On interpretations of quantum mechanics, the West and human mind
Sunday
Today I watched an interesting movie whose plot brought me back to the quantum mechanics interpretation problem I’d been focused on a couple of months earlier. The plot goes like this: the police forced their way into a hotel room and found a woman’s dead body. Her boyfriend was in the room. The room was locked from the inside, chain on the door, and the windows couldn’t be opened. The boyfriend claimed a masked assassin killed his girlfriend. The police thoroughly searched for secret passages or hiding places but found none.
The director did a good job building mystery around the situation, but to me it was immediately clear that the person found in the room had to be the killer. It’s the simplest and most natural explanation. If you want a more complicated, less natural explanation, you need a strong reason—like the simple one failing to explain all known facts. But if it explains everything, you have to accept it. Occam's razor is powerful principle.
This reflects my stance on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which has become popular in recent years. It holds that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in different worlds—i.e., they’re all equally real. If a quantum system is in superposition and I interact with it, the world would branch in two ways: in one branch the first outcome occurs, in another the second outcome.
So, there’s a quantum system in superposition. I interact with it and become entangled. Then the larger system—me plus the quantum system—quickly decoheres with the environment. That’s when the splitting supposedly happens, but I don’t perceive it—I see only one branch. Another branch is perceived by my exact copy in that other branch.
I don’t accept this explanation because there’s a simpler, more natural one that accounts for all the facts: we observe that quantum measurements yield a single result according to probability. Why not just accept what we experience—that physical reality evolves probabilistically, with each new step not fully determined by the previous state?
So, the picture is this: there’s a quantum system in superposition. I interact with it and become entangled. The larger system—me plus the quantum system—then decoheres with the environment, and only one possible outcome is physically realized.
Clearly, this is a much simpler and more natural explanation that still fits everything we know. We don’t need other worlds to explain our observations. This is my main motive for rejecting the Many-Worlds Interpretation in favor of what’s called the Consistent Histories interpretation. One of its creators, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann, remarked about Many-Worlds (and I agree):
“This talk about many worlds that are ‘equally real’ has confused a lot of people, including many who are highly educated in quantum mechanics. What does ‘equally real’ even mean? It doesn’t have any practical meaning. But what people intend to say is that there are many histories—many alternative, coarse-grained, decoherent histories of the Universe—and the theory treats them on equal footing except for their probabilities. If that’s what you mean by ‘equally real,’ fine. But that’s all it means: the theory treats them equally except for their probabilities. Which one we actually experience is a different matter, determined only probabilistically.”
Monday
I remember that when I was a young teenager, I believed we lived in a time of steady progress—that with every passing decade, society would advance in technology, science, culture, and overall become more rational and equitable. I never expected any major regression.
Two decades later, I look back on that belief and see how naïve it was. Yes, there has been progress in certain areas, but also considerable backsliding in others.
One of the most striking examples—and something I never anticipated—is the abandonment of meritocratic principles. Decades ago, the ideal was that hiring should be based purely on merit: if someone worked hard, was intelligent, and got results, then factors like skin color, gender, nationality, or race were irrelevant. This approach made sense because it was fair to workers—rewarding them for their efforts—and beneficial for employers, who would thus maintain a high-caliber workforce. It also served society at large by promoting competent, hardworking individuals essential to a dynamic, resilient economy. Admittedly, this meritocratic ideal wasn’t always perfectly implemented, but it was a sound goal that we seemed to be moving toward.
Today, however, in many companies this meritocratic focus has been replaced by a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” mindset. The aim is to build a workforce that has the “right” number of people from different backgrounds and traits—once again considering skin color, gender, nationality, and so forth. Since such diversity doesn’t always occur naturally, companies impose hiring rules to meet specific targets, such as ensuring that 30% of employees belong to a certain race or background. This clearly conflicts with meritocratic standards, because hiring decisions must account for something other than merit. In practical terms, it can mean that a highly skilled and hardworking white man—otherwise a perfect candidate—might be rejected solely to preserve certain demographic targets. I fail to see how that counts as progress; to me, it’s plainly a step backward.
That’s why I was glad to hear a recent announcement from a major tech company that decided to eliminate its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion division. I hope it’s an early sign of a broader push against these anti-meritocratic, unscientific, and self-defeating tendencies that are undermining Western societies.
From my perspective, we Westerners tend to take our current prosperity for granted, thinking the West is inherently strong and will continue thriving indefinitely. Yet it’s far more fragile than many realize—just like the USSR, which seemed invincible up until it collapsed and fragmented. The West, like any other powerful bloc, relies on intricate internal mechanisms. When those mechanisms function well and remain in balance, it can continue to flourish. But it’s also like a Jenga tower—once you start removing or shifting essential pieces, the whole structure weakens and becomes prone to a sudden collapse. At that point, all its previous strength disappears, and rebuilding is a long, painful process. When vultures gather seeing the weakness, it becomes tragic.
Friday
I find it puzzling why anyone would accept Many-Worlds when there’s a better explanation and when Many-Worlds makes human life seem absurd. I guess this happens when people focus too narrowly on theoretical physics and forget about the philosophical implications of their views. It’s as if they’re living in two different worlds that never intersect, believing something in an abstract realm but ignoring its implications for daily life.
Recently, I traveled by plane from Warsaw to Manchester. Because I’d been spending so much time thinking about quantum mechanics interpretations, I started reflecting on my situation from a Many-Worlds perspective as soon as I boarded.
The flight took about two hours. I’d estimate that the plane contained on the order of 1028 atoms, including its payload and passengers. From those numbers, I can conservatively guess around 1030 quantum events took place. If each event has just two outcomes, this single flight would generate 210^30 branches. It’s an absurdly high number.
I recall hearing that there’s about a 1-in-11-million chance of dying on an average flight, which is extremely low. But given the enormous number of branches, it’s almost certain that in at least ten thousand of them, I die horribly. So, if I don’t limit my perspective to the one branch I observe, every flight would imply thousands of excruciating deaths for me. Life indeed becomes absurd under Many-Worlds if you think about it philosophically.
This is my third, more subtle reason for rejecting Many-Worlds. One of my main assumptions is that God is sophisticated, and I can’t imagine him producing such philosophically absurd scenarios for countless intelligent, self-aware observers. I agree with Einstein’s remark, “God is subtle but not malicious.”
I don’t want to give the wrong impression about why I reject Many-Worlds. I reject it because there’s a simpler, more natural interpretation of quantum mechanics. That’s the primary reason; its absurd implications for human life and the shadow it casts on God’s nature are secondary considerations. But if tomorrow some evidence emerged proving Many-Worlds correct, I would change my view, however absurd it might be. I would also reconsider my views on God. Still, when a simpler, more natural theory exists and one option has such significant downsides, it’s an obvious choice to reject Many-Worlds.
I accept Special Relativity despite the counterintuitive nature of Lorentz contraction and time dilation. I’m okay with it because it aligns with the facts—I won’t reject it over philosophical discomfort. Facts matter more than any unsettling implications, and it would be a huge mistake to deny what solid data clearly indicates in favor of unsupported preconceived notions.
Monday
I started reading a book called “The Parasitic Mind” by Gad Saad, which I hope will help me understand the processes pushing the West in a direction that worries me. It’s a chaotic book, but it has some great insights. Saad ingeniously uses the concepts of Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy syndrome to account for the dynamic spread of some far-left ideologies in recent years. He argues that, in the same way people fake diseases to become the center of attention and gain sympathy, some minorities (or their supporters) falsely portray themselves as victims, dramatizing their situation to win attention, sympathy, and a sense of moral superiority. Certainly, it’s not the whole story, but it elegantly explains many otherwise nonsensical phenomena in our contemporary society.
Today is the third day I’ve been reading this book, and my conscience rebels against it—I feel as though I shouldn’t read social and psychological books, since they don’t help much in the realm of metaphysics.
This feeling is generally correct, but in part it is misguided. I often catch myself believing my mind is some perfect analytical tool, free from emotions and biases, and that it reflects reality with the greatest precision. This isn’t the case. One can’t get rid of emotions because, without them, one wouldn’t be able to make decisions. One can’t eliminate biases because they are deeply ingrained. One can’t know everything and inevitably forgets. Clearly, the mind is not a tool designed solely for discovering objective truths; rather, it evolved to allow our species to survive and flourish. I think there is some truth in the following passage from Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”:
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life.
But the situation is not hopeless. By recognizing the biases and instincts we possess, we can pay attention to them and account for them. We can also acknowledge our emotions interfering with rational thinking. We can write down important things so we won’t forget them. That way, we won’t significantly change the mind, but we can introduce techniques to minimize its shortcomings and weaknesses.
Reading about evolutionary psychology and sociology is beneficial for working in metaphysics because it helps tune the main instrument used in this field of knowledge—the mind. I won’t spend all my time delving into the soft sciences, but it certainly helps to read a book once for a while that reminds me how fallible the human mind can be.
Wednesday
Recently, my thoughts have gravitated toward social issues. My latest entry on the state of Western culture reflects that. I wanted to write more, but I felt overwhelmed by disaffection.
I believe the main reason is that my exploration of metaphysics has shown me how little time I truly have. The sheer volume of information available to me far exceeds what I can process in a single lifetime. Consequently, I’m driven not to waste time and to prioritize my efforts. Contemporary social debates often require arguing about the most obvious and self-evident points—like the existence of objective reality and the fact that not everything is a social construct. For me, even thinking about engaging in such arguments is a waste of time. It also completely bores me.
Another big factor is harmony. The universe exhibits a highly ordered, harmonious structure, and I suspect that the metareality might be even more so. Societies, on the other hand, can be chaotic, often irrational, sometimes immoral, and occasionally display repulsive traits. When faced with a choice between the two, it’s obvious to me that I would rather focus on order and harmony.
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