'Einselection' of Pointer Observables: The New H-Theorem?

Understand

In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: 'molecular chaos.' The program of 'Einselection' (environmentally induced superselection) within Everettian approaches faces a similar 'Loschmidt's Paradox': the universe, according to the Everettian picture, is a closed system obeying only unitary dynamics, and it therefore contains no distinguishable environmental subsystems with the necessary phase randomness to effect einselection of a pointer observable.

• The theoretically unjustified assumption of distinguishable environmental subsystems is the hidden premise that makes the derivation of einselection circular.
• In effect, it presupposes the 'emergent' structures from the beginning.
• Thus the problem of basis ambiguity remains unsolved in Everettian interpretations.