Understanding Many-Worlds: A Beginner's Guide to Quantum Mechanics

I reject sections 5.2 and 7.2 of the article.

There are alternative explanations for the apparent phenomena of wave function collapse and Many Worlds is just one. Another is that the observer itself is a quantum system: a set of entangled particles represented by a shared eigenvector. When a particle interacts with this system, it becomes entangled and overwhelmingly likely to align with the same eigenvector. This gives the appearance of wave function collapse, but in reality, the particle has simply been absorbed into the observer’s wave function. The wave function hasn’t collapsed - it’s evolved through entanglement. This is the core issue I have with 5.2: it treats collapse as a physical event rather than a probabilistic outcome of entanglement.

As for 7.2, it begins with the premise that collapse is real - a notion that’s been philosophically and technically challenged for decades. The "shut up and compute" attitude dates back to the 1930s and reflects a pragmatic stance: treat collapse as a computational tool, not a physical truth. This approach led to the electronics revolution, where quantum mechanics was used to build real-world systems without resolving metaphysical debates. Collapse was never a confirmed physical process - it was a useful abstraction for prediction and engineering.

So which is it: wave function absorption via entanglement, or Many Worlds? Without further empirical evidence, Occam’s Razor favors entanglement. It explains the observed phenomena without multiplying realities and remains consistent with quantum field theory’s treatment of observers as quantum systems.