Yes. Many worlds is just the Schrödinger equation without the wave function collapse. It makes less assumptions. Falsify the Schrödinger equation, and you have falsified many worlds. However, is the wave function collapse falsifiable? It's one postulate which many worlds doesn't make, and it cannot be confirmed or falsified by experiment.
This is not what falsifiability means in the Popperian sense. You are confusing falsifiability of a theory’s predictions with falsifiability of an additional claim of what those theories mean. We might as well say that the simulation hypothesis is falsifiable because the laws of physics govern our simulated universe, so if you can falsify those laws you can falsify the simulation hypothesis. That being said, the concept of falsifiability is not without its weaknesses.
> Many worlds is just the Schrödinger equation without the wave function collapse.
It is not, it is the Schrödinger equation plus an extra rule that says that classical observers are only certain kinds of quantum states. There's no explanation in the MWI for why a device never reads out that a particle is 1/sqrt(2) |here> + 1/sqrt(2)|there>, even though that is exactly as probable a state as being |here>. And it turns out that this is exactly equivalent to positing wave function collapse / the Born rule.
And no, decoherence has nothing to do with this. Decoherence explains why there is no observable interference at the classical level between these states, not why you can only observe some states.
This is known as the preferred basis problem, for anyone who wants to read more about it.
>Any good scientific theory must create falsifiable hypotheses.
For any behavior inside the world, this is good.
But for the world itself and what harbor's it, asking for falsifiability is like measuring the expansion of space using a ruler that inhabits the same space.
Even science, that works in terms of cause and affect, which implies space and time, cannot be used to describe space and time itself.
Vanilla "scientists" have been trying to do that, but that is a dead end.
> But for the world itself and what harbor's it, asking for falsifiability is like measuring the expansion of space using a ruler that inhabits the same space.
Which exactly is what general relativity is centrally about and the reason why general relativity is defined in terms of intrinsic properties of the Einstein manifold describing the space of the universe. Intrinsic properties are, colloquially, indeed properties that can be measured "using a ruler that inhabits the same space".
Gauß' Theorema Egregium [1] is an early predecessor of intrinsic properties of general manifolds, and says that the curvature of a surface can indeed be "be determined entirely by measuring angles, distances and their rates of change on a surface, without reference to the particular manner in which the surface is embedded in the ambient 3-dimensional Euclidean space" ([1]).
So time extending into the future is not a useful hypothesis? Space continuing beyond the cosmic horizon is not a useful hypothesis? The past entropy of the past being arbitrarily low (vs what is essentially last tuesdayism) is not a useful hypothesis?
Time extending into the future is validated by direct experience.
A continuum of variants of myself is bought.
What is the value of assuming that literally every possible trajectory actually happens, but somehow I am only in one of them, while also being a continuum of other ones? If everything is true, than nothing is true.
Yes. Many worlds is just the Schrödinger equation without the wave function collapse. It makes less assumptions. Falsify the Schrödinger equation, and you have falsified many worlds. However, is the wave function collapse falsifiable? It's one postulate which many worlds doesn't make, and it cannot be confirmed or falsified by experiment.
This is not what falsifiability means in the Popperian sense. You are confusing falsifiability of a theory’s predictions with falsifiability of an additional claim of what those theories mean. We might as well say that the simulation hypothesis is falsifiable because the laws of physics govern our simulated universe, so if you can falsify those laws you can falsify the simulation hypothesis. That being said, the concept of falsifiability is not without its weaknesses.
> Many worlds is just the Schrödinger equation without the wave function collapse.
It is not, it is the Schrödinger equation plus an extra rule that says that classical observers are only certain kinds of quantum states. There's no explanation in the MWI for why a device never reads out that a particle is 1/sqrt(2) |here> + 1/sqrt(2)|there>, even though that is exactly as probable a state as being |here>. And it turns out that this is exactly equivalent to positing wave function collapse / the Born rule.
And no, decoherence has nothing to do with this. Decoherence explains why there is no observable interference at the classical level between these states, not why you can only observe some states.
This is known as the preferred basis problem, for anyone who wants to read more about it.
Doesn’t the structure of the Hamiltonian (local interactions) set what the preferred basis are?
Exactly.
Any good scientific theory must create falsifiable hypotheses.
Otherwise it’s just a nice story.
>Any good scientific theory must create falsifiable hypotheses.
For any behavior inside the world, this is good.
But for the world itself and what harbor's it, asking for falsifiability is like measuring the expansion of space using a ruler that inhabits the same space.
Even science, that works in terms of cause and affect, which implies space and time, cannot be used to describe space and time itself.
Vanilla "scientists" have been trying to do that, but that is a dead end.
> But for the world itself and what harbor's it, asking for falsifiability is like measuring the expansion of space using a ruler that inhabits the same space.
Which exactly is what general relativity is centrally about and the reason why general relativity is defined in terms of intrinsic properties of the Einstein manifold describing the space of the universe. Intrinsic properties are, colloquially, indeed properties that can be measured "using a ruler that inhabits the same space".
Gauß' Theorema Egregium [1] is an early predecessor of intrinsic properties of general manifolds, and says that the curvature of a surface can indeed be "be determined entirely by measuring angles, distances and their rates of change on a surface, without reference to the particular manner in which the surface is embedded in the ambient 3-dimensional Euclidean space" ([1]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theorema_Egregium...
4 replies →
> measuring the expansion of space using a ruler that inhabits the same space
We do that, routinely: that’s how we do cosmology.
3 replies →
So time extending into the future is not a useful hypothesis? Space continuing beyond the cosmic horizon is not a useful hypothesis? The past entropy of the past being arbitrarily low (vs what is essentially last tuesdayism) is not a useful hypothesis?
Time extending into the future is validated by direct experience.
A continuum of variants of myself is bought.
What is the value of assuming that literally every possible trajectory actually happens, but somehow I am only in one of them, while also being a continuum of other ones? If everything is true, than nothing is true.
1 reply →