Slashdot Mirror
A Mathematical Answer To the Parallel Universe Question
diewlasing writes to mention that Oxford scientists have proffered a mathematical answer to the parallel universe question that is gaining some support in the scientific community. "According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by 'wave functions' representing a set of multiple 'probable' states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options. The Oxford team, led by Dr. David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes."
Yeah, yeah, I know it only affects physical outcomes. Laugh anyway. It's Monday.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's just the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and I don't see anything in the article that's a shocking new revelation about it. The article's just a rehash of an idea that's been around since the 50s.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But can this explain why all the men have goatees?
Does Spock have the beard in that parallel universe?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So does this mean that the dog really did eat my homework (in another universe) and thus I'm not really telling a lie?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It happens to be that the answer to life, the universe and everything in that universe is 43
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
. . . so it "can" explain (mathematically) the outcome of quantum level observations using the many worlds theory. But is it falsifiable?
Hey, if you don't believe in God because "you can't see him/her/it" then you can't believe in a parallel universe because, hey, you can't see it. Nor can you believe in dark matter/energy. /troll.
How does this reconcile with reality as we see it?
From my perspective, even if this mathematical "proof" is true, it is only true in the ontological sense, i.e. that these branches can happen and maybe do happen, but not in reality. Then again, I believe the entire basis for the universe is ultimately ontological but that's a different matter.
My point is that these alternate "universes" may only exist in infinitesimally-small times (possibly below the Planck time threshold) and then simply cease to exist again as compared with our reality in the next moment, moment after moment.
I don't believe this. On the other hand, I do.
If there are an infinite number of parallel universes for each possible quantum outcome, why do we only experience -this- one?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Would it have senile felines? You know like schrodinger's cat!
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
We, in the fire department (when driving our elevated platform aroudn town), use the phrase, "A miss is as good as a mile." Especially as an answer to the question, "Did you come close to that telephone-poll/car/sign?" :P
Or perhaps instead of having parallel universes, it's all one universe with segments separated by space/time. Of course we are a long way off from truly understanding this universal paradox.
On another note, why are scientists wasting their time with this when Sliders solved this mystery for us over a decade ago?!
The game.
Think about the "mind-body problem" Okay ...
I did ... and here's my solution. Basically, there are other branches where life sucks less, and others where life suck more, etc. I'm going to find the one where life sucks less and kill my alter ego so I can take their place!!!!!!!! (Of course, that means that there's ANOTHER me in an even suckier universe gunning for me, so better be quick!)
You'd better watch out - there may be a doppelganger of you looking to do the same thing...
Kevin Smith on Prince
Seriously though, there's no sign of a citation from any of the people running the story (most of which are nearly identical, so they're probably just copying from the same press release), and there's no sign of it on arXiv or from a quick trawl of journal feeds, so it's a very good chance that it's either unpublished work, or a conference paper somewhere. Not surprising, given how many "most significant discoveries in the history of science" turn out to be much less dramatic under the cold hard light of review than when they're first reported.
There is a circular dependency here. The author assumes that the parallel universe interpretation is correct and then argues that if this interpretation is correct, then we can derive probabilistic nature of quantum of mechanics. All this means is that the parallel universe is a self-consistent theory. Nobody has argued against this for the last 50+ years.
The problem with quantum mechanics interpretation is that as of now, no interpretation exists which is not bizarre in our traditional world view. Parallel universe is just one of them.
But where are we putting all of them?
What is the name of the space that contains Universes?
Quit making so may decisions/observations lest we run out of space for all the different outcomes.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
well, it sounds like a proof based off an invalid assumption. the first assumption of "bush-like branching structure" needs to be proved first, and it isn't. how could it be?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Life is like a dream. You never die in your dreams. You never die in your observed life. You just die in alternate universes. This carries on until you reach the next plane of intelligence (wake up) whereupon you realize that there was no mind-body problem to begin with.
Fixed!
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
So, after every quantum time interval there are 2^(number of quanta in the universe) new universes being created. Each with an identical number of quanta in the exact location of the universe it split from. And this has been happening ever since Time began.
That's a lot of universes. You'd think that in one of them I could [fill in the blank].
Where does the energy come from to give existence to this second universe? This whole splitting of the universe thing seems common in physics, so I'm sure I'm not interpreting this correctly. It seems like there's entire universes being created because of the uncertainty of a single particle.
I would very much like to find the publication of this, or least more details given by the authors if anyone can fine a link.
By the way, Deutsch is a well known physicist, not some crackpot. One of the first problems discovered to be theoretically sped up by a quantum computer is named after him (link).
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0104033 (i think?)
dear researchers (read: ill-informed mathematicians & faux-losophers):
many worlds is the answer to a question that didn't need asking. why assume that superposition means that each state is uniquely there and existing, like a huge OR statement?
look. we get it, it's weird. a particle can't "spin" both ways. the cat can't be alive or dead. it makes your brain hurt, and keeps you up at night.
but you know what? i don't care. neither does reality. it's going to just keep on being whatever it is. and as far as we can tell, that is: things behave like waves. then we observe them, and they behave like particles.
why are you worried about the other possible states? you're just making a philosophical assumption, that they were there to begin with. just accept the fact that things can behave according to probabilistic models, and we can all get on with our lives.
So they say they have a mathematical description of the parallel universe theory. One can construct a mathematical model that describes the geocentric solar system perfectly well, but the the heliocentric version is much simpler.
So, which is simpler?
(1) Shit happens.
(2) Shit happens. Parallel universes are created.
[
Mathematically the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes. - The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch
My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. - Hedley Lamarr
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
This is yet another example of an academic discovering how easy it is to generate press. Math can prove that a mathematical system is consistent, and within that system can prove properties that result in that system. There are several wonderful mathematical models that describe physical phenomena with incredible accuracy. However, these models do not prove these properties, they just expose some relationships and properties of our world that are not necessarily obvious, and are useful in planning, engineering etc. The claims of "proof" of parallel universes is an abuse of the mathematical language.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
Whose up for a game of quantum suicide?
ARE BELONG TO US. At least in this universe. In some parallel universe, Zero Wing was translated properly and AYBABTU never became an internet meme. Sucks to be them ;-)
sudo eat my shorts
blown by a gorgeous blond with a fabulous rack, an ass that stops traffic and a face that camera's love.
... and the mouth of a two dollar whore"
"She's got the face of an angel, the heart of a saint
-Three Dead Trolls in a Baggy
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What if you found a gateway to a parallel universe where you the same but everything else is different...I found the gateway
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Not really. It's convetionally interpreted as "It was a miss, but a near thing." And convention generally trumps nitpickers. :)
:)
You *can* use "near hit" and I believe the safety industry actually uses the two interchangeably. It might be one of those glass half full or half empty situations.
But it boils down to what it really was. Was it a hit or a miss, and what kind of hit or miss.
Here's how *I* would put it:
Near miss: Objects miss, but it was close.
Near hit: Objects collided in glancing blow.
Distant miss: Objects missed, we're not close, but maybe it's something to look into.
Distant hit: meaningless
And then there's:
Direct hit: Bang on target!
Direct miss: Meaningless outside of satire,
Now I can prove mathematically that there is a version of the universe where I scored with that hot supermodel!
Or in other words, this science fiction nonsense about parallel worlds, unscientific because it can never be tested or proven, and which was inspired by observations of quantum mechanics, is now supposedly able to explain, guess what, ... quantum mechanics, the very concept that the nonsense was built on in the first place.
The absurd number of parallel universes that would have to be created is mind boggling, since, at the very least, an entire universe would have to be created every single time any atom decayed (one for the universe where that atom happened to decay at that instant, another for the case where that atom didn't happen to decay). Strange that none of the wackos who advocate this, and I use the term very loosely, "theory", bother to expain where all of the mass and energy is coming from for all of these extra universes. Note that we are talking about far more universes than atoms in our own universe. Absolute hogwash.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You know the answer is 42.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Now, I'm not well-versed enough to say anything substantial about spontaneous particle pairs appearing and fixing things, but I think you really need to consider the possibility that at some point (maybe when you were born, maybe yesterday, maybe tomorrow) life according to the path you've experienced so far will, inevitably, lead to your death. Not "almost surely" (limes p -> 0), but simply p(surviving beyond date X) = 0.
We also have the sad part (mentioned when this line of thinking has been presented on /. in earlier posts): there might be an infinite number of universes where you survive, but in a disastrous majority of those, it will be as a maimed and crippled individual in total pain. Somehow, it seems easier to imagine that just a human brain is moved out of harm's way by an (almost) infinitely small chance, than that this happens to the complete body without harm.
This only proves you have bad aim, didn't load the gun, the safety is on, it's a water gun, or some other issue. ;-)
Here is the New Scientist article being cited:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19526223.700-parallel-universes-make-quantum-sense.html
However it is behind a paywall. See Google Groups for the whole thing.
There is a great quote by physicist Max Tegmark: "The critique of many worlds is shifting from 'it makes no sense and I hate it' to simply 'I hate it'."
As far as the meat of it, traditionally the Many-Worlds Interpretation has had two technical objections raised. The first is called the basis problem, and the second is deriving correct probabilities. The basis problem is that when the universe "splits" it's not clear how it should split. The math allows for infinite different ways to split, but we only see one way. This has been solved in recent years by the study of decoherence, which in MWI terms is like looking at the splitting process up close. Turns out it can only happen one way in practice. So that one's done.
The article is more about the other one, deriving probabilities. Actually it's easy to derive probabilities in the MWI, but they're wrong. The right probabilities are what is called the Born rule, and it's been hard to get those. David Deutsch came up with a new idea in 1999 where he proposed tying it in to decision theory. He said that we really care about probabilities because they influence how we make decisions about what to do. If we can derive a reasonable decision theory within the MWI, then we've essentially explained probabilities. His work had some shortcomings but subsequent efforts have largely resolved those.
So now for the first time, the two traditional technical problems with the MWI have reasonably good solutions. Hence we are back to, as Tegmark says, "I hate it" as the main objection to the theory. Since that's not really a good argument, it can be said that the MWI should be considered the most compelling candidate for an interpretation of QM.
One final link, here is one of the papers that extends Deutsch's idea about decision theory and pretty much closes the holes: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312157. It's pretty technical but still a lot more readable than most physics papers.
I abhor mathematical proofs of supposedly scientific things. Math is a tool for constructing human thought in meaningful exchanges for other humans to understand. It is, therein, a language and not a scientific form of proof in and of itself.
As just one more language, math suffers the faults that any language can suffer. Just because something makes a working equation does not give it validity. Certainly no more than when a sentence is grammatically correct does that make the sentence a proof of anything. "My cat is a dog."
However, if anyone would like to propose a repeatable and verifiable experiment for finding the universe where George W. Bush lost in 2000, I am all for conducting it just after I pack my suitcase.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
And say, in a Heisinger way: if the many many possible worlds aren't available to us, then by our observations, there is only one state that evolves strictly from the present.
The past is 'in concrete'. So far, no evidence that we can change it, otherwise it wouldn't be history or the past.
We can change, and do, the present, and cannot so far leap very far into the future (thus altering the time coefficient).
At the quantum level, so are things at the macro or universal level; it's the same number with significant digits or places to the right of the decimal point. You can observe the big (universe) picture, or the micro/femto/whatever particle you want level. They are the same, and one has the rules of the other; it's the observation point that's amusing.
The bottom line: should multiverses exist, we can't get to them, and they are therefore irrelevant and meaningless and more strangely, matter created and energy expended evolved from ether, which makes no sense to me. So many basic laws of physics are violated to explain multiverses that I can't accept the concept until these are rectified. Simple conservation of matter/energy prohibits this multi-state set of pseudo-universes.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
...in some other parallel universe, they are right.
:)
uh...wait a sec....
Thanks for the links and explanation.
Shouldn't it be an icon of Niel's Bohr when representing Quantum Mechanics?
Yes. Pity it didn't happen in this universe.
And the brethren went away edified.
I've always wondered if the Many Worlds hypothesis implies predestination. If we posit an infinite number of existing alternative universes, how can we speak of creating more with the choices we make today? How can you add to infinity? Doesn't that imply that all possible universes in fact already exist, and therefore all possible futures are all already determined?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.
So what they have done is demonstrate a mathematical framework that can explain the stochastic/quantum nature of our universe in a self-consistent framework that uses multiple parallel universes. But that is not "Proving" it... But let's not dismiss this so quickly. Recall that good ol' Albert (Einstein) had a quaint theory that altered our perception of the universe when we could start verifying it.
Here are some things I would like to see investigated using this math framework:
Can this explain Quantum Tunneling?
Can this explain Action at a Distance? (Particles separated by meters [of late] behave identically)
Can we create a situation where a quantum particle has to swap universes? That would be the killer proof...
Folks have been working on reducing String Theory from 26 dimension to 11-10 (sorry, I haven't kept up). Could the high-dimensional strings be the manifestation of the "bushes"?
Is it possible to send Gravity into a parallel universe around an object, thereby creating null gravity? Things might get a bit heavier in that universe, but hey, it isn't ours...;-)
Rather than dismissing this as crackpot, consider viewing it as a mathematical attempt to develop a framework to explore the theory and perhaps prove/disprove it sometime in the future.
Of course, Science Fiction has already dealt with this set of scenarios...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
I can't see the point .. ..
... single electron interference should signify that parallel universes interact with each other .. until observed. So when i observe something, i find out which universe I am in AND disconnect/destroy all other possible universes.
What does we gain if we allow parallel universes?
If we only choose one of possible universes when we make observation, it's only other explanation of probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. And probably quite useless
Or is there some interaction between between realities after split? Is there some physical phenomena that could be explained by existence of parallel universe but not by probability waves?
And
It's 2007, they are USB universes nowadays.
So, in a constantly branching parallel universes system, I am both dead and alive. Which really translates to "I am always alive." This is because if this version of me dies, I simply wake again in one of the other verses. I just won't have any memory of the mistake I made that killed me in this one. Is that how you guys figure it?
Not to be confused with the notion of Bushisms.
So how can there be more than one? That's like trying to have more than one identity element or zero element in a vector space. It doesn't work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
or tried to, anyway. It seems to be related to the
paper the article talks about.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0104033
It's more of an information theory paper, it seems to me, and
not so easy to relate to any verifable theory of the
universe/multiverse.
assignment != equality != identity
What happens if the good version of you has a goatee?
And the brethren went away edified.
I do not see anything new here at all. The "many worlds" hypothesis has always depended on a hypothetical "probability tree" to describe the odds of quantum occurrences. This idea was new to me, oh, about maybe 30 years ago, and was not actually new then.
Are they trying to claim that their mathematical probability tree corresponds to a "real" probability tree? If so, on what basis do they make that claim?
To them, I say: "Show me evidence, and I will believe. Until then, stop bothering me with old ideas."
I'm not sure why you were moderated down but you do pose an interesting question. The universe as we know it offers plenty of opportunities for a creator or deity to exist. The very notion that parallel universes could exist and that nonlocality does indeed exist are enough to cause an atheist to question.
To each their own, but I think you make a good point.
It's not the weight, but the size of the struggle that matters.
I personally believe that the brain is like the needle on a record player. We already know that the existence of memory allows for the notion of cause and effect to become past, present, and future. Beyond that, I believe we are extrapolating quantum data which aligns us to our current universe(s).
It could even be that our physical senses are what tether us to a particular track in reality.
It's not the weight, but the size of the struggle that matters.
Nicely explicated!
I'd say that the quantum immortality theorem would also work if you do load a real gun, but simply decide not to pull the trigger for whatever reason. Or if you, like most of us, read about the experiment but decide it's not really not worth the risk.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
So how exactly does this work? In the article the author talks about in one universe you avoid a near collision, in another you hit a car and die, and in another you hit the car but survive. How does the quantum state of one atom in one universe end up with a car crash and in another no crash? I realize this just example, but the popular conception of the many worlds is that you would have very different histories between each universe - if I went left in stead of right. But the only difference between each universe would be small quantum fluctuations, just how much difference do we end up with?
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
Thus, until you observe the cat, you are in an unforked portion of the universe (with respect to the (un)dead cat). Once you observe the cat, your section of the universe forks into either the branch where it died, or the branch where it lived.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I haven't found the "New Scientist" reference this article cites, but I did find another, better article on the subject: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/09/21/sciuni121.xml
Nonlinear processes can have seemingly probabilistic behavior but still be completely deterministic ... no need for wave collapse at all. I must admit no one has actually formulated a fully functional nonlinear QM theory though :)
Call me crazy, but all that'd determine is if you'd die HERE. Wouldn't impact the other universe, AFAIA. Anyone?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
The term "parallel universe" is a misnomer because it implies that these other universes do not intersect our 'real' universe. In fact, the "parallel" universes are not parellel at all, and cross one another and the 'real' universe infinitely in a wavelike fashion, cancelling and reinforcing one another.
To say that there are an infinite number of universes branching off is like saying that a waveform is the superposition of an infinite number of small waves, stepfunctions, or what have you, and in fact that is exactly how we deal with them mathematically. But we don't boggle at the idea of a wave having infinite dimensions, we recognize this is an artificial persepective induced by our mathematical tools.
There are many ways to leverage atomic-level (things in the domain of QM) changes into macroscopic effects. For example, the exact quantum state of molecules used in setting states in your brain are quantum mechanically defined (don't ask me the details, I've forgotten them). Flip it one way, it's possible that you show up to the intersection 30 seconds earlier or 30 seconds later by almost-forgetting (or just remember) your keys.
I don't think (I *hope*) is asserting that the car is itself subject to QM in the same sense as an electron is, but this whole matter *is*, after all, the basis for Schroedinger's Cat.
It could _work_, but how do you _prove_ it worked?
From my lay person's understanding, there'd be some physical evidence of something attributable to chance or choice, and only statistically could one start to piece together evidence for the theorem. That is, unless you can detect the alternate realities directly. How does one go about doing that?
there's actually some theory, dont remember what it's called or even if it had a name, which if true would mean you could play Russian Roulette forever and never die, because your consciousness follows the universes in which you're still alive. that may be what the GP is referring to.
The same thing has been happening to me. I've gone from Excellent karma to Positive in just a few months. Just today, I had five negative moderations in just a few minutes. I emailed CmdrTaco about it and asked him to look into it, he promised that he would. Hopefully they'll put something in place to stop the abuse of the moderation system before it gets truly out of hand (assuming it hasn't already). I'd hate to see Slashdot devolve to be more and more like Digg.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm not totally convinced by the quantum mind arguments but I do agree that little effects can lead to big changes (butterfly wings and all that). It seems to me that if the many worlds theory is correct that at the beginning (big bang or what not) that each quantum state of a universe subdivision would end up with very different universes (galaxies in different locations, different states of matter, even different physical laws if the changes were enough).
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
All I can find is this rather content-free press release. I tried Deutsch's home page, SPIRES and arXiv, and none of them seem to have any papers by him on this subject since 2002.
Math can prove that a mathematical system is consistent, and within that system can prove properties that result in that system.
Oh really ?
Repeal the 17th amendment? Considering that the 16th was never properly.. ratified... the 17th is prohibition, which then wasn't repealed (the 21st mentions the 18th by number, so it is really repealing women's vote in my renumbering). So you want to repeal prohibition (I agree). But we should really repeal the 16th as well! OK, keep your signature, I gave myself a headache.
well, here's one way. use this site. if you get a 1, go drive head-on into someone.
Doesn't this mean that all of us are immortal, then?
Is it a scientific theory? I've personally never heard any refer to "consciousness"; some folks might even take that as proof of a "soul".
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I thought this outcome was an obvious result of the original EWG model. Whether the "collapse of the wave function" is a real effect (in the Copenhagen interpretation) or a side effect of the way our measurement devices (including our senses and conscious minds) work, the uncollapsed (unobserved) state vector produces the correct results after the collapse ... there's no reason to assume that this would magically change if the collapse was "held off" indefinitely and the measurement was just performed in effect "in parallel" across multiple states.
That is, it would be headline news (well, for a certain kind of paper) if this study produced any other result.
What exactly am I missing?
Also, this doesn't "prove the multiple universe model", it just confirms that it's consistent with observation, but that's kind of the point of the model.
That would mean the universe only splits in situations where you would die. Otherwise your conscious self would be allowed to split up.
It also means that if I see someone die, he/she did not have a conscious self. Or that that person was forked off into a different world. But for that to happen, you would also have to be forked, which was not allowed.
Pretty crazy consequences that to me make the Russian roulette theory very implausible.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes."
And it also explains where the missing socks go, what the number "42" means, and why your battery always runs out on your cell phone when the conversation turns interesting.
In fact, it shares this property with a lot of mathematical assumptions. For example, if you assume that "1=0", all sorts of interesting mathematical facts follow from that (and their opposites, too!).
Strange that none of the wackos who advocate this, and I use the term very loosely, "theory", bother to expain where all of the mass and energy is coming from for all of these extra universes.
The mass and energy isn't coming from anywhere, because there's no new particles being created. The particles are the same ones, in all universes, their state is just getting more complex, and each "parallel universe" is just a description of one consistent state of all the particles of the universe over all histories. We only observe the particles as as having measurable (subject to Heisenberg) positions and velocities because we're using other particles to measure what those positions are.
A better question might be "where is the information needed to describe the state of the particle stored". Or to put it another way "how many bits does God's Computer have, and can we hack it?"
It seems to me that if the many worlds theory is correct that at the beginning (big bang or what not) that each quantum state of a universe subdivision would end up with very different universes (galaxies in different locations, different states of matter, even different physical laws if the changes were enough).
Well, yes, that's kind of a direct outcome of the model. The universe is a superposition of all possible states of the universe, and we only "observe" a little tiny selection of those states because we're measuring the universe using tools that are inside the universe.
It's weird, but if you think about it a while it makes sense.
I've always appreciated the Many Worlds hypothesis because it jibes with my religious views. I am an Orthodox Jew and I believe in God as One and all the other strangely capitalized tenets of faith. The Many Worlds hypothesis lets me easily mesh an omniscient creator with a universe that has free will. God knows every outcome of every "decision" at the quantum level. Whichever "path" is chosen is a function of free will and randomness, but God knows all the endings.
blarg.
Quantum theory appears to state (IANAP, though I started a degree in it, but moved to IT cause it was more fun ... then) that an object (a very small object) may exist in multiple states until observed.
The act of observation fixes [collapses the eigen state] the state of the object observed. If it has an entangled twin, the state of that is resolved at the same time.
Pussyfooting around trying to say "No no, it was fixed all the time, we just didn't know" is NOT what is going on. (And yes, I have read that quote that says "if you feel you understand quantum mechanics intuitively, actually, you just plain don't understand it"). I recall recent experiments showing this.
The multiple universe proposal doesn't appear to solve this "spooky action at a distance".
But the real question is - What is an observer. And why the heck does it matter?
"Cats like plain crisps"
I die in dreams all the time.
... All this and no Bob the Angry Flower?
http://www.angryflower.com/schrod.gif
I agree with this comic, by the way, actual beers are far better than possible beers.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
No. The entire trigger mechanism could fail through many quantum means, such as a cross-section of the protons decaying and it breaking in half.
Trust me, it will happen if Many Worlds is right.
Granted, it will only happen in one out of every septillion universes, so sucks for all the other yous. (Of course, they're dead, so what do they care?)
Also, talking about 'here' is wrong. The universes you live would be just as much 'here' as the universe you died in, because they haven't split yet.
I'm not sure other people would believe it, though. We need to do is a massive scale.
What we really need is some process that will destroy the entire earth with 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% certainty. Then, when it doesn't, we can look around and conclude that, yup, obviously there are parallel universes splitting off and we're in one, because, frankly, that outcome was insanely improbable.
Obviously, the other universes couldn't conclude that, of course, but, then again, they wouldn't be doing any concluding at all, so it hardly matters what their view of the universe is.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
parallel universes were just mathematically proven to not exist.
public class Universe {}
public void main() {
Universe parallels[];
int max = MAX_UNIVERSES;
bool multiverse_exists = true;
for (i=0; i++; i<MAX_UNIVERSES)
{
parallels[i] = new Universe;
}
while (multiverse_exists)
{
multiverse_exists = run_multiverse(parallels);
}
}
UTF-8: There and Back Again
It's not a real theory, it doesn't need to be. It's just a corollary to Many Worlds.
Basically, the idea is that, at any moment, in at least some universe, your consciousness will not end. At any branching, at least one of them includes a universe where 'you' continue to exist for another moment. If you think about it a little bit, you'll get it.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I don't like Many Worlds: It makes a hash out of physical laws.
In some universe, somewhere, there are human beings that think they can fly unaided. Not because the laws are different, or the humans are different, or they're just delusional, but every single time in history they have thought 'I would like to lift up into the air', some crazy quantum miracle has happened that has allowed it.
And a world where people can 'travel in time' with a thought, although what is really happening is that the entire universe just randomly rearranges itself to look like the past and this happens to coincide with these apparent temporal jaunts, and then it just happens to rearrange itself to look like the present again when they 'get back'.
Yes, those universes are extraordinally unlikely, but they still must exist under Many Worlds.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Would that mean overwriting some other poor schlub's consciousness? What'd he ever do to you?
Would that ALSO mean that there are universes where everyone who has ever existed is still alive?
Neither of those sounds pleasant.
It's been a long time.
I still don't think that is proof of anything. Even if we did that thing that with 99.9999999999999% destroys the earth, and it doesn't get destroyed, there's no proof of parallel universes. There's still a 0.0000000000001% chance that the earth even before the experiment that the earth is not destroyed not out of any parallel universe theory but out of sheer luck.
Take the gun experiment. Suppose I don't shoot myself, but I shoot someone else in the head. If that person lives, is that proof of parallel universes? Taking it further, if I shoot 1,000,000 people in the head and one lives, is that proof of parallel universes? Someone lived. Now, if I shoot 999,999 other people and myself, and I'm the only one who lives, is that proof of parallel universes? There's exactly the same chance of that one person being me as any single other person.
Anyhow, I don't know where I'm really going with this, but a situation where the odds are firmly stacked against my continuing existence doesn't seem like any kind of proof at all.
"Schrödinger may or may not have slept here."
So, if parallel universes exist for all possible permutations of possibilities, then I see a built-in paradox. Consider all permutations of if they exist or not and the correctness of those conclusions:
1. Parallel universes exist, that is correct.
2. Parallel universes do not exist, that is wrong.
but also:
3. Parallel universes exist, that is wrong. and
4. Parallel universes do not exist, that is correct.
How can all permutations of these conclusions truely exist in parallel universes? Because if it must be possible that all permutations do exist, then it also must be that there are no parallel universes, at least that must be true somewhere. Or does that represent a fork in the multiverse, and there are also parellel multiverses?
Compare the tone of the New Scientist writeup to the tone of the writeup on Breitbart.com, which has Drudge headline sidebars and doesn't cite where they started writing from. New Scientist is reporting what one of their physics guys thinks is fairly neat stuff from a meeting. The "most important in the history of science" quote is from someone not on the team (apparently) who works at Davis. He may have been having a drink when he said it, the poor guy. Breitbart breaks the quote into two parts and separates them by a few grafs, making it look like a looming consensus. I'm sorry the Breitbart piece was the one linked in, since the New Scientist piece (follow the google link above) is so good. I'm very glad that so many people With Clues are in this thread to discuss it.
Oohhhh, damn, so it's really still 2322? And I thought I'd invented a flying time machine.
This sucks man.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
He obviously hasn't read his ISO Big Bang 1.0 spec. closely enough. The language reads "quantum mechanics behaves *as if* it bifurcates into parallel universes". The actual mechanism is implementation defined. Consult your documentation on Local Universe for more details.
I've stated this humorously, but I mean it quite seriously. The other universes don't necessarily exist merely because your local universe behaves as if they did. To a certain level of accuracy, the orbits of the bodies in the solar system behave as if epicycles exist. What did that prove?
You continued to dream. You just stopped remembering what you dreamt (which is normal... many people are completely unaware of their dreams when they wake up), but you definitely continued to dream.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
One theory says the parallel universes occupy different spaces in a single infinitely large space. This theory says the universes occupy the same space but we only perceive one at a time.
In some parallel universes the link posts you
Make SELinux enforcing again!
If communication between parallel universes were to be attempted, it would naturally have to flow backward in time, through a point where both universes share a common ancestor. Although tachyons are said not to exist, or, if they were to exist, could not possibly bear information, perhaps there is some physical phenomenon which could carry information backward across the time dimension, allowing progeny universes to send messages?
... you must travel with a overweight bearded opera singer... http://sfon.tv/Television/S/Sliders/Images/Sliders_Cast.jpg
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
...there can be only one.
How about: A.) "Noticing", or measuring, causes the superposition to collapse into a particular outcome. B.) Superposition continues to exist, but it is featureless, eternal, complete, and just plain boring. So currently your attention is focused on exploring a harmonious subset of particular outcomes.
"because your consciousness follows the universes in which you're still alive"
Finally, a scientific explaination for all the zombies I encounter during the morning peak hour.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting...
Putting "bush-like" and "universe splitting" in the same sentence makes me a bit nervous, thinking about our political situation.
Table-ized A.I.
The parallel universe theory is just a way of getting infinity back into a currently scientifically defined finite universe. Of course you can simplify the whole issue by having the universe as being infinite, rather than finite, but that creates a problem with time as constant, a finite dimension, as any dimension of an infinite universe has to be infinite itself, so motion is the more applicable infinite dimension in an infinite universe.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Michael Crichton put forward this very idea in a recent novel of his, "Timeline". Despite the fact that his stuff finds its way into various slick "shoot'm-up" movies, the underlying books are incredibly well researched, and the reader can learn a lot from them. For example, "Jurassic Park" was a well-reasoned exposition on the folly of trying to understand or predict the behavior of large systems, and "State of Fear" was a brilliant look into the politics of big-time environmentalism. Please understand that I don't necessarily agree with everything Dr. Crichton writes. But he makes the reader ask tough questions and manages to teach the reader some math and science along the way. All his books are worth careful reading. This can be said about few authors.
It doesn't matter if Copenhagen, many worlds or some other interpretation is "right" as they are merely models to try and explain the math of quantum physics. Their irrelevance is similar to the electron, we don't need *it* to make accurate predictions, although it can be helpful in visualising what is ocurring.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
Fry: So it's true, there is an infinite number of universes.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: No, just the two.
Fry: Oh, well. I guess that's enough.
Perhaps Microsoft used these equations in the latest version of Excel.
You can't possibly gather enough statistics to prove quantum immortality, since by definition you can't use anyone experience as proof. You can only use yourself as proof, and you need to somehow measure the potential lethality of every event.
Because of its epistemological deficiencies, QI is a useless, unprovable theory. And even if it's true, you wouldn't be able to test it, since the longest life-line worlds are the ones in which you either choose against or are prevented from pulling the trigger.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
then schizophrenics are like ...quantum astronauts.
"My dreams have come true, I am an astronaut."
*I am reading Robert Anton Wilson so I have great disdain for the word 'is' now, and the word 'true' as well.
That's assuming that you can't be in two places at the one time without knowing about it. That's also assuming a lot about time that we don't know.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
If Paul Everett was on the right track in this Universe does it mean he is on the wrong track in a parallel universe. Then this becomes a case recursive reasoning.
If this is correct you would have never have written this as surely knowing this would have sent you to the next plane of intelligence already?
"the Bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes"
So what does this mean in practice? Will we or won't we invade Iran?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
The fundamental problem with Many-Worlds, as I see it, is that it's a source of infinite energy.
Suppose time is quantized, and the universe runs at Planck Time intervals. Each Planck moment has a certain number of interactions, the particular one that occurs determining the preconditions to the next, to the next, etc, for all eternity.
If all things that can occur do occur, then the amount of state -- information content -- energy in the multiverse is constantly increasing.
Sure, Quantum Dynamics is weird, but when did it get to violate the Laws of Thermodynamics?
According to Deutsch's book The Fabric of Reality (iirc) one of the consequences of Many Worlds is that time travel is logically possible. You can travel back to a different parallel universe and it doesn't matter if you kill your grandfather there because you're not in the same universe you were born in. It's a far-fetched example but it shows that you can't rule out the possibility of a definitive test of Many Worlds.
There are a lot of loose lazy understandings of occam's razor flying around on this thread. To be precise, Occam's Razor states that the explanation with the least number of arbitrary assumptions is the most likely to be correct.
Not the most plausible, or the most intuitive, or even the most "simple" if we are being exact. Just the least number of arbitrary assumptions.
This is because every arbitrary assumption you introduce has a chance of being wrong. So the more there are, the more chance your explanation is wrong.
Of course, this is probabilistic and therefore is not guaranteed to indicate the definite correct explanation. But given no further information, it is the most prudent explanation to choose.
The scientific approach to exploring other explanations is to introduce one arbitrary assumption, and devise various experiments to find evidence for that assumption. Should enough evidence be found to back it up, its no longer an arbitrary assumption, and we are back to an explanation with no arbitrary assumptions, and can safely add another and begin testing it.
A lot of people decry Occams Razor as a refuge of the closed minded, but in reality it's just a sensible default on which to gradually build a more thorough explanation. In terms of directions of enquiry, it does not discriminate. If you want to say you lost your car keys because of a poltergeist, fine. Occams Razor says it's more likely you just misplaced them, but if you like the ghost idea, it doesnt tell you not to look for evidence of a poltergeist. And if you find the evidence Occams Razor shifts position to back you up.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Great post, parent. Your penultimate paragraph especially is right on the money. The falsifiability criterion always struck me as a bizarre one anyway. I know that Popper (its inventor) was motivated to come up with a criterion whereby enterprises like experimental physics would be classes as "science" and enterprises such as Freudian psychology would be classed as "non-science", which is fine, but the principle cannot extend that far.
For one thing, as the parent points out, there are scientific "axiomatic" statements that cannot be shown to be false. In fact, this problem (if you think it is a problem) is not as isolated as the parent's post may suggest. The model of falsification that we have in mind looks something like this: We have a theory T that we want to test, so we derive from T some prediction about observable phenomenon O, and then we perform a test and see if O occurs. If O does not occur then, we conclude, T must be incorrect. Schematically, the model is just a modus tollens argument:
If T, then O (derived prediction)
Not O (we observe that the predicted phenomenon does not occur)
Therefore, not T
However, the problem is that no theory (excepting possibly some toy examples) is sufficient to entail, all by itself, any observational prediction. In order to derive any such observational prediction we will have to make additional assumptions about (e.g.) the way our instruments work, how the formulae of the theory are to be calculated and applied, the system of logic that we use to derive the predictions, etc. So, going back to the model, what we really have is something more like:
If (T & A1 & A2 & A3 &...) then O
Not O
Therefore, not (T & A1 & A2 & A3 &...)
But all this tells us is that at least one of those conjuncts is false (i.e. either T or A1 or A2 or...), but it can offer no insight as to which conjunct(s) is (are) the false one(s). Hence, if falsifiability requires that there be an observation that can deductively show that a theory is false, no theory is falsifiable. At best, we might say that *entire theoretical groups* can be falsifiable, but this is not particularly helpful since such theoretical groups will almost certainly include mathematics and logic as well.
Additionally, even if the above problem (the so-called "underdetermination" problem) can be overcome, there is an additional serious problem with the falsifiability criterion; namely that it is not at all clear which observations are possible and which are not. It may seem that the only handle we have on possibility (other than what we've already done, of course) is what we can conceive of--if something is imaginable, or makes sense on imagining, then we might be inclined to say that it is possible. But notice that this involves a rather strange claim for a Popperian to make, namely that we somehow have this amazing facility of mind such that if we can imagine something, it really is possible and, if we cannot imagine it, then it isn't possible (because, recall, this is how we show that things like psychoanalysis are not science--we cannot conceive of any observation which would falsify it). But why should we suppose that we have such a tremendous faculty of mind? For one thing, the claim that conceivability entails possibility certainly isn't itself falsifiable...
The Republicans already proved the existence of Bizzaro World.
Anyhow, I don't know where I'm really going with this, but a situation where the odds are firmly stacked against my continuing existence doesn't seem like any kind of proof at all.
What do you mean? The odds are 100% you will live, somewhere.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
add in some whiskey to that and i'll quit my server to join yours.
waitaminute... damn. still having troubles distinguishing between reality and ffxi...
Karma: NaN
And this is supposed to be new?
I thought about this several years ago, when I studied physics.
Particles typically describe world lines in the variants of Hilbert space that quantum mechanics use,
with say 4 dimensions per particle in the universe. When interacting, such as a photon hitting a half
transparent mirror, the world line described by that photons wave packet gets split in 2, and enough
splitting like that will give a branching structure of waves in Hilbert space.
In other words, the interacting particles in Fock space gives wavy structures that branches, as long as
it is sufficiently for from thermal equilibrium.
Kim0
See, you can't assume that fact is true and proceed to use it to prove that it is true. What I'm saying is that if it weren't true, it is still possible that you can perform these experiments and arrive at the same experimental results as if it were true. Therefore, no proof.
Deutsch himself did not present, according to the speakers list. The New Scientist mentioned his collaborators Wallace and Saunders, who presented the following talks: David Wallace
Probability in the Everett interpretation: state of play
I will review the current state of the probability problem. My main focus will be on the attempts by David Deutsch and myself to provide a proof of the Born Rule starting from Everettian assumptions, but I will also attempt to locate these attempts within the more general framework of the probability problem. Simon Saunders
'The Everett interpretation
I shall present an overview of quantum mechanics in the Everett interpretation, that emphasises its structural characteristics, as a theory of what exists. In this respect it shares common ground with other fundamental theories in physics. As such its appeal is conservative; it makes do with the purely unitary equations of quantum mechanics as exceptionless and universal. It also makes do with standard methods for extracting 'high level' or 'emergent' ontology, the furniture of macroscopic worlds, from largish molecules on up. It would appeal all the more if it made do with standard epistemological principles too - for example, in the context of inductive statistical confirmation, with standard Bayesian epistemology. But this links to the question of the interpretation of probability in the Everett interpretation, and here the theory seems anything but conservative. It is a common complaint that the approach leaves no room at all for talk of uncertainty. I shall argue, again on conservative interpretative practises, that this claim is incorrect. Chance events are, indeed, revealed in a surprising light - as quantum branchings - but they are the more perspicuous, and their properties and quantitative measure better explained, in light of that. Neither one of those abstracts sounds like it is giving any theoretical or experimental support to the "many worlds interpretation" over other interpretations. At best, they purport to show how MWI is compatible with probability theory — a far lesser claim.
Indeed, it is impossible to give Everettian MWI any precedence over other interpretations, because by construction Everett made the MWI experimentally identical to conventional interpretations of QM.
Deutsch is famous for claiming that MWI is empirically distinguishable from other interpretations, but again, this is not actually possible. You have to read the fine print. I read one of his books years ago where he made that claim, and IIRC there was some footnote which explained that he wasn't actually talking about Everett's MWI, but some modification of quantum mechanics he has proposed which is compatible "in spirit" with the actual MWI. Well, fair enough, but it's not really legitimate to claim that he's talking about the MWI anymore: he's talking about his own theory (which has no experimental support).
What I'm saying is that if it weren't true, it is still possible that you can perform these experiments and arrive at the same experimental results as if it were true.
No you can't. If it's untrue you will arrive nowhere because you're dead.
If it's true, OTOH, you will arrive in a universe where it's easy to demonstrate because you are somehow alive. (A bunch of the dead yous will arrive in other universes, but I'm not certain why you should care about those guys.)
It's hard for other people to extrapolate the truth or untruth, because most of them will be in a universe with a dead you, and won't be able to tell which kind. But for you, it's easy. You, of course, will only be in the amazingly improbably universe where you lived.
This is why I recommend doing the entire planet at once. Then everyone can see.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
> Put a gun to your head. Pull the trigger. If you are
> still alive, you have proved the many-worlds theory.
Larry Niven already wrote that short story, as All The Myriad Ways.
Does a parallel world theory help explain why the bullet's particles all simultaneously leapt one foot to the left?
The branches wouldn't merge - too many other things would be different to allow a merge to take place. For example, in one branch, Darl McBride is a scum-sucking bottom-feeder, and in another he becomes a lawyer ... oops - same diff - bad example :-)
Kevin Smith on Prince
No you can't. If it's untrue you will arrive nowhere because you're dead.
You're absolutely wrong here. If it's untrue, there is a 0.00000001% (or however minimal we're setting it) chance that you stay alive. That is if it is untrue. If it is true, there's a 100% chance you stay alive. Either way, it is possible to arrive at the same result. There is no way to tell how you arrived at that result.
If we're setting the odds at 0% survival, there is still no proof, because even with multiple universes, there would be no way to survive then. The only way to survive in that case would be to not shoot yourself, which doesn't provide proof of multiple universes, either.
As far as "doing the entire planet," I doubt that would make much of a difference. There's no saying that anyone else will live through it; it still only guarantees that you see it, because it's possible that everybody except you dies.
It happens to be that the answer to life, the universe and everything in that universe is 43
Sounds like prime real estate to me.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That is true, but I think Occam's Razor has an application here. The ordered universe is simply the most practical reason for our memories being the way they are. The multiple-universes theory, however, doesn't have the same advantage. It's alot easier for me to believe that, if I live after shooting myself in the head, the bullet simply must have deflected off my skull, or missed any critical portion of my brain, or left me a vegetable. Probability does not apply to former events. Again, if multiple universes is false, and you live through the shot to the head, the probability of your having lived is entirely irrelevant, and there is a way to trace back (given the proper knowledge) how exactly you survived.
Not enough people understand this about the Many Worlds interpretation. It really is a slightly different theory, with (in principle) testable consequences.
>Take the gun experiment. Suppose I don't shoot myself, but I shoot someone else in the head. If that person lives, is that proof of parallel universes?
No, other people are perfectly free to die, it is only your personal consciousness that would be uninterrupted in a MWI immortality scenario. It only works because *you* can't experience death if there is always some quantum possibility that your consciousness will go on.
Personally, I think that artificially induced unconsciousness (anastesia, being knocked out, etc) proves that this does not work.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
'Wave functions', string theory, etc., is just an If-Then-Else loop. A particle keeps vibrating, representing endless possible outcomes, until variable 'x' changes indicating the act of observing and then the loop reaches a conclusion and the particle assumes the state represented by the condition it's in when observed. Endless possibilities until the particle is observed, loop is exited, and a final determination is made.
But don't they also NOT exist then?
If you have an alternative way to reference the direct election of senators amendment that is shorter then what I just typed here I will be happy to use it thanks
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You're absolutely wrong here. If it's untrue, there is a 0.00000001% (or however minimal we're setting it) chance that you stay alive. That is if it is untrue. If it is true, there's a 100% chance you stay alive. Either way, it is possible to arrive at the same result. There is no way to tell how you arrived at that result.
Man, you've suddenly got an amazingly strict standard for scientific results.
All experiments have a margin where they might succeed or fail simply by chance, so I don't know why this one is any different. If you really don't trust it, you can always repeat it a few times.
As far as "doing the entire planet," I doubt that would make much of a difference. There's no saying that anyone else will live through it; it still only guarantees that you see it, because it's possible that everybody except you dies.
Only if you design the experiment stupidly. I specifically said 'the planet' instead of 'every person'. It's very hard to imagine a way you survive without a planet. And, if you do, that's also incredibly improbably and hence proof.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
always forget that Occam's Razor requires all things to be equal? This means you need measurable results, something we don't have yet. It could be that for the measurable results the parallel universe bit is the simplest explanation. Who knows? Neither of us - that much is certain.
"Little is much when little you need."
Better start rowing, rowing, rowing your boat.
You probably are referring to this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide
IMO, if this metaphysical argument is valid any support for the many worlds interpretations would be pretty good news... What are your thoughts, ghost of Ben Franklin? http://www.drmcninja.com/