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"Everett, Hugh"
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Quantum Worlds
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n1p45Because of the conceptual difficulties it faces, quantum mechanics provides a salient example of how alternative metaphysical commitments may clarify our understanding of a physical theory and the explanations it provides. Here we will consider how postulating alternative quantum worlds in the context of Hugh Everett III’s pure wave mechanics may serve to explain determinate measurement records and the standard quantum statistics. We will focus on the properties of such worlds, then briefly consider other metaphysical options available for interpreting pure wave mechanics. These reflections will serve to illustrate both the nature and the limits of naturalized metaphysics.
Journal Article
Many worlds: see me here, see me there
Fifty years ago, physics student Hugh Everett III, dissatisfied with the standard view of quantum mechanics, came up with a radical new interpretation. Mark Buchanan reports on the ensuing debate.
Journal Article
The many worlds of Hugh Everett III : multiple universes, mutual assured destruction, and the meltdown of a nuclear family
\"Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose \"many worlds\" theory of multiple universes has had a profound impact on physics and philosophy. Using Everett's unpublished papers (recently discovered in his son's basement) and dozens of interviews with his friends, colleagues, and surviving family members, Byrne paints, for the general reader, a detailed portrait of the genius who invented an astonishing way of describing our complex universe from the inside. Everett's mathematical model (called the \"universal wave function\") treats all possible events as \"equally real\", and concludes that countless copies of every person and thing exist in all possible configurations spread over an infinity of universes: many worlds. Afflicted by depression and addictions, Everett strove to bring rational order to the professional realms in which he played historically significant roles. In addition to his famous interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett wrote a classic paper in game theory; created computer algorithms that revolutionized military operations research; and performed pioneering work in artificial intelligence for top secret government projects. He wrote the original software for targeting cities in a nuclear hot war; and he was one of the first scientists to recognize the danger of nuclear winter. As a Cold Warrior, he designed logical systems that modeled \"rational\" human and machine behaviors, and yet he was largely oblivious to the emotional damage his irrational personal behavior inflicted upon his family, lovers, and business partners. He died young, but left behind a fascinating record of his life, including correspondence with such philosophically inclined physicists as Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and John Wheeler. These remarkable letters illuminate the long and often bitter struggle to explain the paradox of measurement at the heart of quantum physics. In recent years, Everett's solution to this mysterious problem-the existence of a universe of universes-has gained considerable traction in scientific circles, not as science fiction, but as an explanation of physical reality\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Set Theory and Many Worlds
The 2022 Tel Aviv conference on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics highlighted many differences between theorists. A very significant dichotomy is between Everettian fission (splitting) and Saunders–Wallace–Wilson divergence. For fission, an observer may have multiple futures, whereas for divergence they always have a single future. Divergence was explicitly introduced to resolve the problem of pre-measurement uncertainty for Everettian theory, which is universally believed to be absent for fission. Here I maintain that there is indeed pre-measurement uncertainty prior to fission, so long as objective probability is a property of Everettian branches. This is made possible if the universe is a set and branches are subsets with a probability measure. A universe that is a set of universes that are macroscopically isomorphic and span all possible configurations of local beäbles fulfills that role. If objective probability is a property of branches, then a successful Deutsch–Wallace decision-theoretic argument would justify the Principal Principle and be part of probability theory rather than specific to many-worlds theory. Any macroscopic object in our environment becomes a set of isomorphs with different microscopic configurations, each in an elemental universe (elemental in the set-theoretic sense). This is similar to the many-interacting-worlds theory, but the observer inhabits the set of worlds, not an individual world. An observer has many elemental bodies.
Journal Article
Hugh Everett III in Personal Reminiscences by Bryce S. DeWitt, Frank J. Tipler, Harvey J. Greenberg, Paul D. Flanagan, John Y. Barry, Joseph G. Caldwell, Donald L. Reisler, Keith F. Lynch, Keith M. Corbett, and David E. Deutsch
Reminiscences by ten people about Hugh Everett III (1930-1982) are collected, describing his leaving quantum physics in late 1950s, defense analytical studies in 1956-1965, founding successful software and research corporations Lambda (1965-1975), mainly for defense work, and DBS (1973 - early 1990s), for civilian work, and finally his last public return to Many Worlds interpretation (1977). Previously unpublished memoirs taken from E. Shikhovtsev's private correspondence, 2000-2002, and commented by him, describe intellectual and business qualities of Everett, his personal relations with different people, his views in various areas, habits, and manners. NeuroQuantology | March 2013 | Volume 11 | Issue 1| Suppl 1 | Page 160-170
Journal Article
The everett interpretation of quantum mechanics
Hugh Everett III was an American physicist best known for his many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which formed the basis of his PhD thesis at Princeton University in 1957. Although counterintuitive, Everett's revolutionary formulation of quantum mechanics offers the most direct solution to the infamous quantum measurement problem--that is, how and why the singular world of our experience emerges from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the quantum world. The many-worlds interpretation postulates the existence of multiple universes. Whenever a measurement-like interaction occurs, the universe branches into relative states, one for each possible outcome of the measurement, and the world in which we find ourselves is but one of these many, but equally real, possibilities. Everett's challenge to the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics was met with scorn from Niels Bohr and other leading physicists, and Everett subsequently abandoned academia to conduct military operations research. Today, however, Everett's formulation of quantum mechanics is widely recognized as one of the most controversial but promising physical theories of the last century.
In this book, Jeffrey Barrett and Peter Byrne present the long and short versions of Everett's thesis along with a collection of his explanatory writings and correspondence. These primary source documents, many of them newly discovered and most unpublished until now, reveal how Everett's thinking evolved from his days as a graduate student to his untimely death in 1982. This definitive volume also features Barrett and Byrne's introductory essays, notes, and commentary that put Everett's extraordinary theory into historical and scientific perspective and discuss the puzzles that still remain.
eBook
Many lives in many worlds
Accepting quantum physics to be universally true, argues Max Tegmark, means that you should also believe in parallel universes.
Many Worlds
Yes, this is
Nature
. The cover art, by David Parkins, salutes a big year for quantum physics: 50 years ago, Hugh Everett III proposed what came to be known as the 'many worlds' hypothesis. He took quantum physics at face value, and imagined what it really meant. He aimed to resolve the paradoxes of quantum theory by allowing every possible outcome to every event to exist in its own world. In a News Feature, Mark Buchanan reports on modern reactions to the 'many worlds' idea. Although too bizarre for most physicists of the 1950s, many worlds theory now has its followers, including Max Tegmark, who laments in a Commentary that Everett's original paper is not as widely read as it should be. Tegmark also explains why he believes in parallel universes which, as Gary Wolfe illustrates in Books & Arts, are of course meat and drink to science fiction writers. Life sciences also have their place in this fiction-inspired issue and the whole is brought together in an Editorial.
Journal Article
Everettian quantum mechanics without branching time
In this paper I assess the prospects for combining contemporary Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) with branching-time semantics in the tradition of Kripke, Prior, Thomason and Belnap. I begin by outlining the salient features of 'decoherence-based' EQM, and of the 'consistent histories' formalism that is particularly apt for conceptual discussions in EQM. This formalism permits of both 'branching worlds' and 'parallel worlds' interpretations; the metaphysics of EQM is in this sense underdetermined by the physics. A prominent argument due to Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986) supports the non-branching interpretation. Belnap et al. (Facing the Future: Agents and Choices in Our Indeterministic World, 2001) refer to Lewis' argument as the 'Assertion problem', and propose a pragmatic response to it. I argue that their response is unattractively ad hoc and complex, and that it prevents an Everettian who adopts branching-time semantics from making clear sense of objective probability. The upshot is that Everettians are better off without branching-time semantics. I conclude by discussing and rejecting an alternative possible motivation for branching time.
Journal Article