(November 29, 2014 at 1:56 am)Alex K Wrote: Surgenator,
It's not really an additional multiplying of particles. The MWI amounts to basically just taking what the Schrödinger equation gives you and running with it. The quantum superpositions of the observer which automatically occur when it is included in the qm state along with the measured system,already give you the many worlds from your perspective. Copenhagen tells you to artificially deviate from Schroedinger after a measurement and project this down to one of the observer states in the superposition. So in a sense its less parsimonious than MWI.
There a two issues with that, how to assign probabilities to the superpositions, and whether some states should be special, but those are technical details.
In this picture, the usual observed quantum interference, eg in the double slit, precisely *is* interference between universes. Interference between very dissimilar universes is ultra suppressed afaik because the wave functions have little overlap.
I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it. Is there a collapse of the wave function? If there isn't, then we are one solution of enourmous superposition function. How the fuck do you assign a probability if you have to worry about other superposition states your not in interfering with yours? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH This is why I'm an experimentalist.