Talk:Hugh Everett III

How the Hell??
Can a bio have 1 stinking referrence?? This ENTIRE article should be NUKED and started from scratch...Paging Michael D. Wolok!! --Tom 21:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

That's not a very constructive attitude; why not add the missing references? I am going to revert your changes since the one reference provided does support the deleted text. BTW I'll add some more references as well :-) --Michael C Price 22:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I changed the date for the manuscript and the title of it. It was written in 1955, since it refers to Einstein as still alive. And indeed it wasn´t a thesis, but a manuscript that was (very) modified and later became a thesis. I'm finishing my M.A. and soon will post the reference for those.

I will begin making some minor changes about incorrects historical references. I, together with my advisors, wrote some articles concerning his interpretation, including my master thesis (in portuguese. I'll add it in the references, if it's allowed in others languages), and an article which will be published on Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. As soons as its published, I'll also add the reference in here.--Fabiofreitas (talk) 00:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I have made some minor changes, being the most importants: Niels Bohr was not considered THE father of quantum mechanics, but one of its founding fathers, therefore I changed the text so it could keep it's meaning while being correct. I also changed that Everett believed in quantum immortality. There's no evidence of this, not written not spoken. Somes supporters of his interpretation today, like Deustch and Tegmark, claim that it would be possible some kind of quantum immortality, but such ideas only appeared after Everett's death. Any questions outside the scope of this article, please send me a message.--Fabiofreitas (talk) 00:27, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Ps. If the reference is not in the style of Wikipedia, please do correct it, since I don't know how.
 * There is evidence that Everett believed in quantum immortality and a reference will be supplied supporting this. --Michael C. Price talk 08:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Dear Price, now I'm doing my Ph.D. studies in history of Physics. Right now, I'm at Max Planck Institute for History of Science, in Berlin, Germany, preparing my talk to HQ2 conference on history of Quantum Mechanics (http://web.science.uu.nl/HQ2/program.htm). I've been working with Everett's writings since 2004 and I can say I've ready everything he has ever written on QM I can certainly, with no doubt, say that he has NEVER written a single word about it. You might say that this is a consequence of his interpretation, but it's just MISLEADING to say that HE himself believed in quantum immortality. I do understand that you have much more experience in Wikipedia than I do (I'm just a begginer in this), but unless you do provide some evidence that he indeed believed in Quantum Immortality, you should redo the changes that I've made. --Fabiofreitas (talk) 12:36, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Update: I just read the reference you gave on the article. This cannot be taken as a historical evidence. It's a recollection of a third person, written 19 years after the death of Everett. As I have argued before, the idea itself of quantum imortality didn't even existed back in the 70's. I'm leaving the decision upon you, but as a historian, this evidence wouldn't fit in any scientific article, therefore I believe that although the language of wikipedia should be for a broader audience, we should not, by any means, loosen the requisites of rigor in writing here. If it's not suitable, as evidence, in a scientific paper, then it should not also be in here. --Fabiofreitas (talk) 12:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that Everett probably wrote nothing about quantum immortality. And it's also true that this is a recollection after the event by a work colleague (Keith Lynch) -- but so are many other sayings attributed to scientists (e.g. Schrodinger's distaste for quantum jumps is attributed to him from Heisenberg years later, but people accept that as a reliable source).  But Keith Lynch was also a physicist (perhaps the only one that Everett discussed MWI with after Princeton, apart from DeWitt) who would have understood the concepts at the time - which makes him a reliable witness, in my opinion, but I can understand that others can reasonably take a different view.  I consider quite likely that Everett did think about quantum immortality even before the term was coined; in my opinion it is quite an obvious concept -- in fact I'd be amazed if the idea hadn't occurred to Everett in the 23+ years after 1957 available to him before his death.
 * I've just read the link to your talk -- very interesting. I'd never heard of Everett's involvement in the 1962 Xavier conference.  Looks like some new material is entering the public domain; excellent! --Michael C. Price talk 13:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

the section of the article where it says that everett believed in quantum immortality, however he never admitted it is not clear to me. How can we say that he believed in it if he never admitted it? Unfortunately, I do not feel I know enough about the subject to change it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.100.249.26 (talk) 16:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Wealth
The intro strikes me as problematic... We're using an unpublished book? That violates at least 2 guidelines: WP:V and WP:SNOW, and likely others. Also, even if we accept that Everett died in penury, that doesn't seem to contradict the idea that he made millions off his math acumen. It's perfectly possible to become a multimillionaire and die poor (eg. the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo). --129.49.7.125 (talk) 18:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * About to be published, I believe. But I agree with your point, that he might have made million(s) and then lost it.--Michael C. Price talk 00:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Education
the description of his education is unclear. it describes him defending his dissertation, but never mentions princeton conferring the doctorate. this is compounded by the image of the (later) cerificate, on which he is listed as 'mr.' hugh everett. did he get the ph.d.? Toyokuni3 (talk) 17:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * sorry, i see it now in the second paragraph. perhaps that should be moved to where it fits chronologically?Toyokuni3 (talk) 17:06, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's difficult to decide what's best -- Everett switched back and forth for a few years between academia and the military. The article tries to talk about these two activities separately; perhaps it should just describe everything chronologically. --Michael C. Price talk 19:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Info in Later Recognition possibly not accurate
Claims denoted with "citation required" in the second paragraph of this section contain weasel words and are not verifiable in the references given at the end of paragraph. Specifically: it is not clear from the cited references that the talk was quite well received and who the number of physicists in the audience were who were influenced (and how?) by this talk. Similarly, David Deutsch was a graduate student at the time and not yet a physicist at the time. --Methylene Blue 14:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Methylene Blue (talk • contribs)
 * I guess that depends on whether a grad student can be a physicist. I would have thought so, since they can and do publish papers.  But the text is explicit that Deutsch was a grad student at the time.
 * Re "well received" Everett is recorded as being in high spirits after the talk (this is currently unreferenced, I'll grant you).
 * I believe, from a photograph I saw but which I can't now locate, that Paul C W Davies attended the talk, but I have no reference for this. --Michael C. Price talk 10:18, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Quantum Immortality
It seems irrelevant and irreverent to mention that Everett believed in quantum immortality in the same sentence as his death. There is no evidence that he believed that he would live forever in this universe, just in at least one, so it is a belief related to his physics theories, not relevant to his death "in this universe". Lucifer-oxy (talk) 03:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No irreverence intended by association. It just seemed a natural segue.--Michael C. Price talk 10:07, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It is relevant if you understand Quantum Immortality. From his perspective he would have never died, because he would only experience those versions of himself that continue to live. Clearly, we are all versions where we know about his death. --Akvadrako (talk) 10:22, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Obesity, chain-smoking and drinking
“Everett's obesity, constant chain-smoking and heavy drinking almost certainly contributed to [his untimely death].” — from the current article. This is lacking citations; I googled up his photographs, and found not a single one were he would look obese. I am adding a citation request; please feel free to remove if unappropriate. — Fregimus (talk) 11:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Have a look at Everett on wikiquotes, his son describes him as such. (I agree the photos don't really make him look so bad.) --Michael C. Price talk 19:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Michael, for locating the citation. Fregimus (talk) 00:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

make page: Everettian cosmogony = many-worlds cosmogony
We factually know from particle accelerators that wave functions do not collapse instantaneously but "boil their statistics" for few fractions of a second. The Big Bang was the pointwise superluminal expansion of the universe. Nowadays the universe still expands superluminally but not in an absolute = pointwise manner but in a relativistic manner when we compare different distant points in space. The Big Bang was so extreme during inflation (or pre-inflation; make page: the state before the Big Bang - liquid more extreme than quark-gluon plasma according to MIT theorists) that many interactions were boiling and '''overlapping before their Everettian separation into many worlds/different universes).

Thus according to Everettian cosmogony (many-words cosmogony), the alternative worlds had the time to interact, because they didn't collapse but their statistical pre-collapse boiling overlapped.

What happened then? The answer is NOT that these different worlds interacted as separate units in an equation. That is a mistake. We should study how light behaves when it enters inside a different medium or how Bose–Einstein condensates behave. The overall protocosmic condensate is just that; a condensate and not merely separated wave functions which interact.

for more ask Caltech physicists — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4106:402:FDC4:D3FE:1FCB:17F5 (talk) 19:57, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * That approach answers also the overall defaulting of spacetime which led to the homogeneity and isotropy of spacetime/the universe.

create page or paragraph in the many worlds article: Everettverse: multiverse of alternative wavefunctional evolutions
It's not the common multiverse.

Everettverse = many-worlds interpretation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4117:34E9:401A:226F:47D1:50B8 (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

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RSI/MWI are the same
The latest changes make it sound a like MWI and RSI are different interpretations. They are not. MWI is merely a popularised version of RSI. Content the same. And RSI was Wheeler's imposed moniker, not Everett's choice. cheers, Michael C. Price talk 19:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Do you have a reference for your claim? Johnjbarton (talk) 22:28, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Which claim? DeWitt's MWI was merely a name change, as anyone who understands QM can easily verify, and "Correlation interpretation" is in the document archives .  cheers, Michael C. Price talk 07:30, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Your claim that RSI and MWI are the same. Wikipedia standard is not "as anyone who understands QM can easily verify", see WP:VERIFY. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Correctly describing the theory Everett's model opposes.
I reapplied this reverted change: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hugh_Everett_III&oldid=prev&diff=1176001365

I added a reference as well.

The edit summary on the revert was "Revert. Need to talk all these change out. MWI's is not Dewitt's interpretation as opposed to Everett's. A false dichotomy." However the change was unrelated to MWI or Dewitt and no Talk topic was raised.

The change concerns the model that Everett's work was set in opposition to. Everett's publication and his thesis point to von Neumann's model. It was von neumann's model that formalized the collapse postulate. Collapse is not even part of Copenhagen and Bohr never talks about it. See for example https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/ It was an idea the Heisenberg proposed and von Neumann is the best "interpretation" level thing to reference. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:20, 18 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I have removed this philosophical debate from the lead. It probably should go in the Copenhagen / von Neumann articles.  cheers, Michael C. Price talk 07:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Compared to the current version, it was clearer in Johnjbarton's version what the controversy that led Everett to leave academia was. However, I agree that the term Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation is probably too technical for the lede, and it should be expressed in some other way. But unfortunately I have no suggestion which word to use, if Copenhagen is not correct. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 08:32, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The statements about leaving academia are the same in both versions.. aren't they? cheers, Michael C. Price talk 08:57, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the preceding paragraph which sets context is not. The words "In contrast" already imply some controversy, although it might be made even more explicit for the benefit of the reader, e.g. by mentioning that the reception was not very positive. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 09:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Everett left academia before his thesis publication, so any discontent must be due to negative feed back during his thesis construction. Probably he found Wheeler a very difficult supervisor, to judge from the Heresy paper.  cheers, Michael C. Price talk 11:39, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Then why did you restore this text? The plural implies that it was not only Wheeler. Besides, that part had been corrected earlier to comply with the source. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 12:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe that text was supported by a reference to Byrne, so I restored it. cheers, Michael C. Price talk 13:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * "Everett left academia before his thesis publication, so any discontent must be due to negative feed back during his thesis construction." This claim is original research, not backup by sources. The sources say he was concerned about his draft deferment and took the Pentagon research job in response. ref "Heresy" pg 112 "We know from a letter of Wheeler’s that, for administrative reasons related to military service, Everett wished to remain registered at Princeton University at least until 1956.194 In the course of 1956, as we have seen, he moved to the Pentagon, where he was no longer in danger of being drafted, but probably had little time to devote to the thesis.195". The review cites two primary sources. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Along the same lines I removed collapse and quantum superposition in the lede in favor of a short quote from Everett that 1) mentions the most critical aspect of this thesis, the pure wave equation and 2) mentions the observers to give the flavor of impact of the universal wavefunction idea. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Removing WP:Original research in lede regarding "equally real"
@Michael C Price reverted my edit, using the summary "equally real".

My text was: Everett's theory assumes "the general validity of pure wave mechanics...for all physical systems, including observers" and references Everett's quote to his long thesis.

That text was reverted this original research version: Everett's theory has no wavefunction collapse and holds that all the possibilities in a quantum superposition are equally real.

There is no reference for either of these claims. The second one is disputed, see 5.1. A unitary model of the world page 107 in the "Heresy" reference. Discussing other references in the body of the article that support equally real together with the discussion in Heresy would be Neutral point of view, but this claim should not be in the lede because it is disputed. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Oh, and the revert version omitted the most critical aspect of his work, its reliance on pure wave mechanics.
 * I undid the revert. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Once again, the lede is not the place for pushing your own view of MWI. Everyone else agrees that objectively real or equally real reflects what MWI says.  cheers, Michael C. Price talk 16:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The objective reality is not a notable issue for Hugh Everett's biography. It's important to you and MWI, but it played no significant role in Everett's life story.
 * If everyone agrees on what Everett said in his writings about his theory, then you should have no difficulty in providing a references that says so. I have provided a reference that says he did not mean this. The lede is not the place for exploring various conflicting reports on his philosophy. It's an ok topic for the article if presented neutrally.
 * Claims that MWI requires "objectively real" are a different thing because not everyone agrees on what MWI includes. It seems, as you say, that the editors on the MWI page think it includes the philosophy of ontological realism. But Everett takes explicit effort to avoid saying that, see his Appendix II of his thesis. (The lede for MWI reference Everett which is why I disputed the realism claim on the Talk MWI page.) Some sources mention dinner time conversations where Everett said things related to this idea. Those conversation snippets are very short and can be included in the body of the article if you think it really important. But the sources are clearly divided on this subject and as this controversy is not at all a vital aspect of the biography of Hugh Everett it does not belong in the lede. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The sources are not divided - you just don't have a good grasp of, or familiarity with, the theory (as others have commented) to see what is universally accepted and what is disputed cheers, Michael C. Price talk 16:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that by reading the references in the MWI article I was mislead about the MWI as viewed by other editors (which of course was not evident in the article). That issue is not relevant here on the biographical page for Hugh Everett. The only issues here are about Everett.
 * My familiarity is not relevant to the content of the article. The only issues is the content and its references.
 * There is no better source for Everett's view on Everett's thesis than Everett's dissertation. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * No, inappropriate direct quotes obscure MWI. cheers, Michael C. Price talk 17:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * This article is about Hugh Everett III, not MWI. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Too much being deleted
e.g. daughter's suicide note which mentions many worlds. This is not trivia. Please restore. Same with Keith Lynch's recollections. cheers, Michael C. Price talk 13:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, we only have Keith Lynch's description of Everett's views on Quantum suicide and immortality, which is disputed by Byrne. Everett himself never wrote anything about the topic. Most likely he had a more nuanced view than what this statement that was previously in the article conveys: Everett believed in quantum immortality. We don't actually know what he believed, so we shouldn't write anything on the topic.
 * I still feel that the suicide note only serves to satisfy our morbid curiosity, it does not actually tell anything about the subject of this article. There is some link between her death and her father, but again we do not know the exact circumstances. Family life could be expanded a bit (e.g. when were the children born?), but one should be careful here, there are living people involved.
 * The rest of the removals were mostly copyediting.
 * I think the article should also tell a bit more about his career in Pentagon and in the optimization business. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 15:13, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * No, we should report Everett's views as Keith Lynch says.... As for the suicide note, it casts a light on Everett family relations - e.g. Liz obviously knew more about her father's work than Mark did.  cheers, Michael C. Price talk 15:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with the deletions. To me the suicide note speaks more to the daughter's sadness in being ignored by her father in life. There is no way to know whose opinion makes the most sense for a suicide note. The refs directly speak about his lack of interaction with his children so we can include that if it is notable. Unfortunately workaholic parents are not notable individually IMO.
 * Also agree on the Pentagon career. It's clear Everett enjoyed and excelled in that position but too much of the current article is about his work in as a PhD. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:51, 20 September 2023 (UTC)