Quantum theory-compliant interpretation of experimental data

[daniweins@gmail.com]

If you are doing an experiment in your own universe only, how do you
account for all the results in the other quantum universes? How do you
decide if the result patterns you observe are those of an average
universe, or of a universe near the extremes of a statistical
distribution? Doesn't this have important implications for
interpreting what physical law actually is? Thanks, Dan

[BW]

On Jun 7, 9:49 pm, daniwe...@gmail.com wrote:
> If you are doing an experiment in your own universe only, how do you
> account for all the results in the other quantum universes? How do you
> decide if the result patterns you observe are those of an average
> universe, or of a universe near the extremes of a statistical
> distribution? Doesn't this have important implications for
> interpreting what physical law actually is? Thanks, Dan

Normally an experiment on a real property is repeated over and over
again, so the chance that *all* of the results are statistical extremes
would be fantastically small. If you strictly go by the many-worlds
interpretation, an experimenter would of course still find this in one
of the worlds, but then again, those super- fringe worlds might as well
contain a lot of other weird effects, like the experimenter self-
combusting or something else.

I found this FAQ about many-worlds, the URL points to the entry about
this issue, how experimental probabilities arise:

http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#probabilities

Personally, I feel the issue is swept under the rug a bit because the
only prediction is what I wrote above, that the probability of a
fringe-result goes to zero as the number of trials go to infinity - but
there are a lot of experiments that don't do an infinite number of
trials..

/Bjorn