Are World Counts the Key to Understanding the Born Rule?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the coherence of world counting in the context of the Born rule, particularly as articulated by David Wallace and others. Wallace argues that world counting is incoherent due to the infinite-dimensional nature of realistic macroscopic quantum systems and the continuous nature of decoherence. Participants debate whether world counts can be meaningfully approximated or if they are inherently flawed, with some suggesting that a finite sampling of worlds could yield stable probabilities. The conversation highlights the complexities of defining worlds and probabilities in quantum mechanics.

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  • Understanding of the Born rule in quantum mechanics
  • Familiarity with David Wallace's arguments on decoherence and world counting
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  • #31
Ontoplankton said:
Still, there is something that bothers me. The extra branching process could happen later than the coinflip, right? In that case, you're letting probabilities be influenced by events that happen later in time. Does that make sense?

I don't see a problem with it.
 
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  • #32
straycat said:
according to the APP/outcome counting, if the extra branching process happens later than the coinflip, then the extra process does not influence the probability that the coinflip comes up heads or tails

If post-experiment branching doesn't matter, then isn't that already enough to complete the erasure proof in section 8?
 
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  • #33
Quantum Arson: You can win the lottery by resolving to burn a lot of stuff if you win, because that will generate a lot of entropy, so it will have happened in more worlds.
 
  • #34
RobinHanson said:
FYI, in the latest issue of the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Hillay Putnam has an article http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/56/4/615" , wherein he rejects the many worlds view because of the conflict between world counting and the Born rule.

Unfortunately, Wash U does not have an online subscription to BJPS :mad: .

D
 
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  • #35
Ontoplankton said:
Quantum Arson: You can win the lottery by resolving to burn a lot of stuff if you win, because that will generate a lot of entropy, so it will have happened in more worlds.

No, this wouldn't work, because the APP, as I understand it, is transitive.

David
 
  • #36
I've started a new thread on a different but (obviously) closely related topic to this one.

"Attempts to make the Born rule "emerge" explicitly from outcome counting"

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=101982

If the Born rule can be made to emerge explicitly from world counts, then that would be an "existence proof" to the claim that the title-question of this thread is: no!

:smile:

David
 

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