Alien visitation and negative universals

Fudbucker said:
If YOU want to move the needle towards skepticism or belief about alien visitation, YOU must provide argumentation/evidence.
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You appear to be using a strange definition of the word "skepticism" here. Mine is that we should examine the evidence and form a provisional working conclusion that is then open to modification in the light of further evidence. Your demand that anyone wanting to employ this process should offer evidence in its favour seems, at best, recursive.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
You appear to be using a strange definition of the word "skepticism" here. Mine is that we should examine the evidence and form a provisional working conclusion that is then open to modification in the light of further evidence. Your demand that anyone wanting to employ this process should offer evidence in its favour seems, at best, recursive.

Dave
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Great. So what evidence do we have about aliens? I look forward to hearing the answer.
 
Fudbucker said:
Great. So what evidence do we have about aliens? I look forward to hearing the answer.
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Lots of people have looked for evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but no credible evidence has yet been found. A reasonable provisional working conclusion is that we can act on the basis that none have yet visited Earth, subject to revision should any credible evidence come to light.

You may now misrepresent the above for purposes of ridicule, but be aware that everyone knows that's what you're doing.

Dave
 
Roboramma said:
... after 10,000 years the goats will be there. If we have a solution to long term space travel that uses similar principles to what allows life to continue to work over the course of millions of years, I don't care so much about what we call that solution, as long as it can get to that other star system and do what we want it to do.
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The goat-based machine does require a large and uninterrupted supply of solar power to run for 10,000 years. It won't restart if the power supply is removed for more than a few days.

Hypothetically a spacecraft could reactivate after a million inert years, when it got close enough to a star to power up. But there would be no question of its correcting its course or attitude during those million years, nor even of running a clock to know what year it awoke in, unless perhaps it was possible to extract enough energy from starlight but then those big solar panels would be awfully vulnerable to dust impacts.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Lots of people have looked for evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but no credible evidence has yet been found. A reasonable provisional working conclusion is that we can act on the basis that none have yet visited Earth, subject to revision should any credible evidence come to light.

You may now misrepresent the above for purposes of ridicule, but be aware that everyone knows that's what you're doing.

Dave
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I don't need to misrepresent it. It's wrong. The bolded is where you go off the rails.
 
Dave Rogers said:
What provisional working conclusion would you draw, then, and how would you choose to act?

Dave
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There is no "provisional working conclusion" to be drawn because there is no evidence, for or against.

I'm going to act like it's possible some alien probe, in the last four billion years, has visited the planet. Which is to say, it won't affect my actions in any way.
 
Fudbucker said:
There is no "provisional working conclusion" to be drawn because there is no evidence, for or against.

I'm going to act like it's possible some alien probe, in the last four billion years, has visited the planet. Which is to say, it won't affect my actions in any way.
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That's the definition. Without evidence to the contrary, you act according to the facts and evidence you have. "Provisional" meaning tamporary-"working" of use- "conclusion" the best I can do.
 
Fudbucker said:
I'm going to act like it's possible some alien probe, in the last four billion years, has visited the planet. Which is to say, it won't affect my actions in any way.
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That's as meaningless as me saying that the leprechaun from the "Lucky Charms" cereal commercials might exist, BUT- we don't know!

So I'm going to manage my finances without thinking of a pot of gold.
 
Roboramma said:
I don't see how it's not a machine in the sense being used here. Perhaps you could explain that important distinction.

ETA Let me put it this way. Let's say we've got an island and someone comes up with a challege: I want to be able to go to this island 10,000 years from now and get some milk. So some people try to meet that challenge and try to concoct machines to do the job. They come up with a chemical process that produces milk, and ingenious solutions to reduce the wear and tear on the machine, but no one can get the thing to actually be resilient enough to last for 10,000 years. Some people think of putting it in some sort of stasis from which it will be brought online by a clock, or some sort of astronomical event, but again 10,000 years is just too long, and they can't get it to work with any real confidence that it will last. I decide to use the high technology that's already been developed called life, which makes use of self-repair, and redundancy, which has a process that builds new machines such that poorly built or worn out ones can be destroyed without worrying about the whole completely breaking down. It may still end up broken by the end of 10,000 years (maybe all my goats die in a flood or famine, maybe some preditor gets loose on the island and wipes them out, or climactic conditions change and they can no longer survive in this changed habitat), but there's some relatively high probability that 10,000 years from now you will be able to go to this island and, with some effort, get yourself some milk.

Now you can object and say "that's not a machine", and maybe even by some definition you have a point. But it doesn't change that fact that after 10,000 years the goats will be there. If we have a solution to long term space travel that uses similar principles to what allows life to continue to work over the course of millions of years, I don't care so much about what we call that solution, as long as it can get to that other star system and do what we want it to do.
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You return to find recognizably goat-like creatures, but their milk is toxic, or is produced in minuscule amounts of no use to you, or is no longer produced at all. Because your resilient redundant adaptive self-replicating machines have evolved, as resilient adaptive self-replicating machines are wont do do.

That's assuming the goat population has survived, because the island's environment has remained benign to them the entire time.

But what if you're concerned that the island might be subject to tsunami or storm surge or volcanic eruption or extreme climate change or perhaps some threat you didn't even know about, during those 10,000 years?

You could choose machines that are by nature even more adaptive and resilient (a type of insect or bacteria instead of goat, perhaps), or choose machines intelligent enough to anticipate and respond to threats with technology of their own. But neither of those measures make your nice celebratory glass of milk more likely 10,000 years from now. In the first case, they're even more likely to evolve away from expending energy producing a substance they themselves don't need. In the second case, they're likely to point weapons at you and tell you to **** off when you come to collect "your" milk.

Now, if all you want to do is get some kind of functioning "machinery" to another star system a long time in the future, those issues won't stand in your way. But if you want that machinery to do something in particular, something you want or plan for it to do, when it gets there, such as to provide milk upon request, or resuscitate deep-frozen colonists, or terraform a planet to your own liking, or send back data, or develop new interstellar colony missions of its own, that kind of "machine" might not serve you so well.
 
Fudbucker said:
I'm going to act like it's possible some alien probe, in the last four billion years, has visited the planet.
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So am I. When did I say otherwise?

Fudbucker said:
Which is to say, it won't affect my actions in any way.
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Me too. In which case, your attempt at disagreeing me is a complete waste of time.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
So am I. When did I say otherwise?



Me too. In which case, your attempt at disagreeing me is a complete waste of time.

Dave
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If you're claiming alien visitation of Earth (either directly/indirectly) sometime in its history is a 50/50 proposition, we don't have a disagreement. Are you claiming that?
 
Not know anything about a hypothesis does not make it reasonable to assign it a 50% chance of happening (or having happened).

All sorts of nonsense and contradictions can flow from such assignation of meaningless probabilities.
 
JesseCuster said:
Not know anything about a hypothesis does not make it reasonable to assign it a 50% chance of happening (or having happened).

All sorts of nonsense and contradictions can flow from such assignation of meaningless probabilities.
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That's exactly what it means.
 
Fudbucker said:
JesseCuster said:
Not know anything about a hypothesis does not make it reasonable to assign it a 50% chance of happening (or having happened).

All sorts of nonsense and contradictions can flow from such assignation of meaningless probabilities.
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That's exactly what it means.
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How can you say that with a straight face?

I really find it very hard to believe you really think this, I just cannot imagine the mental gymnastics required to have that as a real belief.

What distinguishes your 50/50 for UFO's from your dismissal of all the things you think are unlikely. Do you think Unicorns have a 50/50 chance?

Is the existence of god a 50/50?

These are sincere questions.
 
Fudbucker said:
I would be interested in seeing a Bayesian analysis of how you came to that conclusion. I would be particularly interested in your values of Pr(E) and Pr(E/H).
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Bayesian analysis is not appropriate to that context, which you would know if you understood the first thing about it.
 
Fudbucker said:
I would be interested in seeing a Bayesian analysis of how you came to that conclusion. I would be particularly interested in your values of Pr(E) and Pr(E/H).
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OK, here's my Bayesian analysis. The prior probability of alien visitation is unknown. The conditional probability that no evidence would be found if aliens had visited is unknown. The conditional probability that evidence would be found had aliens visited is unknown. The probability that aliens have visited, given that no evidence is available, is therefore unknown and cannot be calculated. Any assertion that its probability can be known, based on the fact that none of the required information is available, is therefore idiotic.

The assertion that a probability must be assessed at 50% when nothing is known is the sort of assertion I'd expect from a half-witted high school dropout who's vaguely heard of probability but is too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia, or a charlatan who wants to manufacture spurious evidence for an otherwise unsupported belief. I have no more time for either.

Dave
 
Fudbucker said:
That's exactly what it means.
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No, it doesn't mean that at all.

Is the answer to all of the following questions 50% Fudbucker? If not, why not, and what is the answer to these questions?

What are the chances that aliens have visited the solar system?
What are the chances that aliens have visited Earth?
What are the chances that aliens have visited the Earth in person?
What are the chances that aliens have visited the Earth via an unmanned probe?
What are the chances that aliens have visited Mars?
What are the chances that aliens put an unmanned probe into orbit around the Moon?
What are the chances that aliens put an unmanned probe into orbit around the Moon, whose orbit has since decayed and the probe has since crashed into the mon?
What are the chances that aliens put an unmanned probe into orbit around the Moon which is still in orbit around the moon?

Logic would dictate that the more specific the question, the lower the odds obviously should be, but you would just insert '50%' as the answer into any of these question.

Or if you wouldn't, what is it about the vague question about visiting earth that warrants a 50% answer and questions about more specific types of alien visitation warrant odds of less than 50%?

Wouldn't that mean that the odds of have visited anywhere in the solar system are greater than 50%?

No, the 50% answer is entirely meaningless, and leads to glaring contradictions and mathematical nonsense if you lazily apply it across the board to any question about hypothetical alien visitation to earth (or the solar system or whatever), just because you don't know enough to give any sort of meaningful answer.
 
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Dave Rogers said:
OK, here's my Bayesian analysis. The prior probability of alien visitation is unknown. The conditional probability that no evidence would be found if aliens had visited is unknown. The conditional probability that evidence would be found had aliens visited is unknown. The probability that aliens have visited, given that no evidence is available, is therefore unknown and cannot be calculated. Any assertion that its probability can be known, based on the fact that none of the required information is available, is therefore idiotic.
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Per the bolded, you can imagine my surprise that you claimed a 50/50 chance of alien visitation in Earth's history is "idiotic". That would, of course, require you to do a probabilistic calculation and provide evidence why it's idiotic, but you seem to be agreeing with me that such evidence is missing.


The assertion that a probability must be assessed at 50% when nothing is known is the sort of assertion I'd expect from a half-witted high school dropout who's vaguely heard of probability but is too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia, or a charlatan who wants to manufacture spurious evidence for an otherwise unsupported belief. I have no more time for either.

Dave
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Dave, what are the odds that a fleem is grue?
 
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Fudbucker said:
Per the bolded, you can imagine my surprise that you claimed a 50/50 chance of alien visitation in Earth's history is "idiotic". That would, of course, require you to do a probabilistic calculation and provide evidence why it's idiotic, but you seem to be agreeing with me that such evidence is missing.
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Dismissing an answer to a question as idiotic does not require being able to accurately answer the question.

It's the fact that no evidence is available that allows to dismiss the 50/50 answer as idiotic. You lack the evidence necessary (in fact, you lack any evidence at all) to make any sort of meaningful calculation as to the answer to the question.

You seem to think that 50% is some sort of meaningful default answer to any question involving probabilities, when you don't know anything to tell you the actual odds.
 
Let us say that I find a discarded and battered cardboard box on the street: Are you saying that there is a 50% chance that if I open it, I'll find a winning lottery ticket making me a billionaire?
 
Fudbucker said:
Per the bolded, you can imagine my surprise that you claimed a 50/50 chance of alien visitation in Earth's history is "idiotic". That would, of course, require you to do a probabilistic calculation and provide evidence why it's idiotic, but you seem to be agreeing with me that such evidence is missing.




Dave, what are the odds that a fleem is grue?
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Ok, this thread has now officially become a Monty Python skit.
 
Fudbucker said:
Per the bolded, you can imagine my surprise that you claimed a 50/50 chance of alien visitation in Earth's history is "idiotic".
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I would expect an idiot to be surprised at being told their idiotic calculation was idiotic, but as I said I'm not sure whether that applies here. But I think you're exploring new realms of comedic performance art by saying that, in the absence of any data to answer a question, it's necessary to carry out a full Bayesian probability analysis in order to justify the answer "We don't know," whereas pulling a precise value of P=0.5 from your nether orifice requires no justification whatsoever.

But, hey, I may be misjudging you. Denoting alien visitation as V and the discovery of evidence of alien visitation as D, what values of P(D|V), P(V) and P(E) did you insert into Bayes' Theorem to arrive at your result of P(V|~D) = 0.5, and what was your source for these values?

Fudbucker said:
Dave, what are the odds that a fleem is grue?
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The irony is that you think that illustrates your point, when in fact it illustrates mine. You don't even understand your own statements.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
I would expect an idiot to be surprised at being told their idiotic calculation was idiotic, but as I said I'm not sure whether that applies here. But I think you're exploring new realms of comedic performance art by saying that, in the absence of any data to answer a question, it's necessary to carry out a full Bayesian probability analysis in order to justify the answer "We don't know," whereas pulling a precise value of P=0.5 from your nether orifice requires no justification whatsoever.

But, hey, I may be misjudging you. Denoting alien visitation as V and the discovery of evidence of alien visitation as D, what values of P(D|V), P(V) and P(E) did you insert into Bayes' Theorem to arrive at your result of P(V|~D) = 0.5, and what was your source for these values?
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Getting a little personal, aren't you? In any case, you realize you have too many letters there, right? :o

Anyway, barring some background knowledge about aliens (that we obviously don't have in this case), Pr(H) is .5 and will remain at .5 until Pr(E) can be determined, which it can't because there is no evidence, either way. So Pr(H) remains at .5.

I'll walk you through a Bayesian Calculus using SETI's failure to detect anything so far as evidence.

Pr(H)= aliens exist
PR(E)= Seti's failure to detect anything (although there have been a couple of interesting signals, but we won't concern ourselves with those. We'll assume SETI has been a complete and total failure).

We'll start Pr(H) at .5. Maybe there are aliens, maybe not.

Pr(E/H) is the probability that we would fail in our attempts to detect aliens given that they exist. It is not very surprising that SETI hasn't uncovered anything. We're new to searching, and there are a whole lot of shaky assumptions that go into SETI. So even if aliens exist, our detection of them is not at all guaranteed. But the lack of waves of colonization, lack of self-replication probes, and lack of someone beaming us a message is a little surprising. So Call Pr(E/H) .47.

Pr(E) is .5. We know it's failed, but counterfactually, what did we expect SETI to discover when it first got going? It could have gone either way. Maybe it could have found something, maybe not. We wouldn't have wasted money on it if there was no expectation of success and we would have funded it massively if there was a strong expectation of success.

So we end up with .5 x .47 / .5
Pr(H/E) = .47

In other words, SETI's failure barely moved the needle, which aligns with our intuition.

The irony is that you think that illustrates your point, when in fact it illustrates mine. You don't even understand your own statements.
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Of course it illustrates my point. I'll use a more mundane example again. Do you have evidence I have ever visited Canada? No. Does it follow that you must conclude it's unlikely I've ever visited Canada? No.

And we're done here, I think. Unless you had any questions.
 
I hope you're not a math teacher...

It's complete nonsense to set the probability of something being true at .5 because you don't have any data.
That just means that you can't give any kind of odds at all...
 
Besides, we do have some data.

We know they'll be held by the same physical laws as we are. Those are well-tested and well-evidenced, and through those we know that, no matter the technology, any interstellar travel will require a significant expenditure or time and/or energy.

They must also be rational, at least insofar as being able to apply physical concepts to achieve goals. AS such, we can also conclude that the energy expenditure required would not be done without a comparable reason, that would offer a reward comparable to the cost.

So, buzzing a few planes, mutilating cows, sending hippies a few messages of universal peace, are highly unlikely to meet that standard.
 
Kings Full said:
You forgot crop circles! How could you forget crop circles? :p
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Because all the evidence there points to people :)

ETA: And, ever since that travesty of rational thought "Signs", I've tried to forget that crop circles even exist.

As I've stated before, I'm willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy a movie or book. I'm not willing to have it tortured, dismembered, cremated, the ashes mixed with salt, and then scattered over the fertile mind to make sure nothing grows there again.
 
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Let's test Fudbucker's Theory, shall we?

Fudbucker's Theory (FT) states that, if we have no information whatsoever on the probability of an event, its probability is 0.5. Let us assume that this is what we normally understand by the term "probability," specifically that it behaves mathematically like any other probability.

We have no information on whether aliens have visited Earth. By FT, P(aliens)=0.5; therefore, P(~aliens), the probability that no aliens have visited Earth, is also 0.5.

We have no information on whether Klingons have visited Earth. Therefore, by FT, P(~Klingons)=0.5.
We have no information on whether Vogons have visited Earth. Therefore, by FT, P(~Vogons)=0.5. [1]
We have no information on whether Goa'uld have visited Earth. Therefore, by FT, P(~Goa'uld)=0.5.
We have no information on whether Cylons have visited Earth. Therefore, by FT, P(~Cylons)=0.5.

Klingons, Vogons, Goa'uld and Cylons are all aliens. Therefore, the probability that no aliens have visited Earth is at most P(~Klingons)*P(~Vogons)*P(Goa'uld)*P(Cylons) = 0.0625.

Conclusion: 0.5 < 0.0625.

Therefore Fudbucker's Theory is incorrect.

(Add another half-dozen alien species and we're up to a 99.9% chance that aliens have visited Earth, based solely on Fudbucker's Theory and the fact that we have no information on whether any aliens have visited Earth.)

Dave

[1] Actually, it hasn't been demolished, so they've probably not visited.
 
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Fudbucker said:
Getting a little personal, aren't you? In any case, you realize you have too many letters there, right? :o

Anyway, barring some background knowledge about aliens (that we obviously don't have in this case), Pr(H) is .5 and will remain at .5 until Pr(E) can be determined, which it can't because there is no evidence, either way. So Pr(H) remains at .5.

I'll walk you through a Bayesian Calculus using SETI's failure to detect anything so far as evidence.

Pr(H)= aliens exist
PR(E)= Seti's failure to detect anything (although there have been a couple of interesting signals, but we won't concern ourselves with those. We'll assume SETI has been a complete and total failure).

We'll start Pr(H) at .5. Maybe there are aliens, maybe not.

Pr(E/H) is the probability that we would fail in our attempts to detect aliens given that they exist. It is not very surprising that SETI hasn't uncovered anything. We're new to searching, and there are a whole lot of shaky assumptions that go into SETI. So even if aliens exist, our detection of them is not at all guaranteed. But the lack of waves of colonization, lack of self-replication probes, and lack of someone beaming us a message is a little surprising. So Call Pr(E/H) .47.

Pr(E) is .5. We know it's failed, but counterfactually, what did we expect SETI to discover when it first got going? It could have gone either way. Maybe it could have found something, maybe not. We wouldn't have wasted money on it if there was no expectation of success and we would have funded it massively if there was a strong expectation of success.

So we end up with .5 x .47 / .5
Pr(H/E) = .47

In other words, SETI's failure barely moved the needle, which aligns with our intuition.



Of course it illustrates my point. I'll use a more mundane example again. Do you have evidence I have ever visited Canada? No. Does it follow that you must conclude it's unlikely I've ever visited Canada? No.

And we're done here, I think. Unless you had any questions.
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That isn't how conditional probability works. You have a bunch of unknowable probabilities and you just arbitrarily pull numbers out of nowhere to assign to them. That cannot give you a meaningful result.

By your own mangled calculations (your conditions are not related in the way you say they are, and you use novel notation) your result of P(H/E)=0.47 is obviously only 'true' where you assume the conditional probabilities of P(H)/P(E)/P(E/H) that give you that result. But that is NOT how conditional probability works. Those other values you feed into the analysis have to be known values. This is pretty basic stuff, statistics is a lot more difficult than just looking up equations, you have to understand what the equations mean.

If you think your interpretation of Bayes theorem is valid I challenge you to find any professional statistician who agrees you can just arbitrarily assign values for unknown variables, or that 0.5 (or 0.47) is a valid way to assign unknown values in a Bayesian analysis.
 
mifune said:
That isn't how conditional probability works. You have a bunch of unknowable probabilities and you just arbitrarily pull numbers out of nowhere to assign to them. That cannot give you a meaningful result.

By your own mangled calculations (your conditions are not related in the way you say they are, and you use novel notation) your result of P(H/E)=0.47 is obviously only 'true' where you assume the conditional probabilities of P(H)/P(E)/P(E/H) that give you that result. But that is NOT how conditional probability works. Those other values you feed into the analysis have to be known values. This is pretty basic stuff, statistics is a lot more difficult than just looking up equations, you have to understand what the equations mean.

If you think your interpretation of Bayes theorem is valid I challenge you to find any professional statistician who agrees you can just arbitrarily assign values for unknown variables, or that 0.5 (or 0.47) is a valid way to assign unknown values in a Bayesian analysis.
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This is not-surprising, considering his mis-understanding of quantum mechanics interpretations and the mish-mash of various multiple universe theories (such as the inflationary-period created universes, brane universes, and the many worlds of MWI all being lumped together).
 
Hellbound said:
This is not-surprising, considering his mis-understanding of quantum mechanics interpretations and the mish-mash of various multiple universe theories (such as the inflationary-period created universes, brane universes, and the many worlds of MWI all being lumped together).
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Remember this gem, Hellbound?

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is not even a theory or hypothesis at all, but an interpretation...akin to a thought experiment, and isn't generally accepted except among those who aren't in the field.
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"As cutting-edge experiments display ever more extreme forms of non-classical behavior, the prevailing view on the interpretation of quantum mechanics appears to be gradually changing. A (highly unscientific) poll taken at the 1997 UMBC quantum mechanics workshop gave the once all-dominant Copenhagen interpretation less than half of the votes. The Many Worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the Consistent Histories and Bohm interpretations."
https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9709032
(Max Tegmark)

"Sadly, most people who object to EQM do so for the silly reasons, not for the serious ones. But even given the real challenges of the preferred-basis issue and the probability issue, I think EQM is way ahead of any proposed alternative."
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com...ion-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/

That's Sean Carroll, by the way.

You want to retract that here or in the other thread? :)
 
Fudbucker said:
Remember this gem, Hellbound?



"As cutting-edge experiments display ever more extreme forms of non-classical behavior, the prevailing view on the interpretation of quantum mechanics appears to be gradually changing. A (highly unscientific) poll taken at the 1997 UMBC quantum mechanics workshop gave the once all-dominant Copenhagen interpretation less than half of the votes. The Many Worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the Consistent Histories and Bohm interpretations."
https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9709032
(Max Tegmark)

"Sadly, most people who object to EQM do so for the silly reasons, not for the serious ones. But even given the real challenges of the preferred-basis issue and the probability issue, I think EQM is way ahead of any proposed alternative."
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com...ion-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/

That's Sean Carroll, by the way.

You want to retract that here or in the other thread? :)
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Neither.

ETA: In any case, if the views have changed I'll retract that part of it. It still doesn't change the fact that you mis-apply it, confuse it with other theories involving universes that have nothing to do with it, and also fail to understand it's an interpretation, not a theory or hypothesis.

You also missed the bits where the vast majority that do subscribe to MWI also regard all the other universes, outside the one we experience, as unreal.

There's also Hawking's comments:
But, look: All that one does, really, is to calculate conditional probabilities—in other words, the probability of A happening, given B. I think that that's all the many worlds interpretation is. Some people overlay it with a lot of mysticism about the wave function splitting into different parts. But all that you're calculating is conditional probabilities.
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And also, the prime thrust of my point, even if we assume many-worlds is correct:
MWI is considered by some[who?] to be unfalsifiable and hence unscientific because the multiple parallel universes are non-communicating, in the sense that no information can be passed between them.[/quote]
That's from Many-worlds_interpretationWP

There's a whole section on your polls, as well:
Advocates of MWI often cite a poll of 72 "leading cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" [88] conducted by the American political scientist David Raub in 1995 showing 58% agreement with "Yes, I think MWI is true".[89]

However, the poll is controversial. For example, Victor J. Stenger remarks that Murray Gell-Mann's published work explicitly rejects the existence of simultaneous parallel universes. Collaborating with James Hartle, Gell-Mann is working toward the development a more "palatable" post-Everett quantum mechanics. Stenger thinks it's fair to say that most physicists dismiss the many-world interpretation as too extreme, while noting it "has merit in finding a place for the observer inside the system being analyzed and doing away with the troublesome notion of wave function collapse".[90]

Max Tegmark also reports the result of a "highly unscientific" poll taken at a 1997 quantum mechanics workshop.[91] According to Tegmark, "The many worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the consistent histories and Bohm interpretations." Such polls have been taken at other conferences, for example, in response to Sean Carroll's observation, "As crazy as it sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory" [92] Michael Nielsen counters: "at a quantum computing conference at Cambridge in 1998, a many-worlder surveyed the audience of approximately 200 people... Many-worlds did just fine, garnering support on a level comparable to, but somewhat below, Copenhagen and decoherence." However, Nielsen notes that it seemed most attendees found it to be a waste of time: Asher Peres "got a huge and sustained round of applause… when he got up at the end of the polling and asked 'And who here believes the laws of physics are decided by a democratic vote?'" [93]

A 2005 poll of fewer than 40 students and researchers taken after a course on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo found "Many Worlds (and decoherence)" to be the least favored.[94]

A 2011 poll of 33 participants at an Austrian conference found 6 endorsed MWI, 8 "Information-based/information-theoretical", and 14 Copenhagen;[95] the authors remark that the results are similar to the previous Tegmark's 1998 poll.
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That's what I mean when I say you don't understand. The theory you're championing isn't actually a theory, can't be tested to date, and even if true does not support he use you're attempting to put it to (and, in fact, specifically denies such use).

Much like your understanding of probability.
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