Objective Collapse and Pilot Waves FTWWWW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP6iyVJ70OU

#physics #graduate #also did you know graduand is a word? It’s someone who’s done but not gotten their degree certificate yet.

#pilotWave #Schrodinger #quantum #gravity #wavefunction

Are many-worlds and pilot-wave the same theory?

https://selfawarepatterns.com/2023/09/30/are-many-worlds-and-pilot-wave-the-same-theory/
#physics #QuantumMechanics #ManyWorlds #PilotWave #quantum

It’s been a while, but I’ve occasionally mentioned on the blog that Cecil B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments (the 1950s color version) is one of my favorite movies. And this has remained true even as I’ve come to see it as straight fantasy.

An interesting fact from when I first saw it as a very young boy. I initially thought Yul Brenner’s Ramses was two different characters. This was because there were several scenes with him outside in armor, and other scenes of him inside in more comfortable attire. To my five year old self, it looked like two different guys. Until the scene after Ramses’ son has just died, when he decides to go after the Israelites. Inside-Ramses calls for his armor, and in the process transforms onscreen into outside-Ramses, making me realize they were one and the same.

Over the years, I’ve encountered many other entities which initially looked like separate things, but turned out to just be the same thing seen from different perspectives or in different contexts. Time and time again, I’ve learned to be on the lookout for underlying patterns that might indicate I’m looking at different aspects of the same thing. (I think this is why I have little trouble conceptualizing consciousness as functionality.)

Which is why found this video from Matt O’Dowd interesting. He explores a proposition that David Deutsch has often expressed, that the pilot-wave interpretation of quantum mechanics is just a special case of the many-worlds interpretation.

O’Dowd, around the thirteen minute mark, does note one seemingly structural difference between the two, the guiding equation of pilot-wave, which tells the particle where to go. It’s not needed under many-worlds because under it, a version of the particle goes everywhere the wave function is non-zero. As he notes, many-worlds is pilot-wave minus any one version of the particle being the one true real one.

I don’t know much about the guiding equation. I do wonder if, under many-worlds, it could be seen an expression of the relationship between particles in one particular world. Or if there’s simply no room for it in that theory.

I think one reason Deutsch emphasizes the similarities between the two theories, and the one difference, is it seems to answer a common question for the idea of pure wave mechanics: waves of what? According to Deutsch, it’s waves of the different versions of the particle. This leads him to hold a particle first ontology, which seems like a minority view among Everettians (many-worlders).

Although ultimately this may just be “a six of one, half a dozen of the other” type thing. Are waves, waves of particle versions? Or are particles just fragments of waves? Under any degree of wave function realism, the answer could just be “yes”.

Unless of course I’m missing something?

https://selfawarepatterns.com/2023/09/30/are-many-worlds-and-pilot-wave-the-same-theory/

#InterpretationsOfQuantumMechanics #ManyWorldInterpretation #Physics #PilotWave #QuantumMechanics #quantumPhysics