Why the "Many-Worlds" Theory doesn't make sense...

Oh fuck!!! There goes my Irony meter off the scale again!

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Note dear readers....the above from the same person who has admitted to using phony handles on another forum, [ and getting banned for it] and not so long ago claimed he had a TOE!!

 

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Yes, but the world as a whole is evidently non-symmetric in a fundamental way. Roger Penrose calls attention to the HUGE issue of entropy and initial conditions as it relates to BB/inflation, in an honest way virtually no-one else bothers even to mention:
[shorter version:

 

Glad you liked it. In post #27 of that thread, a respondent wrote: "...Emission probabilities in the directions of absorbers increase to compensate for the dark spots."
At the time I merely thought that quaint - given that in fact it is absorbing regions that are the true 'spots' statistically speaking. Given that fact, it's since become obvious that with a little thought 'enhanced absorption' fails badly on an observational basis. Owing to it's prediction that, ergo, light from distant stars should be far brighter (by orders of magnitude) than if assuming the standard 1/r^2 intensity law relying on spherically symmetric intensity emission. Seems to me astronomy works extremely well based on the latter assumption. Thus the evidently sole rational counter to the problem of the vast majority of skyward aimed "photons... redshifting out of existence" as you put it, being somehow compensated by a problematic 'enhanced absorption' elsewhere, is ruled out.

If the transactional interpretation is taken as a truly fundamental principle and not merely an ad hoc and limited concept, looks awfully like cosmological considerations have left it dead in the water. Trouble is, whatever extant interpretation is picked, adherents to rival ones always seem to be able to tear it to pieces or at least raise serious objections. The dust may not settle for a long time yet.

And btw I particularly liked the clear and layman-friendly explanation of measurement problem resolution and 'reality of wavefunction' given in the last three paragraphs of your #107. A welcome contrast to the extremes of at best armchair philosophy hand-waving psychobabble on the one end, to the 'impress-my-peers' baffling with BS type reams of dense maths at the other end.

 

Our perception of the universe occurs through filters of the mind. The expert can see better than the layman, because their filters of the mind, although made of the same basic thought materials, are much better polished. The earth was once flat due to filters of the mind. This filter of the mind, created a flat earth expectation, which appeared to be reinforced by the data they could see. It took some time to replace the flat earth filter, because the filters of the mind are not like an interchangeable camera lens. They are living lens.

To help show one major flaw in the modern filter of the physics mind, the simple questions I would ask are, what is the purpose of quanta, and why do we have a quantum universe in the first place? These unanswered questions are part of the mystery foundation, on which this mind filter is built. It is not attached firmly but is able to float.

To answer the first question; if you compare a quantum universe, to a universe defined by continuous functions, a quantum universe reduces the level of randomness, since it results in fewer possible options. All the sides of the dice, between the quantum sides of the dice, cannot be rolled. Quantum dice are loaded dice, relative to continuous dice. Yet, the same people who assume a quantum universe, will also assume a random universe, even though the dice of the universe are loaded by being quantum.

The historical irony was, when physics began to understand the nature of quanta; Planck and Einstein, they still believed that the universe was ordered and rational; golden age of reason. Yet, the consensus decided to choose a random model of the universe, even though the discovery of quanta had actually made the universe even more ordered than the continuous they had previously. This divergence was not rational, since it did not follow the historical line of tradition and the logic from the new discovery, but diverged in an illogical way.

Einstein, who was part of the quantum discovery, did not believe God would choose to play dice with the universe; he was addressing the consensus movement toward randomness even though, the quantum discovery had loaded the dice even more compared to before. He eventually accepted the divergence, due to the peer pressure. He could not complete the ultimate convergence; GUT, because his mind was now going the wrong way.

Emotional thinking; induces memory to process data in a divergent way; filter will be random. This allowed an illogical dual standard where the reduction of randomness, by having a quantum universe, will still appear to lead to a random universe. Multi-universes builds on that divergent foundation, and is coming from the same filter of the mind. Why is it being singled out when divergent is the foundation filter in physics?

 

RJBeery,
It appears that I must now leave this Thread - as 'someone' who has evidently 'raised the "laws of nature"' - which, again evidently, is not what is 'prefer'red.

To Wit :

I enjoyed our discussion, RJB.
Take care.

 

They're measuring that wavefunction. For an analogy, imagine a seismic wave moving along the ground. Strong measurement is where you "detect" it with a stick the size of a mountain range, which absorbs all the shaking. Weak measurement is where you detect it with a lot of little probes, which absorb very little of it.

It isn't a presumption, these guys are experimentalists. See the physicsworld article In praise of weakness: "Quantum physics is being transformed by a radical new conceptual and experimental approach known as weak measurement that can do everything from tackling basic quantum mysteries to mapping the trajectories of photons in a Young’s double-slit experiment.".

No. It is what it is. Superposition just an overlapping wave thing. There is no mysticism.

I haven't said that. I think wavefunction is real. Not just some probabilistic thing.

I don't think an emitter "knows" anything about the absorption. It might be 13.8 billion years later.

The explanations I've given ought to be enough to persuade you that time travel is science fiction, and be leery of anybody talking about something going backwards in time. It ought to teach you how to sort the wheat from the chaff.

We live in a world of space and motion. A clock clocks up motion and displays a cumulative result called "the time". There is no forward-and-backward time symmetry here because motion is motion whichever way it goes. There is no negative motion. A photon is emitted at A and moves through space at 299,792,458 m/s. If it is absorbed at B some 13.8 billion years later, that's got nothing to do with the emission. And note this: the photon moved from A to B, not from B to A.

 

Personally, I call it made up (and unsourced/uncited/unsupported) bullshit

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I have a nasty sneaking suspicion that the photons don't get redshifted at all. But that's one for another day.

I can "solve" the equation x=√16m² and say x is either -4m or 4m, but I can't buy a carpet measuring -4m by -4m. It's a "non real solution". My understanding of time tells me the advanced wave is another non-real solution, which tells me there's a fatal flaw in the transactional interpretation.

I think it's none of the above.

I'm not. I prefer the "wavefunction is real" interpretation voiced by the likes of Jeff Lundeen. (I believe Aephraim Steinberg was his PhD supervisor). You can explain the dual slit experiment by saying detection is a wavefunction-wavefunction interaction wherein something akin to an optical Fourier transform occurs, and the extended-entity photon becomes pointlike. So if you detect it at one slit it goes through that slit. If you don't, it goes through both slits, like the picture on Aephraim Steinberg's website. Then when you detect it at the screen you get a dot. No multiverse is required, and no mysticism.

Good stuff.

I'm not a Wheeler fan.

Yes, but you could boil this down and say we make an electron out of a photon in pair production, and the typical interaction is between a photon and an electron in a detector, so you can reasonably focus on photon-photon entanglement. Or wavefunction-wavefunction entanglement.

I have to go. I'll continue later.

 

Farsight, I'm not sure your QM worldview is consistent. It sounds like you believe in a physical wavefunction which exists until measurement, but the measurement problem has many well-known issues which I can bring up if you're not familiar with them. One solution for this is MWI, but you apparently don't believe in that, so what do you think qualifies as a wavefunction measurement?

Also, you clearly have a belief that there exists a "now" which enjoys a physical manifestation not attributable to the future and the past. Does this "now" extend to people on the other side of the planet? What about to planets in Alpha Centauri? Because any concept of a "physical now" has been destroyed by SR.

 

Which exists full stop.

I'm familiar with the measurement problem. See what I said to Fednis wherein I view "wavefunction collapse" as something akin to the optical Fourier transform:

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An interaction between a photon and an electron?

Yes. The past isn't something that actually exists, nor the future. The universe exists. Time is just a measure of how much motion has occurred. You can move fast whereupon your macroscopic motion alters your perception of space and time measured by the motion of light. But there is no way you can move to leave this now and go and live in the middle of last week.

They're four light years away, not four years in the past. Right now there might be people like us talking about planets round a star called Sol or somesuch. Now still applies. They talking now, not four years ago.

I beg to differ. Time dilation is not time travel. You could go on a fast out and back trip, and I could watch you every step of the way through my telescope. It takes time for light to reach my eyes, but you don't depart the present. When you return we meet and shake hands, and we do it now, even though your clock says it's the middle of last week.

 

Decoherence comes with some "baggage".

I guess the mental picture I have is very different to yours.

Which doesn't give a clear picture of what we're dealing with.

I don't know if you recall talking about electromagnetism, and me saying it takes two to tango. Electromagnetic force is the result of two electromagnetic fields interacting. I see the observer effect as something similar. Any measurement involves two wavefunctions.

Noted. I expect we will see more papers and articles saying wavefunction is real in the future, and that opinions will gradually shift.

And in the science fiction movies, time travel is possible.

 

Actually, I wasn't thinking about the obvious new-age nonsense. I was thinking more David Deutsch than Deepak Chopra. About the things you see in apparently serious outlets, including magazines, blogs, peer-reviewed papers, and documentaries where highly-regarded physicists come out with some appalling nonsense. A recent example that caught my eye was an article in Focus magazine about the universe next door where time runs backwards. OK this is just a popscience magazine, but that doesn't excuse the pseudoscience woo. The idea isn't even brand new like it says, because it's akin to Sean Carroll's evil twin universe.

 

This isn't right. See the Andromeda Paradox by Penrose; the fact that SR killed any concept of "now" is incontrovertible. What you are considering to be a distant "now" would change by walking a little faster. It makes no sense to give any particular plane of simultaneity a physical manifestation that doesn't also apply to the past and the future. In my experience very few people are able to incorporate this SR consequence into their way of thinking.

 

I'm afraid it's the sort of thing I was talking about. When the two people are at the same place and time it's an event that happens "now". Their walking in different directions doesn't alter distant events, and they're smart enough to compare notes to appreciate that their understanding must have been wrong. Alternatively see the box on the right where the caption talks about the car and the alien fleet. Imagine you're in the car, and it's motionless. The space-admiral is allegedly deciding to invade. Now step on the gas and move off, and the space fleet is allegedly on its way. Now hit the brakes, and the space-admiral is allegedly deciding to invade. Now step on the gas, and the space fleet is allegedly on its way. It's a load of old cobblers I'm afraid.

 

Unfortunately, that is SR. You calling it old cobblers doesn't invalidate it. How can you reconcile this contradiction with your idea that "now" has a physical manifestation that the "past" and "future" do not?

 

It isn't SR. It's a misunderstanding of SR. It's a bit like the length-contraction misunderstanding. When you step on the gas, the length of some distance object doesn't change one iota. Instead you change. You see the world different because your motion is different. But the world isn't different, and you compare notes with some other observer to understand this.

I didn't mean SR is cobblers. I meant the Andromeda "paradox" is cobblers.

You can start with the here and now. Now is the name you give to what you're experiencing. You experience a collision with me at the same place and time, and we both say it happens now. After that we look further afield and we each say some distant event is happening now if the distance and the time-lag tie in with the speed of light. Only we don't agree about distance and time because we have relative motion, even though we should. Because we ought to know that when we step on the gas, we don't change the universe one iota. We don't change the distant event, or its distance from Earth, or the light from it moving towards us. IMHO all the confusion from a lack of understanding. People don't understand why when you accelerate towards the light source, you still see the light coming at you at 299,792,458 m/s. IMHO The Other Meaning of Special Relativity by Robert Close explains this. The speed of light appears to be the same because of the wave nature of matter.

 

Then I need to ask for a rigorous definition of "now", because here's what you said earlier about Alpha Centauri:

Does the distant "now" (with a physical manifestation) correlate with what we see locally or should we subtract out the calculated travel time of the light reaching us?