Episode 36: David Albert on Quantum Measurement and the Problems with Many-Worlds 

David Albert is my favorite guest thus far. Definitely have him on again.

I love listening to David Albert and anything to do with the foundations of physics. The extra length was fine by me. Definitely bring him back some time and finish the discussion!

Didnt know who you were Sean, until i saw you on Joe Rogans, now im hooked on your podcast, your such a good guy, scientist and podcaster

Smart people who disagree are excellent guests to have conversations with! Thanks for the great podcast Sean.

I really wish there was another, longer episode of you two talking about these topics. Fascinating, time just flies by so fast listening to it.

I can’t necessarily follow all of his philosophical reasonings, but I like Albert and it just gives me a reason to listen through the whole conversation multiple times. Rather than just clicking on another introductory lecture on quantum mechanics which will normally will only cover material I’ve already heard a million times.

Thanks for the content Mr Carroll - I work as a pianist, but I'm fascinated by physics. I'm grateful that people like you are out there providing these. Most TV documentaries think we're so stupid that we'd hate (or be hopelessly confused by) any REAL technical, philosophical, or mathematical discussion. So instead all we get are dumb animations, and inappropriate analogies. Podcasts like these satisfy my craving for genuine scientific information that isn't so dumbed-down that you don't actually learn anything!

Loved the length of this one. Longer is better.

Guest/Show request: "Nima Arkani-Hamed on Spacetime, SUSY, and building larger colliders" Also, I think this would be fun: "Leonard Susskind on Black Holes and no, I am not Mike from Breaking Bad" 😆

With a few years' retrospective viewpoint, I think this may be one the finest interviews Carroll has done..

Oh my lord, Sean Carroll has a podcast. Where has this channel been all my life?

Wow.. very good conversation. I will admit I'll have to listen to it a second time to really catch it all. Two great minds here having a great conversation.

Forget the wave function. My brain has collapsed.

I've been waiting for this episode for a long time.

Has Tim Maudlin never been a guest? I feel like he'd have some really great contributions to make on both quantum mechanics and relativity (especially shedding light on some remarkable things Bell said on both matters).

This conversation needed like two more hours. Please have David back!

I am so glad you started this series! Thank you!

wow... this episode was worth every penny I've ever given on patreon. so good.

"Sadly, we didn't get quite enough time to talk about what approaches to QM that he IS in favor of..." - Sean Carroll on a podcast that's 18 minutes shy of 2 hours. Alright, let's do this.

Please get *David Deutsch* on the podcast!!!

Fun to listen to these two people. So in harmony and respectful to each other.

Good to see sean carroll again.

Thank you Sean and David for this beautiful talk. It strikes me that we may have to rethink our naming convention: what if quantum refers to the discrete event of the observation itself, in which the interpretation of the observed is an exclusion of one thing and an inclusion of the other. The quantum world then is not the world of discrete packets of energy or discrete, probabilistic outcomes of measurements, it is the absence of it and the Schrödinger equation describes the nature of reality in which there are no observations, that is, measurements, that is, exclusions caused by the nature of our intuitive reality which is discrete and dual by the concept of choice. Our reference frame is discrete, therefore we observe in a discrete manner. Our macroscopic worldview is evolving around differentiation. When we choose, when we measure, we entangle the observed reality to our quanta-based structure of reality. The so-called collapse of the wave function is there only because our reference frame in which we give meaning to observations is discrete. The idea is that our observational experiences live in a quantum world, but reality beyond that what is observed is continuous, described by the universal wave function. The microscopic world is without any quanta, and is fundamental to everything. We might want to rename classical physics into quantum physics, and quantum physics into fundamental physics, the theory in which everything is contained by an a priori logic principles, valid without any reference to observable results as opposed to empirical logic. I would like to know what other interested viewers and yourself as creator of these podcasts think of this.

As an analytic philosopher, I really enjoy your podcasts. Thanks for bringing the disciplines of science and philosophy together for the rest of the public. I find the intersection of the two fascinating. We could all use some more education on social media too. Cheers.

Albert never actually gets around to making a point. He has a soothing voice though. So does Carroll.

Listening to David Albert is a challenge. His answer/point is only reached after a long random walk of excursions into tangentially related minutea.

My favourite guest so far. Classy conversation.

I simply love this talk and have listened to it many times. Often as a bedtime story.

so much respect for your approach to all this Sean

This is what I've been looking for! More plz!

Superb episode, as usual! I'm sure you have plenty of ideas for folks to co-host in future episodes, and I'd like to inspire you to maybe have someone that is pushing more "fringe" theories, like Erik Verlinde. I think you've already been through a MOND phase of your research and a conversation with both of you might be able to explain to us the gaps between MOND theories and observations. I'd also love to hear Edward Witten and Juan Maldacena. Thank you for helping to teach and inspire us!

Sean, I've listened to you and David in different venues over several years and am at a point where I'm grasping these ideas. Some. Great show. Look forward to reading your latest book. A book on the history quantum mechanics i.e. Bohr vs. Einstein would be fantastic.

A great podcast. I'll have to give it another 10 listens to really grasp what he was talking about at core :D

Absolutely loved this episode! Would be awesome to have David back on again.

Sean, this was a little over my head (ok, a lot) but since you & David are smart guys, making good faith efforts to get at the truth, it would be interesting to hear your 5 minute summary of where exactly you & David differ on many worlds, what fact would bring you to David’s side & vice versa, if that’s possible.

Really very good knowledge to learn.... You are the wealthist human in this world professor , you got a endless knowledge of physics , a wealth never ends.. Everyday I learn a lots from you... Thanks sir for your knowledge share....

Basically, all I got out of this ~2hr video beyond the history of QM interpretations is that Albert doesn't like the fact that MW basically makes probability meaningless in a sense. I can't help but wonder: so what? I don't even think he's right about that, though it might require a redefinition of what probability actually is. If every outcome happens, then we're not asking about the probability of it happening, but about how many versions of us will see any given outcome. It basically reduces probability to statistics in a sense.

It always puzzles me that there are time limits imposed on such conversations. How dare you, Sean?

Excellent podcast Sean! It is nice how at 3:22 you "open your umbrella" for your support to the many worlds theory! LOL ;-)

Hi, Sean. Could you please consider running a live stream on youtube where we (fans) can interact directly with you through the chat by sending in questions and having discussions about different topics within your field?

I may be wrong, but I think the objections against Everrett raised by Albert have already been quite well responded to by people such as Deutsch and Wallace at Oxford. Edit - I see that Albert actually acknowledges this fact later lol.

Thoroughly enjoyed this session-3 years later.

Amazing podcast, but there should be at least one more with David on this subject. I'm also glad that Sean's pronunciation of Schrödinger much improved.

31:08 dog collapsing wave function

I was hoping for something more like a debate

Yay another physics episode!!! I like the other ones but this is really the only place i can find physics podcasts... anyone have a recommendation maybe?

Good one SC & DA-tks.

Shame the mice don't get to choose ice cream! Thoroughly enjoyed another thought provoking podcast. Thanks to both Sean and David for an enthralling discussion.

Stimulating and informative as always, SC. Thank you both. (-I suggest an all-David podcast. Albert, Deutsch, Wallace..)

from 1:37 "I think that there always will be people who draw the wrong conclusions in an Everettian Multiverse..." Exactly what I thought also

Thank you once again, Sean for your so articulate, and comprehensive, (yet verbally economical) (and unemotional) periodic summary explanations, laying out the logic of what your guest is actually talking about, and how it relates to the bigger picture. Great series of podcasts which compliment your carefully and so logically thought out, well written books! I admire your relatively non-judgmental way of examining problems from many (every?) different points of view.

always relevant and educational!

sean, that would be interesting to hear a talk on other interpretations, perhaps including interviews with the most prominent proponents of each of those.

Sean, someone that I think would make an excellent guest (outside of physics) is Bruce Schneier. If you're not familiar with him, just look up some his talks here on RU-vid or read one of his books. His expertise is in cryptography, computer security and the psychology of security (not just computer security but all types of security from the national level to the personal level). He was one of the technical advisors for various media outlets during the Snowden leaks and frequently writes opeds for the NYT. I think a conversation between you two would be excellent. And I am sure you can book him as he is never shy about media or podcast appearances.

Really enjoyed this one also. Would love to hear a great chat between yourself and David Kaplan and also another with Leonard Susskind. This is such an interesting set of podcasts. Fascinating. Oh, how about Steven Weinberg. And Freeman Dyson and and... You ever watched those “Web of Stories” videos on RU-vid?

I would love to hear some good arguments against everett. Sadly I didn't understand a thing David was saying, especially how it relates to everett. Maybe if Sean would be willing to summarize and steelman it and perhaps offer a counterargument?

My favorite podcast ever. I wish I were smart enough to posit a theory that David could then destroy using his philosophical contrarian sledgehammer of logic. A man can dream can't he.(and he can't, and can be both doing an not doing the dreaming till measured)

On the multiverse and probabilities. I really enjoyed the discussion and David Albert's analysis and objections to the "decision theoretic" approach (I am reading David Wallace's "The Emergent Universe"). I feel that this "problem of probabilities" hints at an understanding of the multiverse that misplaces its relation to QM, specifically to the epistemic formulation that constitutes "QM as we use it". I find that this misplacement comes out as astonishing (I mean to myself, of course) in the decision approach, but there are perhaps less blatant hints in other discussions as well (e.g. see the recent P. Tappenden's "Everett's multiverse and the World as Wavefunction" arXiv:1912.06821). The root of the problem I am seeing is that the multiverse is intended under an ontology that does not reflect the multiverse connection to the epistemic formulation of QM. I think that this understanding of the multiverse is in fact inconsistent to this relation. The probability problem seems to me more a symptom than the malady. Let's start by asking why and how we get to the notion of the multiverse. Everett had an amazing intuition, still that intuition was framed by the knowledge available at his time. We live in a different time, and I think that there are reasons today, that lead to the notion of the multiverse, that none had at his disposal when Everett wrote his thesis. I wrote in my other comment on the measurement problem that I deem that decoherence is at the core of the foundations of the interpretation of QM, what decoherence does that places it in this role is briefly written there. To the aim of the present argument, what is important to notice is that decoherence implies its occurrence within entanglement. The very nature (logic nature) of decoherence implies that alternatives are not excluded or selected, instead they are "combed" by the globalizing consistency enforced by interactions and encoded in entanglement. It is this consideration on the nature of decoherence that today shall be the concrete motivation for the notion of the multiverse. But it is the very same decoherence that in our epistemic formulation of QM yields that emergent classical logic that implies both our solely epistemic probabilities and the objective determination that renders legit a realistic intention of our physical experience. This shows that the multiverse is inseparable from probabilities already in its genesis. And this is one of the reasons why I emphasize a difference in our motivation respect to the possible motivations of Everett, we should just not forget from where we got to the multiverse: it stems from decoherence, from our epistemic probabilities, as a way to better understand the structure of QM. But it is also true that this does not completely excuses the problem. The multiverse is not a simple and direct analytical deduction, it is more like a model of the theory, a structure by which we hope to obtain terms and notions that would render the analytical narration of the structure of QM simpler and more intuitive, while reflecting it accurately. For this reason it is a valid question to ask if this model is satisfied by QM, and a way to disprove this is to show that the multiverse is inconsistent with the very probabilities that are its original motivation. I think that what is inconsistent with probabilities is the ontological intention used to narrate the multiverse, that does not corresponds to its origin and relation to decoherence and our probabilities. This results in an "ontological misplacement" consisting in the unawareness of the necessity of employing modal logic, which would instead reflect the multiverse constitutive relation with our epistemic formulation of QM. Modality here means that "being" "existing" can not be expressed without qualification, that it is necessary to specify the "modus essendi" when we predicate existence. The first kind of modality is the one that interests us more: "actuality", this is our way of being, and it applies to our experience and, thanks to QM's decoherence, to its implication of a determination satisfying realism. But the moment You move outside the determination scope, You can no longer talk in terms of actuality. The way decoherence, in our epistemic formulation of QM, provides us with solely epistemic probabilities is such that the fundamental workings of QM in the proximity of our emergent actuality shall be described as "propensity", i.e. as an objective feed to our epistemic probabilities. Or "potency", to use a classical term. But even this two connotations of the modus essendi of QM seem diminutive when they are regarded in the perspective of the multiverse. The only term I can find to describe it, reflecting its relation to us, conscious of how decoherence unfolds alternatives by mere consistency, is omni-potency. I don't use this term lightly, for its grandeur, and with much reluctance for something that may sound somehow religious (and it has nothing to do with that other notion, omnipotence), but I'm led to it simply because I can't find any better term to name what the fundamental logic of QM is about, and because this seems to me to reflect well the relation of the multiverse to us. What all this imports to our problem is that as soon as one realizes that the modus essendi of the multiverse is impossibly different from ours, notwithstanding the fact that ours is emergent still within that but crucially not the other way around, then that same person would never consider the possibility of even abstractly placing himself in the shoes of the multiverse and from that impossible perspective consider his expectations in the form of probabilities to argue the inconsistency of this perspective with ours. A reasonable modal narration of QM immediately disallows this perspective, as the way we can say that that exists has nothing to do with the way we say we exists. But note that the force of this argument apparently based on modality, in fact stems from what the narration is intended to reflect and represent, which is once again the relation of the general structure and logic of QM to our epistemic formulation and its interpretation, with the mediation between them relying on decoherence. It is the choice to follow an ontological narration of our analysis of this structure and logic that leads us to the form of these arguments, but then we have to choose very carefully the way we speak, somehow allegorically, of very formal notions, because one point is clear, that, if our narration is not an accurate representation of the structure of QM, we will be very easily led astray. Modality is a way to help this necessary accuracy, I think, and this is the motivation of its importance here. In conclusion, my advice is to remember that knowledge precedes ontology, thus set Your perspective accordingly and don't forget where You come from. Then, I think there won't be a probability problem for the multiverse.

I wish this kept going for another hour or two.

Can anyone explain how there are correlations between branching preferences? I'm not really getting his explanation. Some math could help. Cheers

I have watched Episodes 1 through 35 and all was well. This episode is different. Even though I have read books on Quantum Reality or various interpretations of the math of quantum physics I was not able to understand this guest's points. Roughly it seemed like he was talking to Sean, knowing what Sean knows about Quantum physics. It didn't seem that David Albert was considering the audience's understanding. That's unfortunate, since Sean's podcasts are not meant to only be understood by Sean. Cheers!

What a treat was to listen to the conversation of these bright minds. Sean, you are a great pair with David, please invite him more.

Sean, please have Niels Bohr on. He seems mighty interesting.

Awesome!

In the many-worlds theory wouldn't the universe be splitting at every nanosecond at every subatomic region. Do they address the question of what causes the universe to split? And how often? It would just seen that every second of our life involves and unfathomable Infinity of subatomic interactions how could there be universes being created at each of these subatomic levels?

18:30 So, is 5 seeing anyone at the moment?

Ref. @ 15:00 ca., when David Albert describes the "measurement problem". I'm trying to synthesize this formulation of the measurement problem as: since determinism fails in QM and indeterminism is "contagious" (by entanglement) at all levels, how do we reconcile QM with our determined experience? Another form of the measurement problem is the question of the legitimacy of the projection rule for observations, if and how its discontinuity reconciles with the continuous linear evolution or QM, and if in general it is really consistent with locality, relativity, causality, etc.. The former is perhaps a wider formulation of measurement problem, and borders the whole interpretation problem. But the two are strictly connected. To see this consider quantum logic (of probabilities), the projection rule is the conditionalization of quantum logic. Conditionalization is very much a requirement for a logic of probabilities intended as expectations. Now, conditionalization is in principle non-problematic IF the probabilities that are conditionalized are solely epistemic, i.e. if their uncertainty is solely due to lack of knowledge. I say in principle because it still has to be consistent with all the rest of our physical theory (which I think turns out to be the case, for the projection rule and QM). The probabilities of QM are probabilities about the results of observations, moreover about determined results according to the nature of our experience (or naive understanding of it). (Note that we are starting from "QM as we use it", which prescribes us to use this naive understanding, deemed "classical" understanding by CI.) That is, we have solely epistemic probabilities IF uncertainty is entirely due to our lack of knowledge about the determination, more explicitly, the implication of solely epistemic probabilities is determination. Essentially, solely epistemic probabilities means a probability logic satisfying the ignorance interpretation of probabilities. So the two formulations of the measurement problem are linked: determination would both correspond to our experience and allow an un-problematic conditionalization. The general problem then stems from the failure of determinism in QM (or, QM does not satisfy determinism): uncertainty is not solely epistemic, it has an objective content in the sense that it is not that we don't know the determined value of the physical quantity, it is that the physical quantity is not determined beyond some level. It is the impossibility of the infinite removal of uncertainty that constitutes the failure of determinism in QM. We know that determinism is satisfied by classical mechanics, and more specifically by probabilities that satisfy classical logic, because we can get to a non probabilistic formulation of the mechanics as the limit of infinite removal of uncertainty. This assure us (analytically!) that classical probability logic satisfies the ignorance interpretation. In this case we are ok: the determined quantities of the theory match our experience and conditionalization is solely epistemic: it does not affect in any way a system if I peep or not. The same criterion fails for QM: the limit of infinite removal of uncertainty does not exist, does not converge within the theory. BUT, even if CM was right, we never experience that limit: all the determinations that we experience have a limit of resolution (we don't distinguish pi from all other real numbers in our observations). Determinism is an infinite, and moreover it is metaphysical. So, we don't actually need that classical logic remains valid to the infinite and metaphysical limit to match our physical experience, we only need that it is valid within a scope, and then we can let it break down when we reach some (hopefully objective) resolution limit. Both formulations of the measurement problem can be solved if QM gave us a scope of determination that matches our physical experience, and within that scope conditionalization would also be solely epistemic and for this reason unproblematic. But determination is not fundamental, i.e. determinism fails, so how can we get to the needed determination if we can't get it directly as a formulation of the mechanics that avoids probabilities, which again would be the determinism that we can't get to? We get the necessary scope of determination by implication from our epistemic and probabilistic formulation of QM, we don't need any more than this to solve the problem. And the way we get this implication is already sketched above: determination is implied by the ignorance interpretation of probabilities, which in turn is analytically implied by classical logic. If quantum logic has a feature by which, in our epistemic formulation of QM, classical logic is emergent (still within quantum logic), we have the implied scope of determination that is all we need to solve the two versions of the measurement problem. It has it, and it's decoherence. I think this is all the reasoning required to give the foundations of the interpretation of QM. The very non trivial rest (a modal logic narration, the implied realism, the multiverse "ontology", how the orthodox formulation and even the quantum-classic complementarity of CI are both justified as practices and revolutionized in their fundamental meaning, possible implications for an emergent space-time extension, ....) is the analysis of the consequences of this interpretation.

Love it! REAL Science! How does one eventually prove a theory to be correct? ...Try proving yourself wrong!

The many minds of david

I want more!!!!

Looks like Wheeler gave Everett the old "paradigm shaft," just imagine if he had supported him to the max, who knows what further contributions Everett might have made in a free form academic environment?

What are the properties of a measuring device?

Excuse my ignorance 14 minutes in David Albert says he was reading (sounds like Hume) before he came to the measurement problem. Can someone fill me in?

To sum up what I've learned from this: There is no point for the fact of the matter.

Allow me to offer an idea about “measuring” problem of electrons. Here it is: While a coin is tossing in the air, is it H or T? Well as the coin is in the air, it is both! The bias in the coin determines the probability of H or T. An unbiased coin is 50% H and 50% T. Therefore in the slit test, as we shoot electrons on to the screen through the slit, we are sending all the probable versions by wavelike thing which is reflected on the screen. QED!

I don't understand Albert's explanation at 1:11:00

At third listening i understood finally why there is a probability/Born rule problem in Everett and why Everett's theory is fully deterministic. Then my head nearly exploded when i started thinking about the meaning of the linear coefficients in wave functions in Everett. My god! These guys are great!

I've listened to some of Sean's talks on many worlds and i look forward to reading his book on it. However, i remain unconvinced. My memory is hazy of the details (something about the wavefunction of the Universe) but I came away from it with the sense that every other possible world is as undefined as the state of the particle is prior to measurement. Furthermore, i can't reconcile many worlds with the ultimate fate of the Universe, something i share Sean's position on. Given that all possible worlds share the same fate (accelerated expansion and heat death) can a meaningful distiction even be made at this scale?

Defining and discussion the actual problems is as important (if not more) than the possible solutions. What I gather from this discourse though is that one cannot experience a difference between branching and probabilistic theory; by all appearances the single branch you experience would feel the same as having been chancy whether or not the other branches have a physical representation somewhere. We can put something back into a superposition in an experiment (or in a quantum computer), but then there must be some universes where we didn't do this; can the branches come back together? I think the cases where they can are by definition indistinguishable by experiment due to the nature of superposition.

Third time listening to this one

What is meant by “non-branching cases” and “branching cases”? I know that in the Everett analysis of quantum mechanics the wave function “branches”, but what then is a “case where the world is not going to branch”? What does that mean?

"Collapse" of the wave function? The math of QM seems a bit firmer than many of our concepts. Perhaps we could look from its point of view and consider it the wave function becoming briefly hyper dimensional. So in effect we may not be measuring its position but establishing it and thus we are a macro conglomeration of many worlds.

Do not listen to this while driving. It’s not boring but it is soothing. It’s like being a kid and hearing adults talk in the other room. You are not the audience here, you’re eavesdropping on two really smart guys talking. My guess is they are pretty good friends.

I didn't catch the name of the intuitive physicist Albert mentions near the beginning?

By the time David gets to his argument he completely looses me. What is the difference between a branching and a non branching future? Is he just talking about making a decision in a universe where many worlds is correct vs one that it isn't? If so, I don't get what that has to do with whether many worlds is correct.

Superb Content ! as usual. DA is a pretty damn BIG thinker thats for sure ! imo the rather simple concept of "Rendering"(as per ANY flavor Digital Physics/VR model) is the ONLY "sensible"(NOT that it "has to" or should be) interp as of yet. Though it really doesn't "say" any more than the Cope as is, except that one can easily wrap their head around the "why" of the matter. "Many worlds" was/is an extremely "out of the box" idea, especially at the time. But regardless of the fact that an infinite # of imaginary universes surely has poor Occam rolling over in his razor grave, Dave's argument is a much more significant reason(s) to be extremely skeptical of the notion. But at least they(these imaginary universes) would be "physical", besides just being entirely & permanently non-observable/un-testable/un-falsifiable. Its funny af that such mostly otherwise smart people still favor it. VR can "do" ALL of the same things + MUCH more & "do it" with zero infinites.

To "measure" a cosmological "probability" would inherently include a length or amount of space and time... No? On the one side of the "equation"? If you exclude the "infinity" of space and time... The "geometry" or gravity of it... Then perhaps that's why "infinity" is spat back out ? Imagine "measuring" the very first particle in the universe. How would you measure it? What 'scale' would you use? What would you "relate" the particle to?

I don’t quite understand the philosophical concern with the concept of superposition: an electron could be in both states at once to be determined only at time and action of measurement. That philosophically speaking so to speak is just saying the future exists only as “potentials” up until the time you take an action, at which point that potential has turned into a realized state. You now have the information and are no longer taking a chance-whether or not the electron is there! (I loved the bit about the 50-50 probability as the portal to thermodynamics of heat flow: the exact experience I had in the my first (and the last) statistical mechanics course and the feeling I had of having missed a whole prerequisite course prior to this one.)

I know Sean is not a fan of many woo-woo sounding interpretations of quantum mechanics... anyone know what he thinks of Anil Ananthaswamy's 'Through Two Doors at Once' book?

Could it be that the quantum world must be probabilistic and not predictable because no information can be given to the atom in advance. This probabilistic quality is what allows the atomic scales to always instantly acquire the state needed to produce the reality required of it..? Therefore an atom can be "a" and "b" at the same time simply means that the atom may need to be "a" or "b" at any given time depending on what reality requires it to be?

EXCELLENT interview . . Here's my opinion : like Einsteins "Blunder' of adding the cosmological constant to TWEAK his theory, the Copenhagen interpretation seeks to UNNECESSARILY modify what the math would otherwise suggest, the many worlds Theory.. for that reason ALONE I agree with Sean Carroll..

Thought it was David Deutsch for a second there, got a bit excited. But this David's cool too, though. :)

I had no idea that physics was such a blood sport!

should keep the new time format

Fascinating but we’re do you stand ?

I like David Albert his good

Fascinating. I have to read Becker's book and any others that delve into the historical interplay with Bohr, Wheeler, Everett, McCarthyism, the Cold War and beyond. Like John Nash's life, Everett's seems made for a movie. Sad ending to his many whirls life and I have got to believe the negative atmosphere relating to his theories was harmful.

Albert is always an interesting speaker I'm glad he came on. They touched on Hugh Everett this BBC documentary focuses on his son but, it gives you a great insight into his father as well vimeo.com/58603054

"whatever it means" or "what everett means" ?

big fan of both of these people and I really think it shows a certain amount of maturity you dont always see in these types of arguments that it was very civil.Alot of times when you hear these discussions theres alot of sarcasm in the conversation when the people involved dont agree.that being said I fall on alberts side of this.It may seem like one of the more silly arguments on its face but if you look at history any "centric" i.e. anthro geo centric models have always been wrong this in of itself I admit is noy a good argument but (and I could be wrong here) it does not seem to explain why we are the universe from which these others branch and to me that is one of the few areas in the field of physics where a why question almost demands a plausible answer. again I could be making an invalid argument so if anyone reads this and can tell me why i am wrong I would welcome a response