Everett many-worlds interpretation given a more solid footing

[bascule]

I saw this article:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19526223.700-parallel-universes-make-quantum-sense.html

 

Apparently a team of scientists has shown mathematically how waveform collapse can be explained by the continuous branching of the Everett many-worlds model.

 

Unfortunately I can't find their paper. Can someone opine?

[Martin]

I saw this article:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19526223.700-parallel-universes-make-quantum-sense.html

 

The main author mentioned is David Deutsch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch

the WikiP article lists a lot of interesting stuff he's done

 

You may have discussed Deutsch before in other threads. He has this book called The Fabric of Reality 1997

 

I could not find the paper that NewSci is talking about, maybe it is not yet available online.

 

I'll copy out what NewSci said, to look at more closely:

 

==quote==

Parallel universes make quantum sense

 

* 21 September 2007

* Zeeya Merali

* Magazine issue 2622

 

If you think of yourself as unique, think again. The days when physicists could ignore the concept of parallel universes may have come to an end. If that doesn't send a shudder down your spine, think of it this way: our world is just one of many. You are just one version of many.

 

David Deutsch at the University of Oxford and colleagues have shown that key equations of quantum mechanics arise from the mathematics of parallel universes. "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science," says Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis. In one parallel universe, at least, it will - whether it does in our one remains to be seen.

 

The "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics was proposed 50 years ago by Hugh Everett, a graduate student at Princeton University. Rather than ...

 

==endquote==

 

Here's most of what WikiP says

==quote==

The Fabric of Reality

 

Main article: The Fabric of Reality

 

In his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality this interpretation, or what he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one strand of a four-strand theory of everything. The four strands are:

 

1. Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, "the first and most important of the four strands".

2. Karl Popper's epistemology, especially its anti-inductivism and its requiring a realist (non-instrumental) interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on taking seriously those bold conjectures that resist falsification.

3. Alan Turing's theory of computation especially as developed in Deutsch's "Turing principle", Turing's universal Turing machine being replaced by Deutsch's universal quantum computer. ("The theory of computation is now the quantum theory of computation.")

4. Richard Dawkins's refinement of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the modern evolutionary synthesis, especially the ideas of replicator and meme as they integrate with Popperian problem-solving (the epistemological strand).

 

His theory of everything is (weakly) emergentist rather than reductive. It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles.

 

Views

 

Politically, Deutsch is known to be sympathetic to libertarianism, and was a founder, along with Sarah Fitz-Claridge and Kolya Wolf, of the Taking Children Seriously movement. He is also an atheist.

 

Awards

 

He was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998[1], and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005[2]. The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998[3].

 

Popular publications

 

* The Fabric of Reality, ISBN 0-14-014690-3

 

Forthcoming publications

 

Deutsch is currently working on a book entitled The Beginning of Infinity, which he hopes to finish in early 2008.

 

==endquote==

 

Bascule, whether or not you have discussed Deutsch ideas in other threads, you must be already very familiar with them. The news, for me, is twofold:

HE HAS A BOOK COMING OUT IN (early?) 2008.

 

and HIS GROUP AT OXFORD JUST GOT SOME RESULTS about foundations of Quantum Mechanics that NewSci picked up on 21 September, which i can't find on line.

 

I guess this is something to be alert to----fan and nonfan alike. I will look a bit more

[bascule]

Martin,

 

I'm sure I've discussed Deutsch before, and several years ago I considered reading the Fabric of Reality after reading an article on Deutsch

 

I'll be interested to hear what you find

[Martin]

I went looking for some report of the recent work at Oxford that NewSci mentioned in that initial freebie paragraph of their article. Couldn't find anything.

 

I don't have a subscription to NewSci. If you or anyone does, maybe it would help to dig out some exerpts from the article that give more clues as to what it's about---or names of other people working with Deutsch on this.

 

One faint resonance is that experiment demonstrating the GRADUAL collapse of a wavefunction---we had a thread about that not long ago. That may have nothing to do with what Deutsch is talking about but for me there is a hint of a tenuous connection with the Everett style of picturing QM. the non-existence of definite branchpoints. may have nothing to do with it---I don't know---I'm sure it is much clearer to you.

 

here's a link to the gradual collapse thing:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28469

 

==================================================

WAIT, I FOUND SOMETHING!

Forget the gradul collapse business for the moment. Here is a talk at Perimeter by a collaborator of Deutsch where they think they have mathematically DERIVED THE MAX BORN RULE. This seminar talk video has to be about what the NewSci had.

IRSA:07090062

Title: Probability in the Everett interpretation: state of play ( Windows Media , PDF)

Speaker(s): David Wallace

Abstract: I will review the current state of the probability problem. My main focus will be on the attempts by David Deutsch and myself to provide a proof of the Born Rule starting from Everettian assumptions, but I will also attempt to locate these attempts within the more general framework of the probability problem.

Date: 21/09/2007 - 2:50 pm

Series:

Location: 405

URL: http://pirsa.org/07090062/

===========================

 

For people with an intense interest in the Everett QM philosophy and what experts are saying about it these days, there are about 10 video Perimeter seminar talks that came online just in the past week! All have this same PIRSA format---perimeter institute research seminar archive.

As a kind of counterweight or antidote for the Deutsch-Wallace excitement here is another talk from the series that sounds like it might be on the other end of the spectrum

 

PIRSA:07090068

Title: 13 Quotes from Everettian Papers and Why They Unsettle Me ( Windows Media , PDF)

Speaker(s): Christopher Fuchs - Bell Labs

Abstract: 101 years ago William James wrote this about the Hegelian movement in philosophy: "The absolute mind which they offer us, the mind that makes our universe by thinking it, might, for aught they show us to the contrary, have made any one of a million other universes just as well as this. You can deduce no single actual particular from the notion of it. It is compatible with any state of things whatever being true here below." With some minor changes of phrase---for instance "mathematical structure" in place of "absolute mind"---one might well imagine morphing this into a remark about Everettian quantum mechanics. This point, coupled with the observation that the Everett interpretation has been declared complete and consistent for the selfsame number of years that its supporters have been trying to complete it, indicate to me that perhaps the Everett approach is more a quantum-independent mindset than a scientific necessity. So be it, but then it should be recognized as such. In this talk, I will try to expand on these suspicions.

Date: 24/09/2007 - 11:40 am

Series:

Location: 405

URL: http://pirsa.org/07090068/

 

In this format it is possible to SKIP AROUND in a talk, like flipping pages in a book, because it is splitscreen and there are STILLS of the guy's slides and there is a thumbnail MENU of the slides so you can go into the series of thumbnails and find an interesting slide and then click, and enlarge the slide, and then say "start talk here" and it will start him talking and gesturing right at when he put up that slide. So you can jump in halfway if you want. Or begin at beginning and then skip over to later, etc.

IOW the video is "slide-driven". Lovely format.

[Severian]

The closest thing I can find from Deutsch is http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104033 and I presume he would cite his own paper, so I suspect his publication isn't out yet. Maybe it was a talk at a conference?

[Martin]

... so I suspect his publication isn't out yet. Maybe it was a talk at a conference?

 

I'm betting it was this:

http://pirsa.org/07090062/

Probability in the Everett interpretation: state of play

David Wallace

"I will review the current state of the probability problem. My main focus will be on the attempts by David Deutsch and myself to provide a proof of the Born Rule starting from Everettian assumptions, but I will also attempt to locate these attempts within the more general framework of the probability problem."

 

Date: 21/09/2007 - 2:50 pm

 

In fact there was a conference going on at Perimeter that week, about the Everett interpretation----Max Tegmark gave a paper as did some ten or more others. This one by David Wallace was part of that.

 

There could have been a NewSci newsie at that Perimeter conference, who picked up on it and talked to Deutsch on the phone.

[Farsight]

IMHO the "Many Worlds Interpretation" is far more speculative than the material I've been panned for on this forum.

 

I've now finished my paper, and hope to make it available shortly. The conclusion includes this sentence:

 

This will involve a fresh look at Quantum Physics, starting with Quantum ElectroDynamics and new simple concept to replace “many paths”. Then we can look again Quantum ChromoDynamics and review color and charm, whilst finally driving a stake through the heart of the Many Worlds Interpretation.

[iNow]

IMHO the "Many Worlds Interpretation" is far more speculative than the material I've been panned for on this forum.

Perhaps this is because the MWI is an interpretation of existing data, not a statement that existing descriptions are wrong and MWI is right. There's a difference between interpreting things one way and claiming that tried and true methods are not valid.

[bascule]

Sooo... is there any paper available describing this yet? Or is it still just paraphrased from talks they gave?

[Martin]

Sooo... is there any paper available describing this yet? Or is it still just paraphrased from talks they gave?

 

I have seen nothing new on arxiv yet by David Deutsch

There may be something wrong with my search

http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+Deutsch_D/0/1/0/all/0/1

 

 

What I am expecting is something by Deutsch and Wallace (and maybe others) because Wallace is the guy at the Perimeter conference who gave the paper.

 

You may have better search techniques or be able to cast a wider net somehow than I. Not everybody posts their preprints at arxiv before regular peer-review publication, so I miss some papers because i mostly just check arxiv.

[Fred56]

I found this comment from the Brothers, or maybe cousins Horodecki:

Of course, there are some interpretational problems if one imagines that Alice “reads out” the result of the measurement as then we encounter problems coming from possible extension of the model by the projection postulate. However ...for practical reasons (i.e. as far as quantum information qualitative description is concerned) the informational processes like e.g. quantum teleportation do not require reading the data. Moreover, it must be noted that [in] the absence of the projection postulate the above model can be viewed as consistent with [a] “many worlds” interpretation.

but it's a 2000 paper.