[ExI] Criticisms of Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI)

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 12:16 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 2023-09-14 10:22, BillK via extropy-chat wrote:
> > I thought it would be useful to get a summary of the MWI objections,
> > so I asked around in the AI members club. All the responses were
> > fairly similar, so I have copied the answer I liked best below.
> [snip]
> > I interpret that as saying that as yet quantum mechanics still has
> > many theoretical difficulties.  :)
>
> Yes. Accounting for gravity being the most glaring difficulty.
>
> > BillK
> > -------------------------------
> >
> > MWI Criticism Summary
> [snip]
> > One of the main criticisms of the MWI is its lack of testability and
> > falsifiability. Since the theory posits the existence of an infinite
> > number of parallel universes, each with different outcomes, it becomes
> > impossible to experimentally verify or disprove this claim. This lack
> > of empirical evidence raises concerns about the scientific validity of
> > the MWI as it deviates from the traditional scientific method.
>
> It might be testable. For example, I think the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb
> tester only makes sense if MWI is true.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb_tester
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byEaU9ILHmw
> Basically the bomb detector works because a photon gets super-positioned
> into two routes by a beam splitter in a Mach-Zender interferometer and
> interferes with itself. If the bomb is a dud, then the photon will pass
> through the bomb and take both paths at once through the interferometer
> and will recombine at the 2nd beam splitter always getting detected at
> detector A due to constructive interference and never at detector B
> because of destructive interference.
>
> But if bomb is live, it acts as a which way detector preventing the
> photon from entering a superposition and interfering with itself. This
> means that either the bomb will explode 50% of the time or it will hit
> either detector A or detector B 25% of the time each. If it hits
> detector A, then you you have no way of knowing if the bomb is live or a
> dud. But if it hits detector B, then you know it is a live bomb, because
> it did not take both paths at once and interfere with itself and it did
> not blow up the bomb.
>
> This means that the counterfactual photon caused a counterfactual bomb
> to explode, destroying itself in the process, and preventing it from
> interfering with the observed photon. This causes the photon to only
> take one path, end up at detector B, and thereby prove that the bomb is
> live and not a dud. It would not make sense that the photon would not
> blow up the bomb and not interfere with itself unless something happened
> to the other photon. Stuff that does not happen should not be able to
> cause stuff to happen here. Unless the stuff that doesn't happen here
> happens in another universe and that is what causes stuff to happen
> here.
>


How is this experiment any different from any single photons interferometer
experiment (where we say, replace the bomb with a red or blue stained piece
of glass) and use photons from a red light laser, and use photon arrival
locations to infer the color of the glass placed in the path of one of the
photons?

It's less explosive than a bomb (just an explosion of some IR photons after
the photon gets absorbed by the blue glass). But the outcomes are the same.

It also seems to be equivalent to the two slit single electrons experiment
where we put a detector at only one slit and don't observe the electron
there.

I haven't seen people say before that these experiments confirm MW. They
do, of course, confirm a superposition of particle positions, but that has
never been the issue with CI. CI accepts the superposition, it only adds
that it disappears after an observation is made, whatever that may be, even
if the observation happens to be "not observing an electron go through the
right slit" or not observing an explosion of IR photons in the blue stained
glass.

So I am curious what you see in the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb test that implies
MW. (If it's anything above and beyond the other superposition affirming
experiments I mention above).

Jason



> Stuart LaForge
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230915/cbc958b3/attachment.htm>