From: Marc Geddes (marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz)
Date: Sun Dec 12 2004 - 19:17:21 MST
--- Patrick Crenshaw <patrick.crenshaw@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Marc,
>
> I have a degree in physics, and I can tell you that
> there is no
> *observable* difference between many-worlds and any
> other
> interpretation. As far as I know, the only thing
> that we can observe a
> difference between is local hidden variable theories
> and quantum
> mechanics. Google: "Bell's inequality"
Patrick,
Skeptics about the existence of atoms used exactly the
same argument to argue against atoms at the beginning
of the 20th century. They said:
'I have a degree in physics, and I can tell you that
there is no *observable* difference between the
'atoms' theory, and other interpretations'
You cannot presuppose in advance what will and will
not later turn out to be observable. The 'atoms'
theory started out as philosophy. It got turned into
science when much later on people found out ways to
make direct obersvations on the microscopic scale (for
instance the scanning tunnelling microscopic).
It simply isn't the case that there is no observable
different between differing interpretations. As I
mentioned, leading physicist David Deutsch has
proposed real experiments to distinguish between the
differing interpretations, and just recently Afshar
did a variation of the double-slit experiment in order
to try to distinguish between differing
interpretations.
http://irims.org/blog/index.php/2004/09/25/questions_welcome
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