That might be the case. But something still smells in the many worlds theory---it's hard to reconcile conservation of energy or mass with the notion of an infinitely branching multiverse, and if there is no way to interact with those other branches, are they real or just a story we're telling ourselves to try and justify the math?
if they are just a story, it feels like a complicated story to get to the goal.
At the same time, I completely agree that the story of wave function collapse also smells. It creates a distinction between observer and observed reality, and that creates its own set of paradoxes (we can put Schrodinger's cats in nested boxes all day long, and some of the boxes even include experimenters who think they are observing the cat, but experimenters outside the lab don't agree with them that they are the observers!).
> That might be the case. But something still smells in the many worlds theory---it's hard to reconcile conservation of energy or mass with the notion of an infinitely branching multiverse, and if there is no way to interact with those other branches, are they real or just a story we're telling ourselves to try and justify the math?
Looking at the multiverse as branching is where the confusion comes in. There's one Universal wave-function. Why we don't experience the wave-function directly is the mystery.
if they are just a story, it feels like a complicated story to get to the goal.
At the same time, I completely agree that the story of wave function collapse also smells. It creates a distinction between observer and observed reality, and that creates its own set of paradoxes (we can put Schrodinger's cats in nested boxes all day long, and some of the boxes even include experimenters who think they are observing the cat, but experimenters outside the lab don't agree with them that they are the observers!).