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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Tangentially, I know about nothing of quantum mechanics but lately I've been very annoyed alone in my head at (the popular perception of?) many-world theory in general. From what I'm understanding about it, there are two possibilities: either it's pure metaphysics, in which case who cares? or it's a truism, i.e. if we model things that way that makes it so we can talk about reality in this way. This... might be true of all quantum interpretations, but many-world annoys me more because it's such a literal vision trying to be cool.
I don't know, tell me if I'm off the mark!
Unfortunately "states of quantum systems form a vector space, and states are often usefully described as linear combinations of other states" doesn't make for good science fiction compared to "whoa dude, like, the multiverse, man."
There's a whole lot of assuming-the-conclusion in advocacy for many-worlds interpretations — sometimes from philosophers, and all the time from Yuddites online. If you make a whole bunch of tacit assumptions, starting with those about how mathematics relates to physical reality, you end up in MWI country. And if you make sure your assumptions stay tacit, you can act like an MWI is the only answer, and everyone else is being ~~un-mutual~~ irrational.
(I use the plural interpretations here because there's not just one flavor of MWIce cream. The people who take it seriously have been arguing amongst one another about how to make it work for half a century now. What does it mean for one event to be more probable than another if all events always happen? When is one "world" distinct from another? The arguments iterate like the construction of a fractal curve.)
Humans can't help but return to questions the presocratics already struggled with. Makes me happy.