copenhagen Interpretation--do these distinctions even matter?
Yours is closer to a variant of the CI: "Consciousness causes
collapse."

Quoting from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
"The Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is the "standard" interpretation of
quantum mechanics formulated by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg while
collaborating in Copenhagen around 1927. Bohr and Heisenberg extended
the probabilistic interpretation of the wavefunction, proposed by Max
Born. The Copenhagen interpretation rejects questions like "where was
the particle before I measured its position" as meaningless. The
measurement process randomly picks out exactly one of the many
possibilities allowed for by the state's wave function.

Consciousness causes collapse
Consciousness causes collapse is the speculative theory that
observation by a conscious observer is responsible for the
wavefunction collapse. It is an attempt to solve the Wigner's friend
paradox by simply stating that collapse occurs at the first
"conscious" observer. Supporters claim this is not a revival of
substance dualism, since (in a ramification of this view)
consciousness and objects are entangled and cannot be considered as
distinct. The consciousness-causes-collapse theory can be considered
as a speculative appendage to almost any interpretation of quantum
mechanics and most physicists regard it as a non-scientific concept,
claiming that it is 1) unverifiable and 2) introduces unnecessary
elements into physics. Supporters could reply that this simply assumes
what is at issue, namely whether or not consciousness is a necessary
element in physics"

I prefer the CI version which is named in the article you reference
as the Null interpretation by Dirac: "Shut up and calculate!" (often
attributed to Richard Feynman).

2) Hoge's version of both CI and Many Worlds (MW) make strong use of
the observer and observation, implying the mechanisms of QM depend on
them.

Where have I made use of observers in MW?

Quoting your essay:
"For a long time, scientists believed that this wavefunction collapse
was really happening, but in 1957, Hugh Everett had an insight of
great ingenuity: even if the wavefunction didn?t collapse, we would
still OBSERVE the same phenomena. According to Everett?s
interpretation, when a MEASUREMENT is made, the wavefunction branches
into separate ?worlds?, each containing a different outcome of the
MEASUREMENT. This branching of the wavefunction is actually predicted
by the mathematics of unobserved particles (with the minor addition of
the concept of ?MEASURE? to the wavefunction, a mathematical idea that
is not the same as the measuring process)."

If there are different outcomes of the MEASUREMENT, there must have
been an observer.

The MW version is then used to explain life as an improbable
result that is okay because all worlds happen. Somehow that seems to
involve a tautological, snake bites its tail argument. Isn't life
required for intelligence and hence an observer?

In other words, because only an observer can collapse the
wavefunction, it is wrong to claim that the emergence of life is more
probable in MW than CI, since it emerges before it can be observed.
Have I understood you correctly?

If so, can we say that MW and CI make equivalent predictions about the
evolution of the universe before the emergence of intelligent life?

Its your application of the interpretation, I am just trying to be
constructive. Since I believe that interpretations are only useful as
explainations of a theory (in this case QM) and never change the
outcome (if one did, it would be a new theory, not an interpretation.)
then obviously neither interpretation should lead to a higher expected
probability of life than the other. One interpretation might make
the result more comfortable/believable but anyone who finds the MW
interpretation comfortable/believable shouldn't have a problem in any
case.

I hope you don't take my response as being critical. I like your
essay.
.

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