Comments on: Anyone for frequentist fudge?

By: Wine, Physics, and Song » Blog Archive » Foundational Questions in the Azores II: Limiting frequency arguments for the Born rule in Many Worlds

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:01:01 +0000

[...] there are more comments on this issue in Matt Leifer’s blog, under the neutral title “Anyone for Frequentist Fudge?“, which I came across while working on this post, and recomend highly. Matt objects to [...]

By: Matthew Leifer

Matthew Leifer — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 18:32:30 +0000

I agree that they would reject the Born rule. I am not saying that simply adopting Bayesianism is enough to solve the problem. However, the idea that probabilities have to be related to world counts is at least not a foregone conclusion for a Bayesian. Therefore, it may well be possible to justify the Born rule within this approach without modifying QM in any way. This is what Deutsch and Wallace were trying to do, although I do not dispute that the argument is not 100% compelling.

Personally, I have other reasons for rejecting many-worlds, so it doesn’t bother me too much if the probability issue remains controversial. On the other hand, I do think it is helpful to compare frequency-based proposals with the usual frquentist justification of classical probability and ask whether we would accept similar arguments there, or whether it would seem ad hoc.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 17:40:17 +0000

Taking a Bayesian perspective does not avoid the problem that in a finite many worlds view the vast majority of worlds have frequencies very different from the Born rule. That should lead Bayesians in those worlds to reject the Born rule.

By: Steve Esser

Steve Esser — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:25:53 +0000

Interesting post (and blog). I’m grateful for the link to the Appleby paper, which I thought was very persuasive,
Best regards, – Steve Esser