Comment by jabr on If Many-Worlds Had Come First · 2008-05-18T23:04:36.000Z · LW · GW

First, W Bush was just 11 in 1957. However, that does make me wonder over what fraction of the many-worlds he ended up being an idiotic asshole -- much less President now... And, wow, imagine the possible alternate world where he was a good President!

Second, though I generally liked your post, I feel it was a bit disingenuous to not mention the hidden variable hypothesis in regard to the Copenhagen interpretation. Early 20th century physicists weren't thinking collapse was an extraordinary violation of know physics -- they thought it was a temporarily opaque -- and deceptively random in appearance -- layer on an underlying deterministic physics.

It wasn't until 1964 that the traditional interpretation started to really fall apart. And the modern split is, I suspect, largely down a deterministic/stochastic universe preference. The CI survivors are waiting for a workable replacement to hidden variable. The growth in the MWI camp is because they haven't come up with anything in the last four decades.