[extropy-chat] Is Many Worlds testable?

[Damien Broderick]

At 01:58 AM 12/29/2006 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

>their fall back position that observation collapses the wave function,
>because for some people any physical change is an observation.

Well, I think the latter is the decoherence model, where any 
*sufficient* degree of induced change in the local environment acts 
to hide the persistent quantum weirdness, effectively creating the 
classical observables. In that sense, the environment can be said 
metaphorically to "observe" the prepared state (as does a measuring 
instrument), but consciousness, of course, has nothing to do with it.

Damien Broderick