{"id":2808,"date":"2015-02-21T10:58:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T17:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=2808"},"modified":"2015-02-21T10:58:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T17:58:05","slug":"what-does-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-even-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2015\/02\/21\/what-does-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-even-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What does the  &#8220;Many-Worlds Interpretation&#8221; of Quantum Mechanics even mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sean Carroll identifies some\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/19\/the-wrong-objections-to-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics\/#comment-7295910552604304054\">Wrong Objections to the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics<\/a>, which is fine but I&#8217;d rather he addressed some of the better ones.<\/p>\n<p>I have always thought of (my own experience of) the universe as corresponding to (a very small part of) one particular configuration of a stochastic system, and that having a theoretical model for that system allows me to predict conditional probabilities of certain features (measurements) given others (state preparations). I suppose other configurations could be regarded as alternate worlds which *could* in some sense exist. But why is it necessary (and in fact, what would it mean) to suggest that they *do* exist?<\/p>\n<p>Oh dear! Now I feel a little Feynmanesque &#8220;poem&#8221; coming on:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We don&#8217;t know the meaning of &#8220;meaning&#8221;,<br \/>\nAnd we don&#8217;t know the meaning of &#8220;is&#8221;.<br \/>\nSo how can we possibly claim to know<br \/>\nWhat the meaning of \u00a0&#8220;the meaning of &#8220;is&#8221;&#8221; is?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sean Carroll identifies some\u00a0Wrong Objections to the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which is fine but I&#8217;d rather he addressed some of the better ones. I have always thought of (my own experience of) the universe as corresponding to (a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2015\/02\/21\/what-does-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-even-mean\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2809,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808\/revisions\/2809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}