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To hear the multiverse enthusiasts tell it, many worlds theory offers no problems. But you probably sensed that that wasn’t very likely:
It says that our unique experience as individuals is not simply a bit imperfect, a bit unreliable and fuzzy, but is a complete illusion. If we really pursue that idea, rather than pretending that it gives us quantum siblings, we find ourselves unable to say anything about anything that can be considered a meaningful truth. We are not just suspended in language; we have denied language any agency. The MWI — if taken seriously — is unthinkable.
Its implications undermine a scientific description of the world far more seriously than do those of any of its rivals. The MWI tells you not to trust empiricism at all: Rather than imposing the observer on the scene, it destroys any credible account of what an observer can possibly be. Some Everettians insist that this is not a problem and that you should not be troubled by it. Perhaps you are not, but I am.
Yet I have pushed hard against the MWI not so much to try to demolish it as to show how its flaws, once brought to light, are instructive. Like the Copenhagen interpretation (which also has profound problems), it should be valued for forcing us to confront some tough philosophical questions.Philip Ball, “Why the Many-Worlds Interpretation Has Many Problems” at Quanta
They aren’t just philosophical questions any more. We are dealing daily with various wars on science — not just disagreements about climate change or how evolution happens but attacks on the fundamental nature of scientific enquiry as a tool of oppression.
That doesn;t directly answer Ball’s question but it reminds us what is at stake when someone claims that consciousness is an evolved illusion and so forth.
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See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide
and
Education prof: Upend science to benefit the oppressed One gets the impression that many people in science think that the social justice warriors are not serious and that after a certain point, they will just go away. That is the mistake of the people in science.