Understanding Deutsch's probability in a deterministic multiverse
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Abstract: Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, decision theory is itself applicable only if the correct attitude to a future Everettian measurement outcome is subjective uncertainty. I argue that subjective uncertainty is not to be had, but I offer an alternative interpretation that enables the Everettian to live without uncertainty: we can justify Everettian decision theory on the basis that an Everettian should *care about* all her future branches. The probabilities appearing in the decision-theoretic representation theorem can then be interpreted as the degrees to which the rational agent cares about each future branch. This reinterpretation, however, reduces the intuitive plausibility of one of the Deutsch-Wallace axioms (Measurement Neutrality).
Recommendations
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Cited in
(24)- Everettian quantum mechanics without branching time
- Quantum fractionalism: the Born rule as a consequence of the complex Pythagorean theorem
- The actual future is open
- Foundations of probability
- The problem of confirmation in the Everett interpretation
- Analysis of Wallace's proof of the Born rule in Everettian quantum mechanics: formal aspects
- Measurement outcomes and probability in Everettian quantum mechanics
- Quantum probability and many worlds
- Uncertainty and probability for branching selves
- Everett and the Born rule
- Everettian probabilities, the Deutsch-Wallace theorem and the principal principle
- Making sense of Born's rule \(p_\alpha =\Vert \varPsi_\alpha \Vert^2\) with the many-minds interpretation
- Probability in two deterministic universes
- Anthropic interpretation of quantum theory
- The probability problem in Everettian quantum mechanics persists
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- On the Everettian epistemic problem
- Probability in modal interpretations of quantum mechanics
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- Quantum probability from subjective likelihood: improving on Deutsch's proof of the probability rule
- Derivations of the Born Rule
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