Jul 29, 2025 09:28 PM
https://cerncourier.com/a/the-minimalism...ny-worlds/
INTRO: David Wallace argues for the ‘decoherent view’ of quantum mechanics, where at the fundamental level there is neither probability nor wavefunction collapse – and for its purest incarnation, the many-worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett III.
EXCERPT: Physicists have long been suspicious of the “quantum measurement problem”: the supposed puzzle of how to make sense of quantum mechanics. Everyone agrees (don’t they?) on the formalism of quantum mechanics (QM); any additional discussion of the interpretation of that formalism can seem like empty words. And Hugh Everett III’s infamous “many-worlds interpretation” looks more dubious than most: not just unneeded words but unneeded worlds. Don’t waste your time on words or worlds; shut up and calculate.
But the measurement problem has driven more than philosophy. Questions of how to understand QM have always been entangled, so to speak, with questions of how to apply and use it, and even how to formulate it; the continued controversies about the measurement problem are also continuing controversies in how to apply, teach and mathematically describe QM.
The Everett interpretation emerges as the natural reading of one strategy for doing QM, which I call the “decoherent view” and which has largely supplanted the rival “lab view”, and so – I will argue – the Everett interpretation can and should be understood not as a useless adjunct to modern QM but as part of the development in our understanding of QM over the past century... (MORE - details)
INTRO: David Wallace argues for the ‘decoherent view’ of quantum mechanics, where at the fundamental level there is neither probability nor wavefunction collapse – and for its purest incarnation, the many-worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett III.
EXCERPT: Physicists have long been suspicious of the “quantum measurement problem”: the supposed puzzle of how to make sense of quantum mechanics. Everyone agrees (don’t they?) on the formalism of quantum mechanics (QM); any additional discussion of the interpretation of that formalism can seem like empty words. And Hugh Everett III’s infamous “many-worlds interpretation” looks more dubious than most: not just unneeded words but unneeded worlds. Don’t waste your time on words or worlds; shut up and calculate.
But the measurement problem has driven more than philosophy. Questions of how to understand QM have always been entangled, so to speak, with questions of how to apply and use it, and even how to formulate it; the continued controversies about the measurement problem are also continuing controversies in how to apply, teach and mathematically describe QM.
The Everett interpretation emerges as the natural reading of one strategy for doing QM, which I call the “decoherent view” and which has largely supplanted the rival “lab view”, and so – I will argue – the Everett interpretation can and should be understood not as a useless adjunct to modern QM but as part of the development in our understanding of QM over the past century... (MORE - details)