If Bohm preserved determinacy by placing it beyond reach, the Many Worlds interpretation preserves it by making it unavoidable.
Every possibility is realised.
No Collapse, No Privilege
The Many Worlds interpretation begins with a refusal that is deceptively modest: the wavefunction never collapses.
The formalism of quantum mechanics, taken seriously, describes continuous, deterministic evolution. Collapse, on this view, is not part of the theory but an ad hoc intrusion — a gesture toward classical intuition rather than a necessity of the mathematics.
What appears to be a single outcome is, instead, a branching of the universe: every possible result occurs, each in its own world.
Determinacy is preserved not by selecting an outcome, but by actualising them all.
Branching as Ontology
In Many Worlds, probability does not mark uncertainty about what will happen. It marks uncertainty about where one will find oneself after branching has occurred.
Every term in the superposition is equally real. No outcome is privileged. No alternative is denied.
The Refusal at the Core
What Many Worlds cannot tolerate is not indeterminacy, but the cut itself.
Collapse introduces a distinction between:
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what could have happened, and
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what did happen.
Many Worlds refuses that distinction. It treats unactualised outcomes as an embarrassment — a residue that must be eliminated. The solution is elegant in its extremity: ensure that nothing remains unactualised.
Possibility is redeemed by universal actualisation.
The Relational Question
From a relational perspective, the difficulty is not the extravagance of multiple worlds. It is the quiet elimination of instantiation.
If everything happens, then nothing is brought into being through a cut. There is no moment of actualisation, no perspectival transition from potential to event.
There are only already-existing branches and an observer who discovers which one they inhabit.
The relational challenge is therefore this:
What becomes of meaning when nothing is ever excluded?
When Actuality Becomes Cheap
Many Worlds removes that cost.
Outcomes no longer distinguish themselves by occurring; they differ only by location in a branching structure. Failure disappears. Loss disappears. So does commitment.
Actuality becomes cheap because it is no longer selective.
Probability Without Risk
In this framework, probability loses its bite.
Nothing risky occurs, because every alternative is guaranteed. No outcome is genuinely at stake. The future cannot disappoint, only distribute.
Probability becomes a measure of branch-weight, not readiness for instantiation.
But readiness is precisely what probability expresses in a relational frame: the structured openness of a system to become otherwise.
Many Worlds converts openness into abundance.
Determinacy at Any Price
The achievement of Many Worlds is consistency. It keeps the mathematics intact, the dynamics continuous, and determinacy unbroken.
The price is subtle but severe.
By refusing collapse, it refuses the idea that reality is brought forth through construal. It treats perspective as an index, not as a constitutive act. Worlds exist independently of being encountered.
Nothing depends on the cut — because the cut never truly occurs.
The Cost of Universal Actualisation
Determinacy is preserved — but only by abolishing instantiation.
The universe becomes complete at every moment, and possibility survives only as bookkeeping.
The Many Worlds interpretation offers comfort to those who cannot bear collapse.
Relational ontology insists on something more fragile — and more demanding:
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