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Or, maybe, Everett was right.



Most physicists or, depending on who you talk to, nearly half of physicists, would appear to agree with you.

I'm convinced that the Copenhagen interpretation remains popular because by making observation itself an integral part of the theory, you allow us to postulate that there is something special about human brains. But 'mysterious observation' is the luminiferous aether of quantum mechanics.

photonic29: I would like to continue our discussion, but HN has some kind of stupid rule where I can't make more than five posts within a (I think?) 12 hour period. I don't know if this is a general rule that applies to everyone, or simply one of the innumerable passive-aggressive account handicaps our gracious mods will afflict us with if we catch them on a bad day.

At any rate, I can't post anymore for now, so our discussion about MWI and Copenhagen interpretation can't happen. Sorry.


Is that really the case though? An observation collapses a wave function. The Copenhagen interpretation suggests that the collapsed state arises from a probability distribution, but it does not address the "fundamental" origin of that distribution. MW attempts to address it by suggesting that the rest of the reality just went elsewhere, rather than disappearing or never having existed at all, but it still does not explain why "we" get "this" reality. Both rely on observations to collapse the wave function, and neither specifically calls out a conscious agent as necessary for an observation to occur. Observation is a measurement, whether intended and registered by a brain or not.


> An observation collapses a wave function.

Not if the MWI is true. Talking about wave function collapse presupposes that the Copenhagen interpretation is true. In the MWI, there is no collapse; it's unitary evolution all the time.


MWI has more than its fair share of physics woo: "QM tells us that everything happens!" and so on. Of course all that's irrelevant to what the MWI interpretation actually says. And likewise with Copenhagen: No respectable physicist thinks that consciousness has any physical effect on quantum systems. Measurements can be taken by machines.

Regardless, the nature of observation really is mysterious. A measurement projects the wavefunction onto an eigenfunction in accordance with Born's rule. MWI does not adequately explain why or how, and Copenhagen simply inserts it as a postulate. Neither is especially satisfying. So the measurement problem is unresolved.


Observation means measurement, nothing about the Copenhagen interpretation implies anything special about the human brain nor about consciousness.




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