MWI for dummies?

MWI for dummies?

I am a bit tired of wacky theories about multi-worlds, so can someone please explain in the simplest and most concise terms possible exactly what the basis behind it is?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_worlds_theory
MWI’s main conclusion is that the universe (or multiverse in this context) is composed of a quantum superposition of very many, possibly even non-denumerably infinitely[13] many, increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds.

Firstly I’d think that at most there’s a very large number [non-denumerable] rather than an infinite amount of universe.
I’d question if infinity can have a beginning [in philosophy not math I.e. in real not metaphoric terms].
I don’t believe you can have an event and indeed a universal set of events that occur without there being information and communication about that. …and hence distinct and separate universes.
Observing is an inept use of terms, conscious observation or otherwise looking at something does not change anything.
You cannot change history, it is fixed, you cannot not have done something that you have done. An event occurred how it occurred and then no longer exists.

wiki
The many-worlds interpretation shares many similarities with later, other “post-Everett” interpretations of quantum mechanics which also use decoherence to explain the process of measurement or wavefunction collapse.

Fundamentally:
Why does decoherence lead to two or more universes? Why does it not simply mean that there are many possible outcomes within the single universe?

Why does measurement change anything? I can understand that making an interaction can change something, but can that rightly be thought of as ‘measuring’ or ‘observing’?

Do we ultimately have something very simple which has been wrapped up in fancy language, that we are all confused by it all because we are using the wrong terms which throw us of the trail - so to speak?
Really what we have here is an inability to qualify reality in usualy scientific terms, its simply more fuid than any explanation or interpretation can possibly represent.
_

It’s just a fairytale to bemuse those who insist on believing in ghosts and hobgoblins, something to add mystique to science and technology. A part of the competition with the other religions to capture the imagination of the [Zen]Kitty’s.

Ok, yea perhaps that’s it, I was just wondering what makes scientist believe in it?

If “scientists” don’t believe in it, why would science be interesting?
Theoretical physics is merely Sci-Fi in real life rather than merely in Hollywood.
As a motion picture, most people accept that such things are fantasy, but if a university professor teaches it as “theoretical fact”, it has much greater impact on the unsuspecting dummies.
While of course, preaching with the same hand of how foolishly fictional the other religions are.

There is no consensus on many worlds. But the advantage of many worlds is that it retains determnism. If there is a single world, then events are probablistic rather than deterministic.

It seems that observing IS interacting.

I don’t think so. I am pretty sure it is strange from our perspective.

Many physicists do not buy the many worlds explanation and many consider it untestable. But it has advantages and is coherent.
By the way, there are quite a number of multiverse hypotheses.

As someone who accepts and has read a number of papers on MWI, perhaps I can answer some of your quesitons:

I would agree. The number is very large, and increasingly massively each moment. Presumably there are billions upon billions of quantum events going on each second, and each one of them has at least 2, and at most…well, at most is pretty fuckin high…possible results, and since in MW each possible result is it’s own universe, some astronomical number of parallel universes presumably gets created every second.

Observing doesn’t mean conscious observation in the context of quantum physics. Indeed, the use of the term “observation” is a big source of confusion for people who talk about quantum physics without taking the time to look into it at any depth. The quantum vocabulary may consist of words that have connotations to the every-man, and the QM use of those words often completely rejects those connotations. Sometimes, that’s much simpler than just creating a new word: just use an old one, that’s vaguely similar in the idea it conveys, and ignore the dissimilarities. A big portion of language is a metaphor, afterall.

Well, here’s the deal: if there are many possible outcomes, but only a single universe, which one is chosen? How does the universe choose which one happens? Most non-MW interpretations call this “choice” collapse. IE all the different possibilities collapse (I think I have this correctly) into one reality. However, the reason why the idea of collapse is unattractive to many quantum physicists is that they don’t understand the mechanism for collapse – they don’t understand how the universes chooses which one among the possibilities is to become the real one. I couldn’t be sure myself, but I’ve read and heard many people say that experiments actually rule out collapse. I couldn’t say if that’s true or not, but it’s something to consider. At the very least though, we don’t have any evidence for collapse, i think…

So, MW, instead of proposing that the universe chooses one of the possibilities, just says that each possibility is realized. There are also, from what I’ve heard (though I couldn’t say for sure again), significant pieces of experimental evidence for this.

Someone else correctly pointed out that to measure IS to interact. The act of measuring requires an interaction. Invariably.

It’s not clear to me what percentage of quantum physicists and theorists accept MW. Some sources say up to 58%. Some people say that quantum physics IS many worlds – they believe that, given all the evidence from quantum physics, there is no other conclusion to be made. The two terms – QM and MW – are practically synonymous, according to them. I couldn’t say with any authority that that’s true, I don’t know.

I find it a really fun topic. Hope I answered some questions. I’m no expert though, so if I gave any misleading information or was unclear about anything…well, just take what I say with a grain of salt.

Lesswrong has a series of articles about QM, from the MWI point of view. Perhaps you can find something of value in there.

The universe has no bounds and is thus infinite. There is no alternative despite the fanciful imaginings of the Quantum Magi.

Largely true.
If you look into REAL QM, you find that what they are talking about has little to nothing to do with what you hear people profess that they have said. The confusion and ambiguity is quite intentional, but as FJ stated, you have to know what “they” actually meant when they made their statements.

My first reaction to that paragraph was to laugh, but actually reading it further, FJ pretty properly sums it up. “They don’t know the cause” and don’t want to say that there is one that they can’t see, therefore it is left open for the speculation that no “choice” was made, but rather all of the options were evenly taken. They will do anything to avoid that “choice” element as it implies a Chooser and a determiner, an actual “God” that they cannot see. Thus they say, “no choice was made”, “All events took place. You merely ended up with one of the very many still going on.” Of course, they don’t respond when one asks, “But what determined the choice of which one I ended up with as my reality?

All of this is of course ignoring that there can only be one reality in the first place (by definition). Something is either real or it isn’t and all that is real culminates the concept of the one category called “Reality”.

I’ll guarantee that there has never been the slightest evidence, nor can there ever be. The entire philosophy is void of rationality.

That is almost true.
As was recently demonstrated with the Entanglement experiment, one actually can measure a thing without touching it. But of course, they have to actually use reasoning in the process, thus it is almost never done.

It is all sociopolitics and persuasion of the masses for sake of influence. Actual Science has nothing to do with it.

And is a large part of the goal. Capture the imaginations of the young and naive so as to ensure they do not attend to the competition religions.

You did pretty well actually.

I don’t think the word infinity does justice to what the real nature of the world is: infinity presupposes something countable, some algorithm, some method to conceive, visualize, etc. But in all truth, what the real physical world is compared to us as an Observer is closer to “Totally Unrelated”, “Not Conceivable”, “Outset of our Range”, “Impossible to Decode in any possible Way”, etc. Our mathematical concepts are just very vague and gross approximations to something that can’t be decoded in any way at all, no matter how hard you try, no matter what kind of Observer you design (as in a new Brain and Mind and Neural Circuit to Observe and Think the Universe, etc.).

We just invent pretty pictures that we can undertand and manipulate in our mind, associate them with what we observe and experience and call that “Science”.

Nothing can contain Anything, we are lost forever…

Rational Metaphysics led to the paradigm of reality being defined in terms of an infinite series wherein each element was another infinite series of the same form. Then an infinite number of those are placed into a matrix, a “box”. Then an infinite number of those comprise the unbound universe.

So I had the situation of infinity raised to infinity raised to infinity raised to infinity… ad infinitum, multiplied by infinity, and multiplied by infinity again.

Reality = Inf * Inf * (Inf^Inf)^Inf

Contemporary mathematics doesn’t handle infinity very well at times, so I had to come up with a new form of mathematics that could handle such an extreme case. I ended up with “Afflate Analysis”, a combination of statistical analysis, analytic geometry, and tensor analysis. The result allowed for me to express the extreme infinite chaos in a mathematical manner. And then from that number of concerns, physical reality unfolds as order emerges.

No multiverse, “multiple-worlds” needed - Occam’s Razor.

I was hoping someone would ask this question. It’s actually a question that doesn’t really make sense, and it’s slightly confusing and convoluted as to why it doesn’t make sense.

See, the thing is, every single one is the reality for some version of you. You didn’t end up with only one as your reality, you ended up with a different version of you for each reality.

Now, the most rational question after this is, “OK, but why is THIS version of me in this reality?” To which the response is, I think, “THIS version of you IS DEFINED AS the version in this reality. That’s how you distinguish between THIS ME and THAT ME – by which reality they inhabit. If it wasn’t THIS you, it wouldn’t be THIS reality. It would be another one.” Perhaps there’s a better answer to the question though. I think they talked about this question on the Standord page on MW.


I’ll actually try a different approach that I just thought of:

Let’s say you and I are running a quantum experiment with only two possible results. Let’s just, for short hand, call those results “Left” and “Right”. So, beforehand, let’s say there’s a 50% chance of “ending up” in the Left universe, 50% in right.

You naively say “I wonder which one I’ll end up”
to which I respond, “Well, you’ll end up in both!”
“No, flannel, you know what I mean.”

To which I respond, “I know what you think you mean. What you think you mean doesn’t actually make sense though.”
You say “Alright you prick, let’s just run the damn experiment.”

So we run it, and two universes are created, LEFT and RIGHT.

Left you says “Alright, so I’m now in Left. Why am I not in Right?”
“You are in Right too.”
“Well…but why not this version of me?”
“Well because this is the version that’s in the Left one”
“But why didn’t this version end up in the Right one?”
“Because the Right version of you ended up in the Right one. You’re now the Left version of you.”
“But why am I not the Right one”
“Well…cuz you’re the one who ended up in the Left one.”

Meanwhile, in the Right universe:
“Alright, so I’m now in Right. Why am I not in Left?”
“You are in Left too.”
“Well…but why not this version of me?”
“Well because this is the version that’s in the Right one”
“But why didn’t this version end up in the Left one?”
“Because the Left version of you ended up in the Left one. You’re now the Right version of you.”
“But why am I not the Left one”
“Well…cuz you’re the one who ended up in the Right one.”

Now, what the question kinda presupposes is that, somehow, it would make some sort of difference if, at the exact moment of the split in the universe, before you’re even aware of the split, LEFT you and RIGHT you traded minds. The reason this wouldn’t make a difference, the reason it doesn’t make sense, is that right at the moment of the split but before you’re aware of the split, LEFT mind and RIGHT mind are the same mind. If some outside force were to trade our minds at exactly the moment, the same conversations would happen, but this time LEFT you would be having the conversation RIGHT you had before, and vice versa. From the point of view of an outside observer watching both universes, it would be experimentally the same if you switched and if you didn’t.

It also seems to presuppose non-physical consciousness, which I don’t necessarily think is a fair assumption.

But perhaps I’m not explaining this clearly or even correctly. I’ll try to look it up, see what I find.

[edit] THIS IS THE STANFORD ARTICLES’ APPROACH

I pretty much agree that a person asking, “why am I not a bird?” is a bit irrational, but the sheer number of absurdities proposed by the quantum mechanics multi-world fantasy is so huge as to be truly unquantifiable. Stanford wouldn’t be able to tolerate my presence in their bent minds at all.

Objection 1
But my first objection to their fantasy is the requirement to ignore what it means to exist in the first place. To exist means to have affect upon what something exists relative to. If a proposed parallel universe is said to exist then it must have affect upon the universe of which it is supposed to be parallel. But of course, if it actually does have the slightest affect upon it, then it isn’t parallel, but intersecting. If it is truly parallel and having no affect upon “our reality”, then why even claim that it exists? It couldn’t be measured in any manner at all and nothing could be known about it whatsoever. It is a waste of mind time to even think about it, hence irrational. Why would anyone care?

Objection 2
But next comes the issue of how it all started in the first place. If they assume that the universe had no initial magical creator, they are stuck with the notion that their paradigm of infinite universes, even if not individually infinite, would have to have been developing throughout an infinite past, which would yield an infinite number of infinite varieties regardless of any supposed quantum segments of time (which in itself is senseless). They are stuck with a totally unquantifiable number of universes as each, during each segment of time creates an infinite number of varieties and has been doing so for an infinite past. It would yield a number greater than infinity raised to infinity raised to infinity raised to infinity… ad infinitum. And that is just in an effort to count the number of universes, not to mention the more than infinite complexity involved in each one.

Objection 3
And then there is the issue that time is merely a measure of relative change. Having any quantum gaps in time is senseless and an absurd fantasy. Similarly space has the same issue. Any notions of quantum gaps in space is completely irrational. How can one have gaps of space between space itself? Space is merely a relative measure of distance regarding direction. Any gap is a part of the measure or it doesn’t exist, as stated in the first objection.

The list of rational objections to quantum fantasies could go on forever, unquantifiably.

Objection 1:
Illogical – to say that because something doesn’t have an effect on the place that you live in, it doesn’t exist…existence doesn’t work like that.
Also, some people think that split universes never fully decohere, and can continue to have slight effects on each other. There are experiments proposed to test this, though idk if they’ve done so yet.

It’s not completely illogical to claim that something exists even though it can’t and won’t have an effect on you, and I can explain why: if I program some sattelite in space to shoot out a single photon into space, and i point that photon into a part of the sky where no stars and galaxies are visible to our most powerful microscopes, then, given our current knowledge, it’s not irrational to say that that photon will continue to exist and continue to shoot out, even after we’ve lost contact with it and can no longer see any effects of it. After shooting out the photon, it won’t have an effect on us whatsoever, and yet it’s not illogical to think that it continues to exist. Why?

Well, it kinda works like this: not all unfalsifiable beliefs are irrational – the unfalsifiable beliefs that rest upon the implications made by other, falsifiable, beliefs are rational. We have significant evidence for object permanence, and the (usual) conservation of matter. If we assume those are true, we can assume that the photon we shot into space continues to exist, even if we can’t see any effect from it. To assume that the photon ceases to exist once it stops having an effect on us…well that assumption violates pretty much every law of physics. To falsify the idea that the photon continues to exist, you don’t point to the fact that it doesn’t have an effect – you’d have to falsify the laws of physics that imply its continued existence.

Likewise, many seem to think that MW is supported by many falsifiable beliefs, even if the existence of other universes isn’t itself falsifiable. And anyway, if the alternate you’s heard you saying they don’t exist, that might hurt their feelings. Be polite.

Objection 2:
This isn’t a problem for MW. The problem of first cause OR infinite regress is a problem for every single idea about how the universe started. Nobody knows the answer, not just ManyWorlders. Nobody knows the answer to that. Not even you.

Objection 3:
idk what you’re going on about.

Anyway, MW, as you know, isn’t completely proven, and I’m by no means an expert at defending it. If I happen to be unable to satisfy any of your questions, be aware, you and the audience, that that doesn’t falsify MW. I’m sure there are many valid reasons to be skeptical of MW. I just happen to find it compelling, and fun to talk about, and fun to argue for.

First take care how you use the word “illogical”. Whether what I said was accurate or not, it was not illogical.
But what you said that I said wasn’t right.
I didn’t say, “has no effect on where I live”.
I said, has no affect on my reality at all, “my universe”.
And it is perfectly logical and more importantly, rational (for the reasons mentioned).

And some people think that ghosts live in their attics. They too have experimental evidence.
None the less, the universes are NOT parallel if they intersect.
And if they affect each other, then they are the same universe, merely separated enough to only affect in proposed quantum intersections, ghosts that come and go when their time lines allow for brief moments of communing with the spirits of the other world.

As any good physicist will tell you, the effort it took to “shoot it out” will have affect upon you. But also, as that photon travels, it is affecting the space that it is in (else we would never know that any of them existed). As any space is affected, all space is affected, hence “dark-matter”. So yes, to say that it didn’t exist or that it had no affect, would be in error.

The only way anyone ever proclaims that something isn’t there, does not exist, is that it has no affect upon any senses or instrumentation directly or indirectly. Look in front of you. Do you see an elephant? How do you know or even suspect that there isn’t one there?

Yes, and very many people believe that their dead relatives are offended by whispers of disrespect too.

Excuse Me???
To hell I don’t.
Meet your “Nobody”, son.
But regardless of who else might know anything or not, THEIR problem persists and proposes a greater problem in that it proposes something unquantifiable (against the very foundation paradigm of their fantasy).

That’s the only purpose for it. :sunglasses:

Well, for all your arrogance you certainly aren’t very convincing. I’ll leave it at that. I don’t really feel like going into all the mistakes in your post. As you said, you have an endless stream of this nonsense.

“Nobody knows the answer”

It is not the nobody knows the answer, even if you knew the answer, it would simply be an answer you already knew, it would simply be a sequence of symbols, another description of sequential logic, another cause and effect description of the Universe, etc. it would simply be what you already know just said in a different way, as we only and always and ever always just say the same thing over and over again but with a different pretty picture. What can be said and discovered, what we can do, all of any possibility has been established once and for all by the design of our mind and logic and the identity principle and non contradiction. Our mind and thought processes and language and logic have already said, once and for all, all that can ever be said and discovered, it is hardwired from the outset, it is a solid crystal that can only be shattered in order to get to something new: but just look at all of the debates, just look at all of the “conflicting” opinions and choices and descriptions, all of the possible blocks of text, etc. they are trying to reach a truth, or trying to combine the blocks of text into a “greater” truth, but there is no possible “greater” truth, there is no accumulation of knowledge and any positive result, only an infinite array of symbols, ever only expressing a new combination, so many point like sequential logic paths that are disjoint and sometimes combine and sometimes clash, but never going anywhere because it is our logic and mind that is limited, we need crazy and nonsense more than anything else, we need insane, we need wild, we need ever more brains exploding into billions of pieces…

Keep on breaking down all the structures we have constructed describing reality.

Keep on vomiting all your BS information on the cesspool that is the internet…

Yup that’s exactly what I thought! :slight_smile:

Good! I’d much rather it were probabilistic. Science seems to have the persona that requires absolute explainability, and that requires determinism. The winners are the ones in the right [in any religious conflict].

Right, but how exactly? What they mean by ‘observing’ isn’t rightly covered by the term which is why its deceptive. Really in the light slit experiments they are making a physical interaction and seeing change accordingly.
What is strange about it?!

I assume that no two events can occur simultaneously then, otherwise two universe with the same changes would occur.

Main point is; how!

How does two or more possible results result in two universes?
When that single event would be creating an entire universe of events. As there must assumedly be a correlation between informations and a physical exchange between the two or more positions in the quantum superposition, then the creation of a new universe from one event would affect the relationships of every other event in the universe ~ thus nullifying or otherwise changing the superposition of each party?

I imagine its like a puppy stood in front of two doors, it wants to get in as it knows its owner is in there and its hungry, but until the owner shouts it doesn’t know which door to enter.
In other words you have a set of possible outcomes, then real-world events [in the same universe] determine in a probabilistic manner which of the decisions are required for the desired outcome. Naturally as events are relative and in that sense ‘flowing’, there has to be a quantum superposition to connect such fluid events! the whole thing is entire.

I don’t believe they have experiments which show MWI to be right, as part of its premise is that there is a divide between universes. If that duality does not exist then it means my point above concerning communications between worlds is definitely right, and hence the MWI theories with said duality are wrong.

I read the less-wrong articles ~ good stuff though he takes an age to get down to any specific info. Thanks for the informative reply anyhow. :slight_smile:

I think math has bastardised the term, infinity should mean all those things you say ~ it’s a lack of cardinality, limits, and hence is impossible to concieve or utilise scientifically. Fuck calculus it’s a nonsense way to try to include infinity in science when science is clearly inept at explaining the higher aspects of reality.
_

If this kind of discussion was posted in the religion forum, people would be going on about unicorns, imaginary friends, irrationality and lack of supporting evidence. But just say the magic words ‘quantum mechanics’ and all sorts of looniness becomes perfectly reasonable.

Everyone accepts the authority figure (of the day). :wink:

…and guys, “infinity” merely means “without end” - no mysticism or magic associated.

I must point out that your attempt to explain how you imagine collapse to take place actually doesn’t answer any questions. All it does is add a couple new, vague elements, like “required” and “desired”. The question still remains: how does the universe choose which one of the possible events happens?

It doesn’t choose, nothing chooses anything, it just happens without any deeper reason than “just because”, “for no reason at all”, “it is just assigned arbitrarily”, “there is no deeper pattern, meaning rules or laws, etc.”, “it just is”.

And even if you did know “how” and “why” even that would end up being questioned “why and how that specific why and how” in an infinite recursion of answers to questions to answers until you reach the same ground state or final answer: JUST BECAUSE, FOR NO REASON AT ALL, THERE IS NOTHING DEEPER.

TOBOR THE APE MAN