Good overview of some alternative interpretations of QM - at moments the book is hard to follow at others involves unnecessary metaphors, but in other places it is spot on.

Given how hard it is to understand QM foundations I think the effort is of great value.
( )

I'm gradually getting disillusioned by books with titles like this. They promise so much, yet, in the end, deliver some generally agreed facts and then you are swamped with far fetched speculation about "possible worlds" or "possible mathematics etc. And usually, the author comes down on the side of whatever field they have been active in. So it's hardly objective. This book by Sean Carroll,, more or less, fits into this genre. I'll give it to Carroll , that he actually spells out fairly clearly , that the concept of an atom being a miniature solar system is wrong and a particle is really some sort of arrangement or disturbance in a field (or fields).To me, this was quite enlightening but it's ready difficult for particle physicists to let go of the particle description and I find him reverting to that much of the time. I guess there is an underlying theme that the many worlds interpretation of our world is the simplest description that accepts the Schrödinger equation and that consistently gives the right results ....therefore we should believe it. He has an interesting dialogue with "Alice" who asks a lot of the right questions ....though I'm not sure that all are answered totally to my satisfaction.
But, on the other hand, I have to accept the fact that my "gut reaction" to the many world hypothesis is just that. It's not based on any rational basis just the feeling (that apparently Einstein and may others also shared) that this is just too complicated and unreal to be true and there must be a simpler explanation for our experiences. Carroll does a workman like job of defenc=ding many worlds but he also comes down in support of a ten dimensional string theory world which I understood had been largely abandoned by most theorists on the grounds that nothing was falsifiable with string theory and it hasn't led anywhere in about 30-40 years of investigative research and countless papers.
I admit that I had a hard time following Roger Penrose's Book "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe " but he seemed to put his finger one the fact that a lot of modern physics seems to be based on faith and fashion. And he seems to be able to come up with some devastating criticisms of the many worlds philosophy...though at the end I suspect he's just having his own "gut reaction". Sean Carrolls book is reasonably readable though I found myself reading some paragraphs many times and asking what does he really mean here and when he gets to the range of "alternative' hypotheses about reality, I found some of it really hard going and one just has to take at face value what Carroll is saying.
I admit that his enthusiastic support for the many worlds hypothesis and the Branching universe that this entails has made me a bit more cautious about my scepticism. Mainly his claim that if one applies Occam's razor principle to reality then the Many Worlds hypothesis is the simplest explanation. (Well I still have serious doubts...and maybe just accepting the truth of the Schrödinger equation (as a full explanation of reality) leads one astray here).
I guess, that I'm yet to be convinced. Still four stars from me. ( )

I'd fallen out of the habit of reading physics books (kinda sorta), but then, and this is very random, someone I met on fandom twitter was geeking on various since topics, we got to chatting, and next thing I knew, I'd agreed to buddy read this book.

Mostly reading this book made me miss my grad school quantum mechanics rain. I wanted to get more out of this than I did But I had some good a-ha moments: the book has probably permanently changed the way I think about quantum effects AND I got my new favorite quote out of it -- "superfluous ideological superstructure." I would like that phrase tattooed on my body, please.

I suppose that is quite a lot to get out of a book I discovered so randomly! ( )

I found this book interesting and compelling, even though I can't make myself agree with Many-Worlds. Sean Carroll doesn't explain to my liking why the epistemic approach (what I believe, apparently) is insufficient.

One thing that bugged me is that in [From Eternity to Here], he argues that in an infinite universe, anything (and therefore everything, including some local decreases in entropy) is possible, even after the heat-death of the universe. (I was particularly disturbed by the idea of Boltzmann Brains, which Sean Carroll presents in [From Eternity to Here].) However, in this book, he mentions that local decreases in entropy have a probability of zero, and will never happen. I'm wondering if the two approaches are incompatible.

Definitely an interesting read if you're into physics. It's been over 10 years since I've had to use Schrodinger's equation, and I found the book relatively approachable. I can't say I understood all of it, but that's fine with me. ( )

Carroll makes this difficult concept a bit more accessible. Glad to see more advocates of Many Worlds interpretation. :) ( )