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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

This feels like a cop out.

Like sure, you can just do the math and get results and not worry about it. But what's the motivation here?

When you get down to it, he seems to believe many-worlds is true, BUT holds the philosophical position that you shouldn't, like, care. Because there's no practical benefit to caring; because it doesn't help you with the calculations.

But, hey, I still care! What the real nature of reality is is an interesting question! It's fun & satisfying to think about, even if has no direct physical practical implications. Plus, it can certainly have psychological implications, dramatically impacting how we feel about the things that have happened to us and life in general.

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> Plus, it can certainly have psychological implications, dramatically impacting how we feel about the things that have happened to us and life in general.

Other than offering amusement by recreationally asking how many parallel universes can dance on the head of a pin, how should it affect anything?

It is no mercy to know there are kinder universes out there, for with them come those more cruel.

You are already a mote in the sea of infinity, what hope is offered by adding more dimensions to that ocean's depth?

Anyone wise enough to make it this far should know better than to presume that the best available theoretical model is actually the truth. We just use it out of pragmatic lack of a better one (which will likely someday come, but we are approaching the less fun side of the scientific knowledge sigmoid)

Well, do you think there is a truth, understandable by humans, about the nature of the universe?

If you think there is, what better guide than our best theories of physics so far?

So of course what the nature of the universe is doesn't really affect anything, on a physical level, but our sense of what happens after we're gone does in fact change our behaviors. E.g. Most people contemplate with more horror the possibility of all humanity being wiped out than their own isolated death, even though from the individual perspective it is the same.

Somehow things that cannot possibly matter to us physically still matter to us intellectually.

> It is no mercy to know there are kinder universes out there, for with them come those more cruel.

Well, that's debatable. For example, if you're finding this universe to be particularly cruel, perhaps it is a solace to think it's just one of the universes you must endure, and in some other universe you're having a much easier time.

But it's not you. And the idea of every possiblity playing out is a lot less exciting than idealized.

The Alter where you both exist and is better is not actually guaranteed to exist. In fact basically all them are guaranteed to essentially identical. Quantum splits at a macro level would basically only happen now that we have quantum random number generators to make decisions based on and I doubt that will add up to alters where things are much better.

You are welcome to whatever religion you need to settle your existential emotional needs, but don't expect the science to play out in a direction that matches your fantasy.

Well, sure, you could equally find it to be anti-comforting. I just think (1) there is a truth to reality, beyond even what we might be able to physically access and (2) it's interesting to ponder what that might be. Maybe even comforting, depending on your mindset.

> It's fun & satisfying to think about,

It's neither fun nor satisfying (edit:for me) to think about. It's theoretically impossible to design and run an experiment which would either falsify Copenhagen and not-falsify Many-Worlds, or falsify Many-Worlds and not-falsify Copenhagen. Unless we can do that (we can't) then arguing about Copenhagen vs Many-Worlds is just navel gazing.

I'm fine with arguing about interpretations which are experimentally distinguishable from Copenhagen.

And it is absurd to say it has no direct practical implications. We still don't know all of physics, and part of the reason is precisely because we're stuck in the wrong mindset regarding how nature works. Only a better insight on the true nature of the universe can give us the correct mathematical models.

Can you explain what the direct and practical implications are? I don't know if I buy what the link says about this, but I do know that no one has ever found utility by being frustrated about many worlds

I mean that interpretations have practical implications because they're the only way to find the true laws of physics, which in turn has obviously applications. For example, if you believe in superdeterminism, and you obviously should, then that will save a lot of work researching dead ends (like multiverse stuff), which will make us find the correct algorithms faster.

> the correct mathematical models

There are those that think reality (including the universe) is just mathematics. Not modeled by mathematics, but is mathematics. To me, the mathematical universe hypothesis is starting to be the only theory that makes sense.

Wait isn't that the common assumption? That the universe is just an algorithm and we're trying to figure which is it?

No, the common assumption is that we attempt to describe the universe with precise tools like mathematics, but the map isn’t the territory and all models are incomplete, some are just less incomplete. The universe being mathematical is a form of Platonism, which is the belief that mathematical and abstract objects are real.

> mathematical and abstract objects are real

It might be a distinction without a difference, but I always understood the idea to be that objects we believe to be real are actually mathematical structures.

I see it as sharing some ideas from the we-are-living-in-a-simulation idea. If we were in a simulation, you wouldn’t say data structures and objects are real but would say the table in front of you is actually just data.

You would say the table in front of me is data inside a physical computer, whatever the physics of the real world were, assuming they aren't the same as our simulated world (perhaps they are an approximation of the real all depending on the purpose of the simulation).

That's different from the world being mathematical or informational, which raises the question of what makes it real to us. What breathes life into the equations? Consciousness? Where does consciousness come into the picture?

I think it's beyond being a cop out; I suspect that some of the things that he's dismissing might be gravitationally relevant:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630528

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