Emily Adlam (Chapman University) and David Wallace (Mellon Chair in Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh) have argued about quantum mechanics with each other for years, but this is the first time they’ve sat down and done it together on camera.
They share almost every technical premise, and end up on opposite sides anyway.
We cover:
Why many-worlds may be self-undermining. In Emily’s words, it doesn’t make sense to believe an interpretation of quantum mechanics which says we shouldn’t believe quantum mechanics.
Relational quantum mechanics keeps collapsing back into Everett. Emily says she asked Rovelli and Di Biagio directly, Isn’t this just Everett?, and her recounting of their conclusion is well, yes, essentially.
The measurement problem’s revenge on shared reality: on the relational view, Emily warns, there are no absolute… observer independent facts, so there may be no fact of the matter that you and I share a world at all.
The Costanza observer (yes, after Seinfeld’s …
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