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Found this on Sabine Hossenfelder's video criticizing the MWI. Yud debating an actual physicist would be a fun watch. (https://i.redd.it/r99pgbfi7vj61.jpg)
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Yud’s stuff on QM is imo among the most revealing of how much of an intellectual poser he is. He has written like four dozen blog posts on the topic and literally none of them involve any concrete formalism. I don’t think the Schrödinger equation was written once by Yud. I don’t think the word “operator” ever fell in all the hundreds of pages of these blog posts, let alone a description of what they are. I don’t think there was ever a state vector explicitly written. Hell, there isn’t even a single mention that explains the “quantum” in quantum mechanics.

he probably likes MW because it allows him to speculate all kinds of crazy shit without any evidence. And his followers buy anything he says.
The thing is, I don't even know **which** MWI Yud is trying to advocate for. He spends post over post going on and on about how he thinks that MWI is the most rational interpretation, but he never specifies which MWI formalism he supports, because there are many different ones and that is actually a huge point because one of the main criticisms of MWI is that phycisists struggle to find a consistent formalism for MWI that also doesn't make overly arbitrary assumptions. Yud entirely advocates for MWI because of ontological reasons and what is usually called "beauty" arguments. Since he never specifies a concrete formalism for MWi though he avoids every possible counterargument on wether or not his approach on MWI is even consistent with our observations and the rest of our theoretical framework. Let's take the most basic Everettian approach for example: The graph of the state vectors evolution is a physical entity. Meaning all of reality is described by a single wave function and all quantum phenomena are just that wave function branching. So everything essentially happens with a chance of 100%, just in different branches. A common criticism of this formalism is for example the following: Let us assume a wavefunction Y = a |i> + b|j> If we attempt to measure the sate of the particle now we should find it in state |i> with a chance of |a|^2 and in state |j> with a chance of |b|^2 . However, in a naive Everettian view, what do |a|^2 and |b|^2 mean? After all, if the wavefunction splits in two worlds, one in in which the particle 100% has state |i> and one in which the particle 100% has state |j> then the chance to experience |i> or |j> should be 50/50 since all branches are equally valid. So you need a mechanism that makes it at least seem like some choices are preferred over others. One could for example argue that during each measurement the wavefunction doesn't split into two branches but instead into an ensemble of branches where each possibiltity is represented as much as needed to replicate the probabilities |a|^2 and |b|^2 . However, one could argue that such behaviour is somewhat arbitrary because loads of completely identical realities would get created just for the sake of creating an arbitrary statistic and that this theory doesn't really explain quantum effects better than copenhagen, because you don't really have an explanation how the measurement device forces such weird ensemble creating from the wavefunction instead of just simple two-way branching. This is why MWI is far more complicated and on far less steady ground than Yud makes it out to be, because a consistent formalism of MWI still needs more extra assumptions than just naive wave branching. Serious proponents of MWI thus argue for much more nuanced and complicated formalisms than Yud's armchair physics.
"formalisms" and "math" are for the Cathedral elite who finished what only the elite call "secondary education."
I doubt Yud is aware, but there *are* straightforward responses to naive branch counting concerns. Hilbert space essentially mandates a non-linear measure, the intuition for which is not much different than the "un-intuitive" classical notion that when adding speeds in different directions the combined speed is not merely the linear addition of the two.
But that's entirely my point. A serious proponent of MWI would invoke serious responses on grounds of a clear formalism. Yud doesn't really do that though since he doesn't really make arguments from formalism. 90% of the stuff he writes on QM could be described in far less length, far more rigorous and far less confusing if he had just at some point introduced the Hilbert Space, operators and eigenstates. See also his blog post on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which one can easily prove to be a necessary property of operators in Hilber Space, but Yud instead decides to write a lengthy piece saying once again what feels like nothing and bemoans the fact that calling it the uncertainty principle is a terrible name, never mind the fact that it's simply called like that because it's related to the clearly defined mathematical concept of uncertainty.
> 90% of the stuff he writes on QM could be described in far less length, far more rigorous and far less confusing if he had just at some point introduced the Hilbert Space, operators and eigenstates. Yeah but none of that would make his audience be impressed by how smart he is, their eyes would just glaze over because of all the math.

[deleted]

he just blocked me

I’ve been watching Sean Carroll’s YouTube videos lately, they’re really good. Not sure what “in danger” could mean, possibly that he would be more interested in having a useful scientific discussion than “winning” a debate.

Yeah, Sean and Sabine are too good to debate someone like Yud.
I'd love for Carroll and Sabine to discuss the various interpretations. Both have a deep understanding of the science and both are curious and careful enough to discuss the philosophy of science.
The danger would be Yud’s ever more rabid fanboys.

I mean MW and simulations are the same thing in a way. There’s no real evidence for them.

MW: there are infinitely many universes outside of our own. Now we can’t see them, detect them, or even conceive of a way to do either. But we did a bunch of math and conjecture so …

Simulation: ever noticed how much our world acts like video games? The ones we created to look like the real world and used equations that describe the real world physics around us to build? That’s because we live in a video game my dude.

> I mean MW and simulations are the same thing in a way. There’s no real evidence for them. Eh, not really, that's an unfair assessment. There's a [mathematical theorem](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07422)—so this is really proven—that any quantum description of nature must necessarily lack at least one of the following three properties: * Q: Quantum mechanics as understood today (Schrödinger equation + Born rule) is correct. * S: Experiments have a single observable outcome. * C: Observers that can exchange information agree on the outcomes of experiments they observe. By basic premise of science, C has to be preserved, otherwise science is ultimately inconsistent and nobody can use it to reach any universal truth. (I don't have any evidence for this though—call it faith that science works.) This means we must break either Q or S. Breaking Q necessarily leads to a different evolution for quantum systems; this should be observable in an experiment. Breaking S means some notion of MW: each possible outcome of an experiment is observable by someone in some branch. This means that, assuming science is consistent, we will observe a violation of traditional quantum mechanics **or** many worlds is correct. (inclusive "or" meant here) There are fair criticisms of MW, but it not being empirical or impossible to experimentally verify isn't one of them. Every single time we make a quantum experiment and no violation of the Schrödinger equation or the Born rule is detected, that's evidence in favor of MW.
What if "Q" or "C" are violated in such a minuscule way that it's not experimentally significant? Physical models only aim to describe reality, but might be not absolutely accurate, and still stay very useful.
Violating Q is a non-issue, you just have to replace the Schrödinger equation and Born rule by some corrected set of equations, just like general relativity corrects Newtonian gravity. Physics still work fine in describing nature. Violating C is way more bizarre. It leads to situations where, for example, if Alice puts a cat in a box, Bob puts Alice and her cat in a second box, then the boxes are opened, Alice and Bob can disagree on whether the cat is alive or dead. Even if the inconsistency is minuscule, quantum effects can accumulate over time so it's difficult to dismiss it as just experimentally insignificant. (For example, atomic decay of uranium is a tiny quantum effect, yet if we wait decades this tiny effect accumulates and noticeably alters the mass of a macroscopic uranium sample.) This is so utterly bizarre that frankly we should only entertain this possibility *if* there's evidence that reality really works this way.
Well, the statement "observers agree on the observation results" is vague. I don't know what that theorem really says, but I doubt it talks about macroscopic cats, does it? But I totally can see that a particle can be measured as having coordinate x1, or coordinate x2. The two observations might be fundamentally distinct due to the violation of "C" (imagine on every odd observation the particle gives a slightly larger x, and on every even observation it gives a slightly smaller x). But if our current measurement devices are too crude to identify that small difference now, it does not mean that in the future a disagreement in observations is outright impossible.
The formal statement is that, if Alice can use the rules of quantum mechanics to predict that Bob will predict X upon running an experiment, then she can predict X if she were to run the experiment herself. If this is violated then it means quantum mechanics isn't consistent in terms of information. Each person can learn quantum mechanics and predict the outcome of experiments by themselves, but there's no proper way for them to exchange information. A lab in the US could measure the mass of a new particle to be x, and a lab in Europe could measure its mass to be 2x and they would both be correct—the experimental results can't be exchanged, so they can't be compared. It's like each scientist lives in their own bubble. > But if our current measurement devices are too crude to identify that small difference now, it does not mean that in the future a disagreement in observations is outright impossible. But this isn't how this works. You are not allowed to simply propose C is violated. You need either evidence (there's none) or a good theoretical reason. Given that the consequence for breaking C is very bizarre, you need a damn good reason.

Sabine has a vid on “the world is a simulation” that’s great too.

This may be controversial but I don’t think him debating anyone would be particularly valuable. Maybe if he pulled a Jorp and was obviously ignorant and unprepared even to his fans, but he hasn’t fried his brain on benzos so he’d do more than reading the equivalent of the back cover of the Communist Manifesto. Or at least lie better.