13 Quotes from Everettian Papers and Why They Unsettle Me

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:07090068,
            doi = {10.48660/07090068},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/07090068},
            author = {Fuchs, Chris},
            keywords = {},
            language = {en},
            title = {13 Quotes from Everettian Papers and Why They Unsettle Me},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2007},
            month = {sep},
            note = {PIRSA:07090068 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
          

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.