Research Projects

Under Review

A paper on the metaphysics of divergence and overlap in the Many Worlds Interpretation.

In Progress

"Unlucky Branches: (Dis)confirmation in Many Worlds"

I consider a puzzle that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI) poses for rational observers with respect to scientific inference, confirmation and disconfirmation from experimental data, and theory choice. An underlying theme for this puzzle is that the MWI entails the existence of unlucky branches: parts of the Everettian universe in which the relative frequencies of experimental outcomes differ significantly from the frequencies that standard quantum mechanics would have us expect. The fact that a multiplicity of outcomes determinately (and deterministically) take place, even those that standard quantum mechanics would take to be exceedingly unlikely, has led many to challenge whether the MWI is epistemically evaluable in the way that other scientific theories tend to be.