Yes, he was an Epsteinite, but his point was generally correct. Einstein, Schrödinger, and Bell all recognized that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics makes no sense because it postulates a transition from quantum to classical with no explanation of how this actually occurs. They would not have liked Many Worlds either because it does not actually get rid of the transition, it just claims the classical world is an illusion so it shifts the transition to something happening in your brain, but then doesn’t explain how your brain could possibly create a world of discrete events happening in 3D space from a world where no discrete events ever happen that is just one giant continuous wave evolving in an infinite-dimensional space as there is no clear way to map the latter onto the former. Bell was around when Many Worlds was becoming popularized and so he did comment on it and pointed out it is nonsense and Everett never demonstrated any way to carry out this mapping consistently.
There’s nothing special about the brain in any quantum theory (except pop science).
In many worlds, it’s not so much that the classical world is an illusion, more that it’s a limited perspective, similar to how the “observable” universe is just a limitation of our position, in both cases the theory is that there’s more beyond the edge that we cannot see (and in both cases we have no way to test that).
I don’t think there’s much difference between many worlds and random selection in the end, at least from our perspective. Either way we experience only state contingent on our state, so any quantum superposition that contains us (ok, sure, contains our brain) we can experience only one concrete resolution to, since the others would require our brain to be in a different state. Many worlds adds “but there is a disconnected copy of us experiencing the other valid states after we entered the superposition”, random chance says “and the other states disappeared when the superposition collapsed”, but without reaching past that horizon of our own state they’re measurably identical theories, so either both equally valid or both equally pointless speculation, depending on how strict you want to be.
There’s nothing special about the brain in any quantum theory (except pop science).
I’ve seen theories of quantum mechanics in the brain applied to the philosophy of determinism. Are those physics theories or just philosophical ones? 🤔
Yes, he was an Epsteinite, but his point was generally correct. Einstein, Schrödinger, and Bell all recognized that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics makes no sense because it postulates a transition from quantum to classical with no explanation of how this actually occurs. They would not have liked Many Worlds either because it does not actually get rid of the transition, it just claims the classical world is an illusion so it shifts the transition to something happening in your brain, but then doesn’t explain how your brain could possibly create a world of discrete events happening in 3D space from a world where no discrete events ever happen that is just one giant continuous wave evolving in an infinite-dimensional space as there is no clear way to map the latter onto the former. Bell was around when Many Worlds was becoming popularized and so he did comment on it and pointed out it is nonsense and Everett never demonstrated any way to carry out this mapping consistently.
There’s nothing special about the brain in any quantum theory (except pop science).
In many worlds, it’s not so much that the classical world is an illusion, more that it’s a limited perspective, similar to how the “observable” universe is just a limitation of our position, in both cases the theory is that there’s more beyond the edge that we cannot see (and in both cases we have no way to test that).
I don’t think there’s much difference between many worlds and random selection in the end, at least from our perspective. Either way we experience only state contingent on our state, so any quantum superposition that contains us (ok, sure, contains our brain) we can experience only one concrete resolution to, since the others would require our brain to be in a different state. Many worlds adds “but there is a disconnected copy of us experiencing the other valid states after we entered the superposition”, random chance says “and the other states disappeared when the superposition collapsed”, but without reaching past that horizon of our own state they’re measurably identical theories, so either both equally valid or both equally pointless speculation, depending on how strict you want to be.
I’ve seen theories of quantum mechanics in the brain applied to the philosophy of determinism. Are those physics theories or just philosophical ones? 🤔