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The Hidden Reality Draws Ire From Physicists
eldavojohn writes "Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering, titled The Hidden Reality. He's not entirely alone; Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The journal Nature ran a short piece (subscription required) trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact, but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile, with Salon even calling it 'the science behind' the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory."
The press repeating pseudoscience as fact? Say it ain't so!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
His sole beef is that it's impossible to prove or disprove. I don't suppose he'd mind if we at least thought about it? From the tone of the article it seems he'd rather we worry about what's possible, rather than flights of fancy. If we worried about the possible, what would we really have?
You can check out a fairly entertaining interview of Brian Greene by Stephen Colbert from last Thursday on Colbert's web site.
I can't say this will educate you further one way or another and I am certainly not qulified to weigh in on either side of the debate but the guy was pretty candid with Stephen and, well, I found it entertaining...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
But the conservation of ire insures that an equal amount of economists will chill out.
Kaku is particularly guilty of this. I seem to recall him talking about dark matter on %RandomShow% some time ago and excitedly stating that it may be the gravitational pull from an alternate universe. It's fun as a thought game, but little else. It's Mickey Mouse anti-physics, and we could do without.
This means that I can travel to the other universes, kill off the me from other ones and become stronger? I am pretty sure that the awesome Jet Li movie came out first (seriously, when he is going in regular motion and the sparks are in slow motion at the end, awesome). And yes, this is all 100% on topic since the movie discusses the multi-verse (it is not everyday that I can figure out a way to shove a Jet-Li reference into /.)
The world is how you make it
We may one day have the science to punch a hole in the universe and go elsewhere. To do the same with a god you need to epic level handbook and a munchkin like devotion to being a rules-lawyer.
Sounds like the submitter doesn't know the meaning of the word theory?
Now tell me about a scientific fact, proposing that we talk about empirical science here.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
what does it have to do with this world? multiverse cannot be science, it's talking about unobservables.
If there's a proposed mechanism that causes observable effects and also produces many bubble universes, why would the side effect make it unscientific?
more theory than fact
To scientists, these terms are not mutually exclusive.
What's so freakin' hard about getting that concept right? Oh, yeah, people can't spell (much less pronounce) "hypothesis".
Errm - well, the double slit experiment is kind of observable, and there are lots of sort of explanations of it that don't involve a multi-verse.
But you could say that Feynman should have been taken literally, although he didn't want to be.
To be frank, Feynman should have been taken literally (and with a bucket full of worship) full stop.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
unobservables
Irrespective of whether I agree with Green or not — these can be inferred. Dark matter and dark energy come to mind.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
OK, it seems that even people who should know the difference can't distinguish between the word theory and hypothesis. What was meant in the write up when this was said "Greene's book is more theory than fact" is "Greene's book is more hypothesis or conjecture rather than theory". A theory has been tested and more than once. It is as close to fact as humans can get. This watering down of the word theory is bad, it causes people to be confused and discount theories. Which is why people doubt the theory of evolution or global climate change.
Use the word right or don't use it.
OK, I'll stop ranting.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I would argue that the effects are observable, and they're against it. If every choice is available somewhere, why does probability work so well? Why can we somehow navigate this infinite sea of all possibilities with confidence?
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
Absolutely. Any decent cleric can plane shift, but meeting their God (other than by the usual means) requires a very friendly DM.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
...where this book is up for a Pulitzer, so sticks and stones, ya haters!
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Why all the negative spin in the summary? As far as I can tell, nobody is accusing Greene of "propaganda." Rather, this is /. propagandizing at its absolute worst.
Here's the real summary: Brian Greene has written on string theory for a popular audience in the past, and he's also fascinated by some of the more fringe-y elements of physics, such as the multiverse theory. He has a new book out. He has not taken any public stance on the Tea Party, abortion, or the Iraq war -- and honestly, I think it's sad that it seems to have become a requirement of modern journalism to pretend that he has.
Breakfast served all day!
and excitedly stating that it may be the gravitational pull from an alternate universe
The difference is that any such model would be testable via dark matter observations.
The guy is out on the most feeble of limbs with his multiverse idea, since 'string theory' itself is little more than conjecture... but to take the edge off the 'not science' rhetoric here, the guy is a very well regarded theoretical physicist. Is it any less scientific-wild-ass-guess than Hawkings' notions about black holes? No. He at least has enough clout to get data access to the CERN supercollider experiments, so its not like its -me- throwing this crap out there hoping it will stick.
I read Fabric of the Cosmos and thoroughly enjoyed it. I then read the Elegant Universe and grew more and more frustrated with each page as Greene delved into theories that can never be proven or disproven. At a certain point, this become little more than fantasy and has as much credibility as religion and mythology, both of which can also never be proven or disproven.
In a parallel universe, Brian Greene is lauded as a genius and his interpretation of multiverse theory is universally accepted!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And that's the problem. It's one thing to play with various mathematical models like M-theory, and to some extent it is science in that researchers in these areas are trying to work out mathematical models that might give us a quantum theory of gravity. But something pretty peculiar has happened, particularly with some of the string theorists, in that they tend not to speak in the normal, cautious language that physicists usually do when talking about very hypothetical models. They seem to start talking in terms that would suggest to an uninformed layman that they have the Answer, so to speak. Science journalists, sadly, are among the most gullible of laymen, and will happily give guys like Greene far to much credence, and guys like Greene in return seem to take this as an opportunity to try to fight the scientific battle in the public press, which to my mind is quite inappropriate. Greene, will of course, in front of the proper audience (his peers in the physics community) speak much more cautiously, and though I hesitate to call that duplicitous behavior, I sometimes wonder. Being a science popularizer like Sagan or Hawking, is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand you want to include hypothetical solutions to long-standing problems to give an account of the state of physics and cosmology, but at the same time you want to make sure that your layman audience understands that these are in fact hypothetical solutions, currently untestable (and with variants on M-theory and its kin, for all intents and purposes pretty much completely untestable with the level of technology at our disposal for the foreseeable future, if ever).
Another thing I don't particularly like about Greene and his gang of string theorists is that they tend to poo-poo the major competitor, loop quantum gravity. While LQG isn't currently testable either, unlike the various superstring theories, which just seem to get messier as you look at them, LQG works within the 3+1 dimensional framework of classical physics. It too may be wrong, but it has a certain attraction in its own right.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If every choice is available somewhere, why does probability work so well?
Localization and abstraction. Somehow we're able to restrict our viewpoint to a simple dynamical system with initial conditions (or similar set ups that have relevant partial knowledge) and assign probabilities to the outcome (or unknowns of the system).
I agree, mutliverse is just the atheist equivalent of God. Instead of being omnipotent and omniscient, it is simply everything that could ever be. They like it though cause each one is random, rather than having one that is designed. Though neither are science.
Right conclusion, wrong reasoning. Its the equivalent because no experiments can be performed that would falsify the theory. Or rephrased the theories are both non-falsifiable.
Also your description of an atheist is a description of a non-christian, not a non-theist. Superficially, a multiverse does not appear to be compatible with native animist religious beliefs or even classical greco-roman paganism, so its not much of "God" for atheists.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Science popularizers like Greene have to tread a careful line. They're not paid to talk about the most important work, which most people wouldn't understand. Real cutting-edge physics is comprehensible only to those extremely skilled in the art, which cuts out even the vast majority of scientists. But people like believing that they're getting dispatches from the front, especially in physics, because that's where people imagine lays the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
You can't even pretend to know much about string theory without some very advanced work in quantum mechanics AND general relativity, which means knowing an awful lot of very, very difficult calculus. For 99.9% even of readers of Scientific American, they're skipping straight past all of that.
Which means, in essence, telling comforting lies. That's common in education, simplifying a subject to the point where it's essentially false. It's common in science (cf. genetics), but in other fields as well. History, as taught in schools, is so far from reality that college professors have to spend a full year (at least) undoing the damage.
It's similar to the situation with space research: most of the actual science is done by the robots, but people like the human stories associated with manned flight. The real science is done practically with the rounding errors in the budget.
In the case of string theory, that means that a bunch of people doing interesting but (bluntly) irrelevant speculation get far, far more attention than they deserve. It's not that they're right, wrong, or Not Even Wrong. People want to know what they're doing, because they've been told that we're Just Around The Corner from The Big Answers. It's a lie, and essentially everybody familiar enough with the work knows it. But they also know it's where the funding comes from.
I mean seriously... a multi-billion-dollar supercollider? How on earth does that get funded? Because a bunch of people who can't tell a fermion from a boson imagine that they're part of a grand human experiment. And maybe, in the grand human scheme of things, it is worth the money, though I personally doubt it. Still, it's the dirty little secret of scientific work: popularizers write a lot of books about stuff that's really of very little earthy interest, in order to attract enough attention to the field of science to keep the actual work going on. The grad students counting bacterial colonies or coming up with new protein folding algorithms or other tedious stuff that slowly an un-telegentically advances understanding.
I don't like the little turf war going on between the string theoriests, who get more attention than they deserve, and the anti-string-theorists, who are doing equally unproductive work. Both are intriguing speculations that might one day be of intense interest, but at the moment are of little value either practical or philosophical. They get attention only because they're right at the edge, but most of us are so far from the edge that they'd be invisible under any other circumstances. Both should be left to labor diligently in quiet, and let their little funding turf war be lumped in with the rest of the academic bickering rather than become a great philosophical debate.
He's selling the idea of a multiverse, but if he can't tell us how to get to Tanelorn nobody should take him seriously.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But you could say that Feynman should have been taken literally, although he didn't want to be.
Oh I think he was quite serious about his rationalizations for men visiting "gentleman's clubs" and he had some pretty good insights into the problems of lower level science education and also some insights into the dating scene. Oh wait you're talking about his physics work.... thats different, I think?
He had some good ideas, generally, but for some reason people latch on to the flakey woo woo stuff instead of his sobering insights into science education.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
[ You don't need string theory to argue in favor of a multiverse; even simple double-slit experiments appear to show that photons from different universes are somehow able to interact with (or collide with) each other. ]
this is exactly how on Fringe Walter was able to make a window to view the other universe.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"more theory than fact"
That is a non-sequitur.
loop quantum gravity .... It too may be wrong, but it has a certain attraction in its own right.
Hmmm .. gravity? .. attraction? ... You may be on to something there!
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Someone who whines that the multiverse theory must necessarily be false because it leads him to uncomfortable conclusions regarding his personal belief in morality has no business criticizing any scientific theory, no matter how speculative it is.
And seriously people, pseudoscience? You are claiming that Susskind and Hawking engage in pseudoscience, like Deepak Chopra?
This criticism isn't based on scientific merit, this is envy of popular attention.
Nah. The multi-verse wave function (whatever it is) should be more or less smooth enough. By killing off all your "twins" you convert your wave function into Dirac delta function. I guess at that moment the multi-verse will respond with a loud "gulp" sound (in hard vacuum) and eliminate you and entire history of our your existence (also it will edit out all ./ logs, I guess).
Wait, to whom am I talking right now?
I'm not sure if "remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact" was from Nature or the story submitter, but no wonder the general public is quite confused about science in general. The sentence implies that it's "just a theory" and that theories aren't highly thought of by scientists, yet the same types of people who object to Mr. Greene's work being though of as useful rant and rave when the theory of evolution is treated as anything other than fact.
If his work is a theory and is supported by enough empirical evidence that we assume it's correct in most circumstances, then it really is interesting and I'd like to know about it. If it's not, don't call it a theory (even if he does). Call it a hypothesis or science fiction or some such thing.
I've believed in a Multiverse since I was 12, before I dug my fingers into my Players' Handbook and DMG. If 20 million people play D&D, it must be true.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
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String or M theory presents the possibility of a theory that doesn't need a ton of constants, just a description of a Calibu-Yau geometry, and the rest "falls out". It's that description that is currently lacking, the search space is enormous and makes a computer search for the answer to the traveling salesman problem look trivial. So yeah, it's far from proved, because it's far from done, and that step isn't in the cards till the right shape for that space is discovered.
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The multiverse also solves some otherwise very nasty problems in similar fashion, or it could.
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Neither is proved, of course, but they hold out the hope that a theory of everything is even possible, and the light was getting really dim on that -- so we can hope. All such things of course deserve skepticism, but until proved wrong, they are in some sense more right than the current models which we KNOW have to be wrong because they can't be reconciled with one another at the limits. They are just useful until we find something better.
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Such is science.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
By that same logic, though, you can flush most of Einsteins work too. We do not posses, nor are we likely to posses in our lifetimes barring alien intervention, the technology to directly test and observe either the General or Special theories of relativity. The math works, its elegant, and is therefore the best explanation people can come up with. String theory tries to tie the quantum aspects together with the space time and forces described by AE. Its only as credible as the information that its based on.
what does it have to do with this world? multiverse cannot be science, it's talking about unobservables.
if we entertain the thought of multiverse, we might as well entertain the thought of a God. what's the difference?
Ohh you mean like dark matter, the big bang theory, string theory, the god particle, comet extinction theory, or even evolution?
All of them are theories. Theories try to explain something that may or not be observable. They're made because there's a problem of why something happens that isn't very straightforward. A lot of times they're wrong, but that's also part of scientific progress.
probability work so well
Does it? Kahnemann and Tversky might have thought otherwise.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Is that somewhere out there exists a universe where beer is free and all the girls look like Natalie Portman, and here I am stuck with you nerds reading flaimbait on slashdot.
No. Theory is not fact. Theory is a well tested and accurate model of the facts, but it is not the fact itself.
For example, the Theory of General Relativity does not precisely match up with reality as we see it. We're not exactly sure what's wrong with it right now, and the errors are ridiculously insignificant, but it is clear that it's not entirely fact. And despite not being fact, and despite being wrong at some ridiculously small epsilon, it is still by far the most accurate theory that we have.
And besides, if Theory were Fact, then Newton's Theory of Motion would still be true today, as it was when he formulated it, and it was widely accepted.
And of course a "theory" can be discredited, and falsified. Such as "Caloric theory".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
For they all are guilty of mental masturbation when it comes to physics. Oh, and include whomever postulated that the Higgs is so abhorrent to nature that it comes back through time to prevent its discovery.
It is a general "parallel universe" or "alternate reality" problem, and not any problem with your understanding. You (and everyone else) have failed to identify the matter/energy constraint. That is to say, if there is an alternative, it must be expressed in matter, and maintaining more than one reality requires additional matter (or base state of energy). I've conceptualized it with a familiar software developer concept: MVC: Model-View-Controller. Anytime when looking at gobs of data (including the state of reality) you need to look and interact with data in a uniform way. MVC allows for this. The model is the data model - the structure of, and data itself. List, tree, etc. The universe would probably express this as dimensional (3 or 10) planes of energy. Next is the view, with is the manifestation of the model. This would be an instantaneous snapshot of the universe, including velocities, etc. Finally the controller are the laws that work on the data. They do not work on the view, as the view is dependent of the model.
Every time you propose an alternate time line, then you need to copy the model (you can share the viewer and controller (if you didn't things would be "noticeably different")) But to copy the model is to acquire the energy to express a whole other universe, and not once, but at every decision point on the time line.
Physicists are just now starting to realize this and many are starting to argue that space-time is quantized on the order of Planck length (and time). While this is infinitesimally small, it vastly reduces the possible outcomes from infinite to a manageable number, possibly 1. Quantized space time locks down the source state and limits the possibilities of the next state, so it is feasible that the laws of the universe would only allow 1 possible next state. Heim was the first (that I know of) to argue for quantized space-time. I've since seen other people derive it on their own and get a similar (yet not identical) result
(but all are some close value to Planck length)
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Huh? Both theories of relativity have been quite well tested, special relativity especially so. Mass-energy equivalence, time dilation and mechanics (where different from Newtonian) have all had experimental tests. Similarly, for GR, differences in Mercury's orbit, gravitational time dilation (Pound-Rebka experment) and so forth.
By that same logic, though, you can flush most of Einsteins work too. We do not posses, nor are we likely to posses in our lifetimes barring alien intervention, the technology to directly test and observe either the General or Special theories of relativity.
Well I guess then you must believe in alien intervention because its all happened already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
From the TFA:
"Multiverse theories aren't theories—they're science fictions, theologies, [...]"
Theology is the keyword here. Postulating a multiverse with many similar universes to this one basically eliminates any objective significance this particular planet Earth with its history has. You can nuke everything and "know" that our culture will continue in other universes. So accepting a multiverse theory would destroy ethics: it would kill God.
I agree... although I live in a universe where we don't have atomic clocks, satellites, particle accelerators, atomic bombs, the planet Mercury, telescopes to observe the bending of light, etc. It is truly frustrating to live in the 18th century.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
More proof that we need to be able to moderate summaries
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Given the authors first sentence disclaimer, I can't fault his expression of well grounded opinion, but I can disagree.
I don't think investment bankers, or quants, are any less moral than vultures or other scavengers. They serve a valued role in eliminating mindless investors with too much money and redistributing fertilizer so more valuable species can take root.
Admittedly, we are all suffering right now from the after effects of some dead elephants. But they were dead before the vultures exposed their rot.
When I was reading cosmology many years ago, it struck me as philosophy. It still does. But philosophy is not bad, and not necessarily not science. Remember that science began as natural philosophy that threw out the all the previous assumptions of how the universe worked. The best science still throws out previous assumption. Assumptions like wave require a media, that we can produce an arbitrary energy, that things can be cut into arbitrarily small sizes, that we can measure things to arbitrary precision. It is also know that when scientist try to invalidate these treasured assumptions, the scientists that have built their careers on these assumptions will revolt.
Take General Relativity. It is a theory that makes some predictions, is getting increasing support, but is not as testable as the photoelectric effect which has many practical applications. These practical applications are key because such routine use of theory tends to validate it. Any theory that remains in the lab is simply going to be that, a theory. General Relativity is supported, it describes the way the universe might be, and is the simplest explanation, but it certainly does not explain how the universe has to be. This unlike QM, which due to the practical applications seems to describe how the universe works, at least within the domain.
So what we have in the book are a series of scenarios. IMHO the valid question to ask is does the data support these scenarios, do these scenarios fall out the math, and is there any chance that any of them can be tested. If the first two are true then, to me, they have some interest. If the data has to be cherry picked and the math is severely obtuse, that is an issue. Otherwise it is like the theory that there is one electron in the universe. It may be true, but it may not be useful or testable. That does not mean anyone should be outraged because someone brings it up.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If every choice is available somewhere, why does probability work so well?
"Every choice" does not mean infinite choices.
Think of this: every molecule of air in the room is moving in some random direction, so there is a possibility that all of them will be moving in the same direction, with the consequence that the air pressure in one wall will be zero and the opposite wall will be blown apart by the air pressure, right?
Wrong. Every molecule is moving in a random direction, as a result of collision with other molecules. Assuming the existence of this "multiverse", it would *not* contain an infinite number of universes, only those universes that could be split by a quantum entanglement.
That is to say, there would not exist an universe where all the molecules of air are moving in the same direction, only universes where each molecule is moving in a possible direction as defined by its interaction with other molecules.
Probability is still maintained because "infinite" is so much larger than any number the multiverse could generate.
So maybe I'm a horrible 'literalist' (not sure there's a word for that, so I guess I'm ... not?) but there's only one Universe.
One.
Any other kind of 'verses' are all a part of this same Universe, that realm which encompasses all of existence. To include further things within the Universe is possible, but it is not possible to have more than one Universe. Even a "Multi" verse is yet still a "Uni" verse when one considers the whole as a single whole... as one without any logical doubt can do.
Therefore the "multiverses" would all still exist within the single Universe. For which reason I would prefer to remove the "verse" from "multiverse" and perhaps call it a "multicosmos" or something equally pointless in the general scheme of things except for which to sate my spontaneous lust for pedantry.
Disclaimer: I've been reading The Baroque Cycle.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
By that same logic, though, you can flush most of Einsteins work too. We do not posses, nor are we likely to posses in our lifetimes barring alien intervention, the technology to directly test and observe either the General or Special theories of relativity. The math works, its elegant, and is therefore the best explanation people can come up with. String theory tries to tie the quantum aspects together with the space time and forces described by AE. Its only as credible as the information that its based on.
What? Both special and general relativity have been proven over and over again. Special relativity is used on a daily basis for a variety of applications such as GPS, particle accelerators, atomic clocks, etc etc. General relativity has made correct predictions about the orbit of mercury, and gravitational lensing has been directly observed around the sun and distant galaxies. Gravity waves have not yet been directly observed but there is indirect evidence for their existence in the measurements of falling binary stars.
Did you ever read Rational Mysticism ? Because I did, and I found it to be very fascinating, written from a skeptic's viewpoint (as opposed to a cynical skeptic) and he came away with a lot of interpretations that I found intriguing.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Greene's NYT op ed piece perpetuates the silly notion that photons will somehow stop in their tracks and start going backwards due to the accelerating expansion. No they won't, they will just be red shifted further and there will certainly continue to be some asymptotic limit to how far away the furthest galaxies were that we are seeing, but everything we can see now is in a sense in front of the CMB and the CMB will keep coming, no matter how cold it gets.
While it must remain outside the realm of direct observation, I'm more comfortable with the idea of the multiverse as the domain in which physics has evolved through cycles from those Type 1a supernova eggs through some inflating placenta to a next generation Big Bang than I am about any notion that physics is somehow simultaneously testing countless possible variations on its laws. Larger possibility spaces demand smarter exploration techniques.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
I heard an interview with Greene on the radio last week. He was talking about a junior-level quantum mechanics problem and he said something so wrong my head just about exploded. He said that something fundamentally changes about an electron when you localize it. That what was a probability wave now becomes a point particle. What?!? No it doesn't. It's still a wave that is governed by quantum mechanics. It doesn't suddenly become a point particle governed by Newtonian mechanics.
This long explanation was somehow key to his interpretation of the Many-Worlds theory. He also implied that the many universes of Brane theory and the many universes of the Many-Worlds theory, and other universes due to a Swiss-cheese spacetime are all the same in some unexplained way.
Brian Greene has been out in left field for a long time. Let's build a fence around him and call it a pasture.
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"Greene's book is more theory than fact"?
Just stop it. A theory is built of facts. You are just feeding the 'evolution is just a theory' trolls.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Just how many scientific theories (in the modern sense of the word "theory") have actually been demonstrated to be outright wrong? Most of the time they are subsumed into larger, more expansive theories (ie. Newtonian mechanics becomes a good description of gravity and force where everything is in the same relativistic frame of reference). About the only theories that I can think of that probably have been outright turfed are the pre-tectonic plate geological theories and pre-Big Bang cosmological models (ie. steady state). Because modern scientific theories have to be evidence-based, the evidence itself rarely changes, so many of the underlying ideas will simply be imported to the newer, more expansive theory.
It's not like when we actually do discover a quantum theory of gravity that Classical Physics will get tossed out the door. Einstein's work will, like Newton's before it, simply become part of a larger theory.
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If you want to get the actual scientific scoop on multiverses, as opposed to John Horgan's myopic rant, check out this excellent article by renowned cosmologist Max Tegmark. It was the cover story in Scientific American a few years ago.
|>ouglas
Never say never. Parts of QM, relativity, evolution and pretty much every other theory we hold dear took much the same criticism until someone figured out clever ways to test them.
My wife came up with the best multiverse theory I've heard. She said that if there are an infinite number of universes and everything that could happen happens in some universe, then there must be a universe somewhere without (the need for) a multiverse. And if there is one, then it must be the one we're living in. QED: No multiverse
As a physicist, I believe that the many-world interpretation of quantum physics is the best because it is more practical than its competitors.
The first major competitor is the theory that the world is deterministic and its just our lack of knowledge that causes us to perceive a non-deterministic world. The problem with this is that we have no evidence in favor of this proposition and to the extent we have any evidence it is *against* this proposition.
The other major competitor is the theory that the wave function of the whole universe collapses every time we make a measurement. This agrees very well with experiment as long as the person asking the question is the one doing the measurement, but it has a major problem: since wave functions don't collapse unless measured, what counts as a measurement? For example, does collapse only happen when *I* make a measurement? If so, why should I be uniquely privileged? Alternatively, does collapse happen whenever some human being makes a measurement --- that is, if I perform the Schroedinger's cat experiment but with a person instead of a cat inside the box, then has the wave function collapsed even if I never open the box (assuming it is perfectly insulated)?
The advantage of the many-worlds interpretation is that it solves the problem of measurement by *not* treating measurement as being an special-case exception to the rules; it postulates that the wave function of the universe never actually collapses. Given this, how do we make sense of the fact we human beings *do* observe such a collapse? The answer actually appears right in the math: when we demand that a particle in a mix of states tell us which state it is in, it causes us to become entangled with the particle so that a *portion* of the universe splits into two states: one with the particle in the first state and us seeing it in the first state, one with the particle in the second state and us seeing it in the second state, and so on. So from the perspective of each of the observers the wave function has collapsed even though it never did. What happens then if you put an observer in a box and have him or her make a measurement? The answer also appears in the math: although the universe splits inside the box, it does not split outside the box.
This might seem fanciful, but it is something that we can actually test. Although we cannot put human beings in a box for ethical reasons, we can put increasingly large systems in the box that act as "observers" of some particle (by engineering an interaction between the observer and the particle) and then perform interference experiments to determine whether the wave function in the box has collapsed or not. Every such experiment we have performed has shown that the wave function does in fact *not* collapse inside the box but rather splits.
So what is the mathematical difference between being inside the portion of the universe that splits and being outside it? It is simple: if you are outside the portion that splits, then the wave function of the universe can be expressed as a tensor product between you and splitting portion. If you are inside the portion that splits, then this can never be the case.
Thus it turns out that measurement *already falls out of quantum mechanics* in a mathematically rigorous and observer-independent fashion, as long as we are willing to accept that a consequence of this is that from the view of someone external to the universe there is a (mathematically rigorous) sense in which there are multiple copies of you and I within the universe. Sure, if we don't like this consequence we can add a rule that gets rid of it by specifying that the wave-function collapses, but then you have to introduce some arbitrary rule that specified that some macroscopic bodies have the power to cause a collapse but not others. Now in fairness, there do turn out to be mathematically rigorous ways to do this and some of them even provide testable predictions so one of them might be proven correct one day, but there is
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
But in a parallel universe, you don't don't care about this, so what difference does it make what you say here?
( My objection with multiverses is that the idea of explaining a coin flip by adding a whole extra copy of the universe seems to be a gross violation of Occum's Razor, not to mention conservation of energy )
The main issue is that anyone familiar with the scientific process understands that there is a huge difference between the theory of evolution and string theory. People that learn about science in the wall street journal and the new york times don't understand this. Yes, the fringe of theoretical physics houses some exotic 'theories', but not all theories have the same level of evidence. I really wish that all of science used mathematical terminology, ie. string conjecture, the multi-verse conjecture etc. When something is proven to the extent of plate tectonics or biological evolution, then it should be promoted to theorem. This way, the idiot masses would know that when they read about string conjecture in the wall street journal, it's an idea that scientists are working on, trying to test etc.
It would also put an end to the "it's just a theory" crap when fact and reality run up against the magical fantasy's of two thousand year old Palestinian goat herding desert nomads.
That sounds horribly condescending and dangerous to boot. By saying you need to have an advanced degree in physics to begin to understand this or that theory sounds an awful lot like religious claptrap. Your 'comforting lies' is religious based argument as well. Scientists aren't members of a Priesthood and shouldn't be treated as the only 'Holy Men with the Truth'. And I would say that people who wish to tell someone like Mr. Greene 'To tread carefully' are full of hooey. At least him and a few others are trying to take their knowledge and their theories to the general interested public. Theories and speculation are the name of the game, your game is orthodoxy and staying within the norms of whatever orthodoxy is in fashion at the moment.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The "Criticism" was mostly emotionally based, and had very little in the way of "facts". It consists of similar arguments that was used in The Trail of Socrates. If no one ever did rampant speculation we all would have stopped with the Laws of Motion. Newton was good but if Einstein didn't go off and speculate about time our GPS system wouldn't work and we'd just chuck it up to "imprecise measurements" like Newton did with the orbit of Mercury.
SciFicPhy-101 is pure levity field theory for public understanding of many obvious unknowns that ain't no godddd.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Saying 'Multiverse Propaganda' is putting a judgment into the description thereby attempting to label the Theory you don't agree with as propaganda. This is Slashdot, not the Rush Limbaugh Comedy Show - most readers here can see that obvious bias and unsubstantiated claptrap on the face of it. It does not advance your argument nor does the 'more theory than fact' quip. It's a Theory dude, sorry if this theory is catching the imagination of people and is getting attention but that's how life goes. All that 'Black Hole' stuff was a theory as well and I do remember the folks whose brains had ossified objecting on much the same lines as you objecting. Very sad, especially when most folks will leave it as theory until something is proven one way or the other so all the ranting and slanted arguments on Slashdot you wish to engage in are pretty much a waste of time.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
It seems like this sort of romanticism is seen in all fields of study, and if you are active in that field, then it's going to annoy you. I'm endlessly irritated by the portrayal of computer programmers in hollywood and some science fiction. And in the end, it's not always that far off for some representative people in the field. There are a few people who have to consider adding a new universe (or whatever) in order to make the equations fit. It's just people such as Brian Greene who 'work downward' to create all of the imaginative aspects for their own purposes, even if it misrepresents what physicists actually do. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing; as a former science journalist at my university's paper, I had to try and inspire the imaginations of semi-literate undergrads every week with stories about esoteric research projects, and if that means using 'creative' imagery or speculation, then so be it, as long as you're careful not to misrepresent the original research (and I really don't believe Greene does so). As far as science journalists being the most gullible, it really is a difficult position they're placed in: they aren't (and can't be) experts in the field they're writing about, but they're supposed to be critical of their subject matter. It takes experts of the same caliber, if not greater, to critique another expert. Imagine if NPR called B.S. on Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking.
Asimov said it best:
"when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
I have damned little respect for science journalists in general. Every fucking time some study comes along that, say, pushes a date around a bit, the headlines read "Current Theories Overturned!", which is almost inevitably complete hyperbole, or more to the point pure unadulterated bullshit. I can either assume the journalist in question is a shameless liar, or a fucking twit, so I choose fucking twit because I'm assuming he's to stupid, ignorant and just plain lacking in curiosity to accurately report.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Note that the string theory multiverse is not the same as the many-worlds multiverse (those two concepts are not even mutually exclusive, so it could be that we live in a "double-multiverse"). The string theory multiverse is about truly independent universes with different physics. The many-worlds multiverse OTOH is about splitting worlds which even share a common past, and only differ in results of random events.
In other words, in a many-worlds parallel universe (MWPU), the electron still has the same charge, but has gone through the other slit. In a string theoretic parallel universe (STPU), it may have any charge. Now that STPU may also contain a double slit, and if both ST and MW are right, then the STPU will again consist of two MWPUs, one in which the electron went through one slit, and one in which it went through the other slit.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Probability is actually an obvious result of a multiverse. Take a die and throw it. The future universes have a roughly uniform distribution of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Throw a second die, and the 6^2 possible sequences are all represented. So each copy of you may see a different outcome, but each copy performing repeated experiments will still see the expected probability distribution. One out of 6^n of you will see all 6s in a row, for any n. Everyone wins the lottery, but only in 1/100,000,000 of their future universes (for appropriate values of 1/100,000,000).
Robert Krulwich talked to Brian Greene onstage @ the 92nd St. Y about his Multiverse Theory.
Here it is: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/aug/12/the-multi-universes/
Black holes were predicted to exist in General Relativity, which made many other predictions in other aspects that it made it a very strong theory. Superstring theory is based on, well, a mathematical model that has no confirmation of any kind. M-theory and other like theories are built on superstring theory/theories and thus are not even really theories as the term is used.
Or, to put it simply, your analogy is bullshit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My guess is that no one's actually covering science at that news outlet. They push a liberal arts guy to write one or two 'science' articles a week, and we see what they come up with. I'll bet that these days, only the very major news outlets like NYT actually employ a dedicated (or at least qualified) science journalist who has at least some respect or even a mild interest in the topic. I've actually seen great science articles from NYT, the Guardian and NPR. 'Studies' articles are almost always bullshit posted in order to grab headlines 'X proven to cause cance', 'people who do x live longer', or anything having to do with sex or dating.
Also, keep in mind that the sole purpose of a newspaper, especially on the web, is to have headlines that grab attention. One perfect example of the bullshit headline-grabbing science journalism was last week's betelguese-supernova story, which, the headline states, will happen in 2012, though as you read deeper in the article, the journalist admits that, actually, it may happen in 2012, or any other year for the next thousand years, nobody really knows.
Every time Shrodinger boxes up another cat, we get a new universe!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Dark matter and energy are observed via their effects, and that's precisely why they were brought up in the first place.
If any bit at all can be observed from alternate universe however remotely/indirectly, i.e. "inferred" as you say, it by definition is part of this universe and not some alternate universe.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Whereas other people find the first two questions interesting.
Oh noes! There are people who have different opinions to you! Get some torches and pitchforks!
This might seem fanciful, but it is something that we can actually test. Although we cannot put human beings in a box for ethical reasons, we can put increasingly large systems in the box that act as "observers" of some particle (by engineering an interaction between the observer and the particle) and then perform interference experiments to determine whether the wave function in the box has collapsed or not.
I believe that the Many Worlds interpretation and Bohm's interpretation are fundamentally indistinguishable from each other experimentally. In Bohm's interpretation, the wave function also never collapses, but it does push around particles, which turn out to be classical in nature. So, in some sense, Bohm's interpretation is the same thing as the Many Worlds interpretation, only all those worlds exist only as pilot waves to push about the particles in the actual world.
Whether or not many worlds being actual is more true to Occam's Razor than there being an unimaginable number of phantom pilot waves pushing on matter in a single actual world, is left as an exercise for the reader.
|>ouglas
Well, would you feel better if people talked in terms of "virtual universes"?
Suppose people used the multiverse idea to describe observable phenomena in this universe without taking any position on whether those other universes actually exist. If the descriptions arrived at are neat and elegant enough, they will surely result in some predictions testable in this universe, even though the physical existence of those "other universes" will almost by definition be a meaningless question.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The phantom pilot waves are programmers trying to patch up their bugs before God finds out they F-ed up.
Table-ized A.I.
Still, as other posters have commented, the real reason why (some) physicists are mad, is the seeming giving up on scientific testibility. I think this is wrong - that scientific testibility is possible, in principle and practice, and the ontological benefits of a Mulitverse are worth it. I could recommend David Deutcsh's book "Fabric of Reality" for an excellent discussion, or my own book "Theory of Nothing" (gratutitous plug warning).
I'm an atheist and I don't feel that way about multiverse hypotheses (which is what they are at this stage). Maybe the problem here is that some religious folks, feeling picked on, try to make proclamations about this mathematical models and how atheists feel about them as if to say "You see, you silly atheists, you have your gods too, haha."
There are plenty of reasons to get a little hot around the collar about the way some people (mainly Greene and the other string theorists) sometimes push what are ultimately mathematical models that may or may not have anything at all to do with reality, but you're idea of an atheist version god is ludicrous, first of all because it supposes that multiverse theories were concocted for a godless-god, and secondly because it presupposes that atheists in general would buy into it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There are two theories:
(1) The Earth is a planet, more or less like any other planet in the universe. It's just the one that we happen to live on.
(2) The Earth is the center of the universe, and the laws of motion and gravity are extremely complicated.
Most people don't realize this, but the details for #2 can be worked out; it's just that we reject this theory by Occam's Razor. There is, however, absolutely no way to experimentally determine whether theory #1 or theory #2 is the correct one.
The theory of multiverses is like theory #1. It makes our theories simpler, and makes us less in the center of things. If John Horgan must assert that theories of multiverses are a moral outrage, then he must also assert that theory #1 is a moral outrage. The Earth is the center of the universe after all.
|>ouglas
P.S. I just pwned that guy.
I've met a couple. I was particularly impressed with Steven Kotler. Of course, he was speaking to a bunch of cynical and dare-you-to-impress-me scientists at Los Alamos. But he sat down (no notes, no overheads, no fucking powerpoints or the equivalents) and just *talked*. And it was fascinating. He did a remarkable job, and utterly convinced me that there are _some_ journalists who want to get it right, who do the background research, who don't pick quotes to make people seem stupider or more hyperbolic or more breathless than they really are, and who was terribly concerned with honestly reporting just what is going on.
...does collapse only happen when *I* make a measurement? If so, why should I be uniquely privileged?
"Thou art god"?
He doesn't speak as if he has The Answer. Listen to his NPR interview or read his books. He's very clear on differentiating between scientific consensus and speculation. The fact that you're accusing him of this and lumping him in with the idiot crowd of science journalists means that you're guilty of the same thing.
He also suggests ways that his theories might show up in experiments in the LHC - for example a collision in which there appears to be a conservation of energy loss might indicate the existence of other dimensions.
Only if those observable effects can not be explained by a mechanism without universes.
Or I will make a hypothesis that the phone I am using now to post this comment, passes data to Slashdot site through another universe. You can observe the comment I have posted, but it can be easier explained by data being sent over various digital networks, all entirely within our Universe.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
multiverse cannot be science
a lot of the stuff you take as 'science' today, were ridicule of earlier centuries. there were people saying similar things like you.
moreover, among them there were a lot of the science establishment doing that. on top of it, a lot of it was done to the science pioneers you acknowledge as great today. last, but most importantly, its not a phenomenon that was centuries ago - it is happening frequently, like even in the past decade :
http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html
read excerpt in the link, then scroll down (way down) to see which particular great scientist was ridiculed for what. and even called a charlatan. and, most importantly, by whom.
like
Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
Invented in 1982, other surface scientists refused to believe that atom-scale resolution was possible, and demonstrations of the STM in 1985 were still met by hostility, shouts, and laughter from the specialists in the microscopy field. Its discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues
the MORONS who ridiculed these people, are still deans, dept. heads around the world in various important universities and corporations .... imagine ...
Read radical news here
It really bugs me that most of the scientists to catch the media spotlight in the last decade or so have been lame ducks like this one. I don't think there's anything wrong with theoretical physicists, but the weird "gee-whiz" science they practice is no real representation of science. It gives the impression that the only way to capture the public's attention is to make up bizarre theories that have no real use. Every time I hear someone like Greene talk, it sounds suspiciously like the "what if we're all, like, one atom on like a giant's thumbnail or something!?" brand of stoner bullshit you would hear from a liberal arts major who took an astronomy class once. Scientists from Kaku to Tyson who promote the "Wowzers" school of scientific thought tend to be hopeless, mincing jackasses at best and ourtight charlatans at worst.
Science has not only the potential, but the duty to ask profound questions about human enterprise and provide meaningful answers. Positing the most outlandish theories you can and spoon-feeding a kindergarten version of them to a public which doesn't have the time to know better is probably the reason that pubic attitudes towards science are so shitty lately.
Scientists need to take very seriously the public face they present, and realize that the kind of science they give people is the kind of science they will perform. No one since Sagan has made a serious attempt to get people interested in real science and to provide them with the tools they might need to reap its very real rewards. Instead we're given junk food like Greene's book which uses concepts we don't understand to fool us into thinking things that aren't true. The first step towards correcting this is to stop presenting the surface facts of a scientific advance without paying attention to the theoretical underpinnings: quantum mechanics is an excellent example of something that shouldn't be taught to anyone without at least three semesters of calculus, because then we get Deepak Chopra and homeopathy. The media is usually given the blame for seizing on a piece of misinformation, but scientific media darlings ladle stuff like this out with rabid glee.
Point is, stop it. I'd bet good money that scientific illiteracy is traceable back to scientific showmanship like this multiverse crap. Science is a process which has as its goal the separation of reality from unreality, and when you start positing the existence of magic, unicorns, and voodoo like this stuff the whole damn thing falls apart.
You can look at any field of science and find hundreds of dead-ends, some which have lasted thousands of years. Aether and phlogiston are the two prime examples of turfed theories, eugenics, Lysenkoism, plenty of medicine i.e. humours and bloodletting are also well-known, hell even the classical physics you refer to as involate has been shown far from complete by quantum theory, we just haven't worked out how to replace it yet.
You have a point though, new theories must explain what we already know, ie. with Newton being a special case of Einstein we should see Einstein be a case of a unified theory, but it could be that Newton and Einsteins approach is fundamentally wrong and classical physics will be shown the door, just like aether. It's almost inconcievable, but that's how it goes.
This attention-grab happens in more than just newspapers. Engineers in my department all have to pitch their project as the MOST AWESOME project with the best bang for the buck EVER! People do not have much of an attention span any more.
God is a single unverifiable prediction. God plus seven different types of angels, or a hundred thousand Hindu style deities, are finite sets of predictions, which however can't be counted as science as they are unverifiable. Multiverse theories differ in that they make infinite numbers of untestable predictions, not just finite numbers. Occam says that the simpler of two theories, all other factors being equal, is always to be preferred. A prediction of an omnipotent God, seven orders of angels doing his bidding, and a single location of warped space where 144,000 can be a geometrically square number without non integer roots, is still simpler than an infinite number of non-observables, The whackyest sounding cosmology of the Hopi, Tantric Vrajayana Buddhism, Scientology, or even the Kaballa is actually more scientific, in that it better complies with Occam's razor even if it predicts many unobserveables., just because many, even a great many, is still better than infinitely many.
Who is John Cabal?
What observable effect could possibly call an infinite number of parallel universes a side effect. Isn't that a bit like saying "New Zargotz, with a 0.0001 % chance of relieving your headache. Side effects include a 100% chance of spontaneous combustion of your entire species!" ? The very use of a phrase such as "side effect " there is begging the question.
Who is John Cabal?
I thought decoherence was the proposed resolution to the measurement->collapsing wave function approach of interpreting QM. Has this been derailed?
Alternatively, I've seen a proposal that QM is just a probability algorithm correlating various observables, as in http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I agree with this comment but my closest 14 alternative selves in other universes disagree. Frankly, they're a bunch of dicks.
"Simpler" in the case of Occam's razor refers to mathematical simplicity, *not* number of predictions.
The sum of the intelligence of the world is constant. The population is, of course, growing.
"Multiverse theories don't turn me on anymore. Perhaps it's because of 9/11 and all its bloody consequences, especially the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
yes, this is an actual quote from the article.
I read the first couple of paragraphs of the first linked article that establish the presence of a lack of scientific evidence for the many worlds theory. Although i am not a huge proponent of this worldview I consider it as likely as any other out there right now. The author of the first scientific american article linked in this story states that this article is based upon science fiction. This a a patently false statement that is either very ignorant of the facts, or a purposeful falsehood. The multi slit experiment which shows the effect of multiply uncollapsed photons through a slit wide enough for just one photon is a repeatable, measurable effect which caused this theory to be articulated. It was not a fanciful conjecture meant to enrich the author, but in fact an attempt to explain observable phenomena that was unsettling to both the scientist involved in the measurement, and those who reviewed the findings. The fact that the author of this article and the poster start off with this perspective towards observable science gives me great doubt to both their objectivity and ability to understand observable, reproducible phenomena.
The difference is that there is evidence that can actually be observed for dark matter, the big bang, comet extinction, and evolution. String theory and this multi-verse thing only have some interesting math behind them.
Evolution is a fact. The theory of natural selection is our current best explanation of this fact. Much like the theory of gravity explains the fact that when you drop something it accelerates towards the centre of the earth.
Anarchists never rule
time travel
bite my glorious golden ass.
Radio National (Australia) has podcasts of The science show", Robyn Williams has been it's host for about 30yrs and IMHO is the best science journalist on the planet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe it's a strange attraction...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
"String theory and this multi-verse thing only have some interesting math behind them."
String theory passes all the same observational tests that the standard model does. The problem is there is no way to test which theory is better since the predictions string theory makes that are different to the standard model are currently untestable. Therefore the best course of action is to continue to devise ways to test both theories until one (or both) breaks.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I find Scientific American guy's moralizing immoral. The book is an explanation of the different kind of multiverse theories which are present in current theoretical physics. The guy seems to have a problem with the fact that Greene and the rest of us scientists should be obligated to spend our time solving humanities ills. If he really thought that was so immoral to be thinking about and communicating true facts about possibilities which arise in theoretical physics rather than solving the Problems of Humanity, then surely it is also immoral to be thinking about and communicating opinions of the prior. Surely we should all be studying cancer. Also, the guy really mentions Karl Popper, which goes to show how much he has thought about the philosophy of science.
For anyone else who is similarly repelled by Mr. Horgan's myopic rant, I would also recommend looking at David Deutsch's excellent (and quirky) The Fabric of Reality, which includes the Everett-Wheeler type of multiverse as Deutsch discusses quantum computing.
Now a lot of commenters have jumped in with "... but this stuff is all unfalsifiable...", which Deutsch explicitly addresses, pointing out that if algorithms such as Shor's or Grover's work, they point fairly clearly to a multiverse, otherwise where is the algorithm actually solved?
A very interesting read, imho.
Don't forget frame dragging and pretty weird GR effect. In fact about the only thing missing is gravity waves. Even Einstein said they are probably too weak to ever detect.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
100% agree. At last, the concept of multiverse is gaining acceptance in the scientific community and in general public (well, the part interested in science).
It should have occurred a long time ago, with Everett theory. People were blinded with the idea of "interpretations" of quantum physic having equal value. Epistemologists were too happy to get rid of philosophical realism, driven by first quantum physic understandings. They didn't reconsider this position after Everett theory.
I heard Greene's interview on Fresh Air and it seems like he does a good job of explaining the theory and the controversy surrounding it, emphasizing that it is the most reasonable explanation he is aware of without yet being entirely convincing.
That said, I studied math and physics at Columbia, and have heard many stories about Greene. My best friend there took his mathematical physics course. And Brian Greene is pretty much universally described as an arrogant jerk. Even by Columbia standards.
It is a case of, fairly well respected theorist makes a name for himself doing pop-sci stuff, gets offered tenure in TWO departments and comes to think of himself as hot shit, then gets pissed off when because of his notoriety he has to teach courses to packed classrooms. So he would do his very best to get everyone to drop his course.
My friend got so pissed off after the first day that he never showed up to a single lecture, studied his ass off without having to listen to the guy talk, and aced the final!
There is a more fundamental problem: there is no "we".
To any given subjective human, the only evidence of the current universe existing is their first-hand experience of it. So for instance, the only evidence for you that this universe "exists" (whereas the universe of Conway's Game of Life, or of that game of Quake you just played, or any other mathematical universe, does not actually "exist") is that you are observing being within it. Quite clearly, at any given split, you do not experience being in the "other" universes. This puts them in the same bucket as that Game of Life, Quake, or whatever -- mathematically they are lovely but to any observer/reasoner they cannot be said to "exist" because you cannot be within them. The thought that somebody else or some other you might be experiencing the other universe is neither here nor there -- even if you'd like to think of an infinite succession of "you" splitting off from yourself at every moment, you cannot experience being those other people or other selves and as such cannot observe evidence of any universe existing except this one. Or to put it another way, for all observers other universes "really existing" is identical to other universes "really not existing".
(The "split" versus "collapse" within the box is neither here nor there: that split or collapse still always appears to occur within the physics of the observer's universe, and as such still only 1 universe is ever observed or can ever be observed.)
So if "an infinite number of universes exist" is essentially identical to "actually, no they don't", then that infinite number of universes does rather look like that imaginary teaset in space... The argument that it makes the equations simpler (so you don't have to consider special cases) doesn't pass muster -- it would make the equations much simpler to pretend that God created the universe this instant, all the experiments are just fake memories, and so there's no such thing as physics in the first place, but that tends not to be considered good science!
To answer your own question -- "does collapse only happen when *I* make a measurement? If so, why should I be uniquely privileged?" -- for all values of "you", "you" (the observer/reasoner) must be uniquely privileged because you are the only person that can empirically declare that anything exists at all.
Sorry to segue into philosophy, but when you're talking about matters of what it means to exist, it usually does come back to St Augustine / Descartes. ("Even if I am mistaken, I am" and "I think [observe] theferfore I am". If those other universes are provably unreachable from that declaration of existence then there is no difference from their non-existence.)
I haven't commented on slashdot in a long while, but this post should never have made it frontpage.
Having read both Greene's op-ed piece on the NY Times, and John Horgan's article, I find the latter much more questionable. Horgan criticizes multiverse theories on purely subjective grounds, and basically thinks that science nowadays should care about real issues first, something no serious scientific researcher would ever support.
Greene's op-ed article is a very good vulgarisation of theoritical physics, I have to wonder what is wrong with it. Seems like the poster has a big chip on his shoulder against Greene for some reason.
I think he is making a valid - if not brave - point. And probably hoping for some support from his readership.
Multiverse Theory opens the possibility of "happy endings" in the style of Sliding Doors or the afterlife: although this existence is not perfect there is another world where it is/will be. We can't do much about this one, sorry for the inconvenience.
This is a very nice explanation of the different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. However, there are two big problems an interpretation has to solve, one of which is the measurement problem, which is what the Many Worlds interpretation was invented to solve. The other problem is the completeness problem. This is a problem that was raised by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in their thought experiment of 1935. They wanted to show that the wave function could not be a complete description of reality. Von Neumann attempted to prove that any addition to QM - so called hidden variables - could not reproduce the experimental results of QM. But John Bell showed that Von Neumann had made a mistake (he failed to take into account the fact that measurement disturbs microscopic systems). Bell went on to show that only a non-local theory could introduce hidden variables into QM and reproduce its experimental success. As it happens, David Bohm had already created such a theory, based on the de Broglie interpretation.
Although Physicists like the Many Worlds interpretation, philosophers hate it. They all much prefer the Bohm interpretation, usually called a statistical interpretation of QM. Da Cog correctly describes this as a deterministic interpretation. The wave function represents what we know of the state of the QM system. Naturally it collapses if we know something new. Naturally, in a closed unmeasured system, it doesn't collapse. For philosophers this is a compelling interpretation. However, for physicists it is not compelling because it complicates the maths. So the choice, unless an experiment can be done to decide between them, is between an interpretation that is ontologically extravagant but mathematically elegant on the one hand, and an interpretation that is ontologically elegant but mathematically complex on the other.
Can you recommend a book for laypeople explaining this many-worlds view in more lenght?
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
So "God did it" is thus always the correct theory, as you can't get much simpler than that?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So, this quantum teleportation stuff is not about Star Trek transporters? ;)
One that hath name thou can not otter
religion and mythology, both of which can also never be proven or disproven.
The difference is that mythology does not pretend to be true, any more than Shakespeare's Hamlet is real, whereas religion claims to be actually true.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The wave function is a *concept of method* used to aid the mind in understanding reality. The fact that it conveniently and easily predicts reality does not imply there is anything *physical* about the wave function, any more than the use of complex numbers to calculate phase shift in electrical circuits, or the use of "electron holes" to simplify equations, implies the actual physical existence of imaginary numbers or "electron holes".
As for the apparently strange fact that observation affects reality - that is simply due to the fact that we must bounce particles off of something in order for us to measure it. To *see* electrons going through the double-slit experiment, we have to bounce photons off of them - and that interferes with the experiment, changing the result. It has nothing to do with us being "entangled observers" or having some "privileged reference frame".
I recommend Richard Feynman's 1-hour lecture on the quantum mechanical view of nature, which clarifies much of the poor philosophizing that has come out of quantum mechanics.
Does it? Kahnemann and Tversky might have thought otherwise.
I gather you replied to the wrong post, since you quoted a quote, but it's worth noting that the above names are experts in human behavior with what I gather is a focus on decision making. Statistics is not based on human behavior. It is a tool which can be and greatly is misused. I don't consider its substantial capability for misuse an indication of its lack of usefulness. To the contrary, because it is such a useful tool, it is commonly misused by those who are aware of the utility and gravitas it adds to opinions or hypotheses, but who are either to some degree ignorant of its flaws or intend deception.
Atheists don't get quite so up-in-arms?
Really? The most vicious attacks on opposing points of view I've ever seen have come from atheists.
I'm not talking about the "I don't know if there is a God or not, and have no way of knowing, so I'm going to live as if there isn't one" type of atheist. I'm talking about the "There is no way to prove God exists, which means it's guaranteed there is no God, and you're a stupid, unintelligent, babbling FUNDAMENTALIST MORON IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE!!111!aneurysm!!!" type.
When you start treating atheism as a religion, which this second class of people does, then you're no better - and arguably worse - than the Christians/Muslims/Buddhists/whatever that try to ram their holy books down your throat.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
God...so many of the academia have become the idiots they want to educate. You can't come up with a theory that says theirs is wrong, because if you do, you are wrong. I thought Scientist were supposed to be the greatest failures, because out of their failures comes their successes. Closed minds: found at a university, as a professor or scientist, who can't think their way out of their mindless boxes.
I still need to finish watching season 5 of "Sliders".
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
Sure. So what? If you don't want conjecture then read a textbook on relativity. A lot of people like to get glimpses of the bleeding edge, not the tested-for-the-last-century edge.
"Bearable" is entirely your own bias.
... it by definition is part of this universe and not some alternate universe
Well, probably part of multiple entities?
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TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I gather you replied to the wrong post, ...
Wrong guess/decision, as you rather broadly replied to 'probability' (not statistics) working well.
Back to your original post, where you mention: "Localization and abstraction". I wonder how you do this without humans making decisions. Further: "restrict our viewpoint" - no place for "experts in human behavior" to have a say? Further: "assign probabilities to the outcome" - not a case for game theory?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I wonder how you do this without humans making decisions.
One way is to have something else make the decisions. For example, there are combinatorial algorithms for somewhat randomized experiment grouping to reduce human decision effects. Monte Carlo methods provide schemes that randomly sample some state space without human related bias.
Intepretation of data can often be automated as well. For example, consider the popular example of the "political compass", a crude classification of political beliefs that attempts to classify everything on a two dimensional chart with axes "left/right" and "libertarian/authoritarian". The problem is that interpretation of questions along these axes is subjective. Someone decided that certain opinions were "left", "right", etc, and then charted answers as coordinates based on those presumptions.
However, given poll answers (or for that matter, any vectorizable data in a rectangular tabular, ie, matrix format), one can apply principal component analysis (singular value decomposition on the vectorized data matrix) to find optimal, ie, highest singular value weight, (in the sense of best approximating the data with a few dimensions) axes (though somewhat dependent on the scaling/weighting of the components of the data) without any presumption about what possible axis orientations are or should be most relevant. Also, just because humans have known bias doesn't mean that they can't make good decisions about localization and abstraction. Some systems or problems have rather obvious choices. For example, table top experiments by definition are intended (though frequently not achieved in practice) to be sufficiently isolated from the rest of the universe to be treated as a complete system (this incidentally being a common form of localization).
Table top experiments are usually also designed to have very few variables (abstraction) and the ability to vary one of these variables at a time so that it is relatively easy to quantify any correlations between the respective variables.
In any case, such decisions are orthogonal to the usefulness of probability and statistics.
Sure, there lie alternate universe magic monsters.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
As for the apparently strange fact that observation affects reality - that is simply due to the fact that we must bounce particles off of something in order for us to measure it. To *see* electrons going through the double-slit experiment, we have to bounce photons off of them - and that interferes with the experiment, changing the result. It has nothing to do with us being "entangled observers" or having some "privileged reference frame".
That is completely wrong. The reason why measurement affects reality is because of the No-Cloning Theorem which dictates that quantum information cannot be copied, so the most that you can do is entangle yourself with the particle which creates the perception of a collapsing wave function. This is not philosophy, this is mathematics.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
I wish I had one for you, but unfortunately I don't read physics books for laypeople any more so I don't know whats out there.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Although Physicists like the Many Worlds interpretation, philosophers hate it. They all much prefer the Bohm interpretation, usually called a statistical interpretation of QM. Da Cog correctly describes this as a deterministic interpretation. The wave function represents what we know of the state of the QM system. Naturally it collapses if we know something new. Naturally, in a closed unmeasured system, it doesn't collapse. For philosophers this is a compelling interpretation. However, for physicists it is not compelling because it complicates the maths. So the choice, unless an experiment can be done to decide between them, is between an interpretation that is ontologically extravagant but mathematically elegant on the one hand, and an interpretation that is ontologically elegant but mathematically complex on the other.
That is a very good summary of the situation. Personally as a physicist I don't see the assumption of many worlds as being ontologically extravagant --- especially since there aren't really many worlds, there is just one quantum world that contains what *we* as classical creatures would consider to be multiple parallel realities --- but it does drive philosophers crazy. :-)
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Every such experiment we have performed has shown that the wave function does in fact *not* collapse inside the box but rather splits.
You could also argue from this that the wave function of the apparatus inside the box is entangled with the particle it's measuring, and doesn't collapse until we open the box. That's what Schrodinger's thought experiment with the cat was about, right?
The key is that you can do experiments that tell you whether the state inside the box has collapsed or not without measuring the state itself, which is different from Schroedinger's thought experiment in which you do measure the state inside the box.
In fact, a variant of this principle is used in something called quantum error correction (which is one of the subfields in which I do research), where you can measure and correct error in an encoded quantum bit without ever measuring the bit itself.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that *I* as a subjective human being can do experiments to determine whether I am the only one who can collapse wave functions or whether other human beings do so as well. That is, this distinction does not require the assumption that a objective reality exists, only that I be able to distinguish between two different kinds of patterns that I perceive.
Furthermore, while it is technically true that there is no reason not to believe that I am a privileged being in this universe and so the rules apply different to me than to other entities, models where I do not make this assumption have historically tended to be better descriptions of my perceptions than those where I do make this assumption.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
I thought decoherence was the proposed resolution to the measurement->collapsing wave function approach of interpreting QM. Has this been derailed?
No, actually in retrospect I see now that quantum decoherance exactly corresponds to the model that I described, its just that it had never been explained clearly to me so I thought it was referring to something else. (Ironically the wikipedia article I just looked at now was in many ways clearer than the explanation I'd received in my classes, though in fairness it might just be that I have a few more years of experience under my belt so that it makes more sense to me now!)
Anyway, so in short you are absolutely right, and I appreciate you asking this question because it caused me to learn something. :-)
Alternatively, I've seen a proposal that QM is just a probability algorithm correlating various observables, as in http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
Hmm, interesting, I am not familiar with that result, but it might answer a question that is left-open by the many-world interpretation: why is it that the square of the amplitude of a component in the wave function corresponds to the probability of measuring it in that state?
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
ad paragraph 1: You may argue as much as you want (and I appreciate the argument that there is methods/methodology built to reduce perceived bias in human decision making), but in the end you will always come to a point (actually a hierarchy of breakpoints) when humans make decisions, all the way down (roughly) from a political consensus on 'important' research down to decisions about tweaking parameters/models in (say) a lab setting.
ad paragraph 2: The problem that you touch here ever since plagued psychologists when it came to removing bias from testing procedures. An early example of a collection of approaches is given in "Holtzman, W. H. (ed.), Computer-Assisted Instruction, Testing and Guidance, Harper and Row, New York, 1970"
ad paragraph 3: The question here is whether the localizations are indeed appropriate, and I always had my doubts. Just two examples that give the scope: "Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity by D. McDermott - 1976"; "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn" may also give hints to the problems of proper localization (as well as the above mentioned consensus). Besides, especially when it comes to social research, I quite well remember the knee jerk methodology applied when a common PCFA 'does not seem right' (non-orthogonal solutions, whatever).
ad paragraph 4: above applies even more,
ad final sentence: Not so sure if I understand right, my interpretation would be that 'decisions' are not 'correlated' to the usefulness of statistical theory (which, from my point of view, is true, since statistical theory is math, which is not related to the world).
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Sure, there lie alternate universe magic monsters.
Surely you will not realize that remarks are self-referential.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
But something pretty peculiar has happened, particularly with some of the string theorists, in that they tend not to speak in the normal, cautious language that physicists usually do when talking about very hypothetical models.
Don't worry, there is at least one possible world in which theoretical physicist are much more careful in their popularizing efforts.
Darn it! I knew I should have ditched Unix for Multix years ago so I can talk to my other selves in other Universes!!!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
That is completely wrong...This is not philosophy, this is mathematics.
That is not an argument. Why is it completely wrong? And why is Richard Feynman incorrect for espousing it? And why is it so obvious from perception?
The reason why measurement affects reality is because of the No-Cloning Theorem which dictates that quantum information cannot be copied, so the most that you can do is entangle yourself with the particle which creates the perception of a collapsing wave function.
This is as backwards as saying that "the amount of impedence of the individual components of an AC circuit is caused by the imaginary exponential." No, the imaginary exponential was devised to easily calculate the impedence. To pretend that the math makes reality is to put the cart before the horse. Quantum mechanics and the no-cloning theorem are concepts used for predicting reality. They are concepts of method. They do not create reality.
That is completely wrong...This is not philosophy, this is mathematics.
That is not an argument. Why is it completely wrong? And why is Richard Feynman incorrect for espousing it? And why is it so obvious from perception?
Sure, I will grant you that if you cut my explanation from a quote then it does sound like I did not make an argument.
The point is that although it is true that we need to interact with the system in order to measure it, it is not obvious that this should specifically cause the wave function to collapse. Thus, the explanation you gave is not sufficient to understand why the wave function collapses. By contrast, the No-Cloning theorem does provide a sufficient explanation.
Feynman was most likely giving an approximation of what was going on for the ears of non-physicists and so one should be wary about reading into it too literally.
Finally, I have never claimed that the No-Cloning theorem was the obvious explanation for wave function collapse; in truth, there is little that is immediately obvious about quantum mechanics.
The reason why measurement affects reality is because of the No-Cloning Theorem which dictates that quantum information cannot be copied, so the most that you can do is entangle yourself with the particle which creates the perception of a collapsing wave function.
This is as backwards as saying that "the amount of impedence of the individual components of an AC circuit is caused by the imaginary exponential." No, the imaginary exponential was devised to easily calculate the impedence. To pretend that the math makes reality is to put the cart before the horse. Quantum mechanics and the no-cloning theorem are concepts used for predicting reality. They are concepts of method. They do not create reality.
Sure, but the model you outlined with particles bouncing is also just a model of reality rather than being reality itself, so you can't claim that the problem with my explanation is that unlike you I invoke a model to explain what is happening.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Sure, I will grant you that if you cut my explanation from a quote then it does sound like I did not make an argument.
Your explanation is not an *argument* against my explanation, that was why I cut it out. The only parts of your reply that actually responded to my explanation were the first and last sentences. I simply pointed out that they did not represent an argument.
Thus, the explanation you gave is not sufficient to understand why the wave function collapses. By contrast, the No-Cloning theorem does provide a sufficient explanation.
The no-cloning theorem is a more precise *predictor* of reality than "particles bouncing off eachother", but it is also more abstract, and not necessary for explanation to a layman. To explain why observing the double-slit experiment changes the result, it is only necessary to say, "the light that is required for one to make an observation happens to interact with the entities one is trying to observe, and that interaction changes the result." That removes the mystery regarding the role of the observer. If they then ask, "how does light interact with electrons", then you would have to get into the more abstract discussion.
Explanation as path to understanding involves delving into deeper and deeper layers of abstraction. If I were ask how fish breathe underwater, and you started at the quantum mechanical level, you would not be *explaining* anything to me that I could understand and conceptually integrate, because you would not be connecting it to my existing knowledge. You would first have to discuss the biological, then the chemical, etc. It is not wrong to answer, "because they have gills". Likewise, "light interacts with electrons, changing the result" is not a wrong answer to the question above.
The Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is a legit possibility, and in fact, one of the more promising interpretations of quantum mechanics out there. Many people misunderstand it though, thinking every choice or possibility somehow "creates" a whole other somewhere that we can possibly travel to ala Star Trek with evil twins.
MWI is in fact much simpler than that. Think of the universe as a giant quantum computer. Quantum computers can perform many computations in parallel. In fact, MWI says nothing less than that each branching point triggers a new parallel computation, specifically, the universe exists entirely in a state of superposition each of which was triggered by a branch in the past. Metaphysically, there is nothing more and nothing less than the wavefunction.
That's pretty compelling IMO. It's probably metaphysically the interpretation of QM with the fewest assumptions, so by Occam's razor, it's preferable to most other interpretations.
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