[ExI] Many Worlds (was: A Simulation Argument)

[Damien Broderick]

I'm going to confess my shameful failure to understand a key aspect 
of the Many Worlds Interpretation.

A basic premise of quantum theory, as I understand it (in a 
rudimentary way), is that what we see always comprises a 
superposition of all possible states of the relevant phenomenon. The 
reason a light beam travels on the least action pathway is that this 
is what happens when all conceivable pathways are taken 
simultaneously, interfering with each other as they do so in such a 
way that the observed straight line, or geodesic, comes out in the wash.

Uh-huh.

I have read Deutsch's book with its peculiar talk of shadow photons, 
which appear to subsist in numerous orthogonal universes that 
mysteriously influence each other. And yet most discussions of MWI as 
applied to decisive choices, for example, appear to suppose that any 
observed state branches into a multitude of alternative experiences. 
You turn right, and you turn left, and you go home, and very very 
rarely you fly into the sky. Presumably, therefore, we must imagine 
that in one universe a given light beam will jig along a random dog's 
leg path, and it's only a sort of "God's eye view" that might 
perceive the kind of hyperreality where all those dogs' legs congeal 
into a straight line.

But actually there is no "God's eye view" unless it is the one we 
experience routinely.

Does anyone see the problem here? It's so basic that I must be making 
an elementary mistake, but I have never been able to see what it is.

Damien Broderick