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There Is No "You" In a Parallel Universe
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Ever since quantum mechanics first came along, we've recognized how tenuous our perception of reality is, and how — in many ways — what we perceive is just a very small subset of what's going on at the quantum level in our Universe. Then, along came cosmic inflation, teaching us that our observable Universe is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the matter-and-radiation filled space out there, with possibilities including Universes with different fundamental laws and constants, differing quantum outcomes existing in disconnected regions of space, and even the fantastic one of parallel Universes and alternate versions of you and me. But is that last one really admissible? The best modern evidence teaches us that even with all the Universes that inflation creates, it's still a finite number, and an insufficiently large number to contain all the possibilities that a 13.8 billion year old Universe with 10^90 particles admits."
nt.
has nothing to do with "parallel" universes...
There's no you, sure. But me, I'm in all of them.
like the universe does, doesn't it?
Those universes aren't what people usually mean by 'parallel'. Usually they're thinking of a universe which at some point in the past was identical to this one.
These orthogonal universes obviously aren't going to have duplicates of anything here.
And the support for Big Bang style cosmic inflation (universe ballooning up from nothing in a trillionth of second) is sparse. (As opposed to the normal expanding universe we see that even old Steady State theory said existed.)
If cosmic inflation happened, everything real far away should be in its infancy, but we see sprial galaxies 13 billion years away.
Quasars are supposed to only be in the beginning of the universe in early times according to the Big Bang, and there are 2 of them within 800 million miles of us which should not even be possible. http://www.sdss.org/news/relea...
So we have old structures very far away well-developed with plenty of metal, which shouldn't happen.
We have "newer" structures nearby, which shouldn't happen.
Add to the fact there are no metal-free stars (Pop III) ever seen, it is difficult to see what aspect of Big Bang Theory holds true. Astronomy might be better off if it were discarded because a number of the popular conclusions double-down on bad science and result in wild goose chases (dark energy only need exist to support the Big Bang because only the Big Bang says expansion must be accelerating.)
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Show me one other alternate universe. Is that so much to ask?
There goes my alternates chance with Kate Upton.
So now we are making predictions about speculations and guesses to say, there is no you in a parallel universe. Call me a skeptic but I would like a molecule of proof that such universes even exist before you start on speculations about what exists in them.
Not saying that the parallel universe concept is correct but his argument just dismisses a particular type then states there aren't any.
From "Our quantum problem", Adrian Kent
http://aeon.co/magazine/scienc...
"...Its great rival was first set out in a 1957 paper and Princeton PhD thesis written by one of the stranger figures in the history of 20th-century physics, Hugh Everett III. Rather unromantically, and very unusually for a highly original thinker and talented physicist, Everett abandoned theoretical physics after he had published his big idea. A good deal of his subsequent career was spent in military consultancy, advising the US on strategies for fighting and ‘winning’ a nuclear war against the USSR, and the bleakness of this chosen path presumably contributed to his chain-smoking, alcoholism and depression. Everett died of a heart attack at the age of 51; possibly we can infer something of his own ultimate assessment of his life’s worth from the fact that he instructed his wife to throw his ashes in the trash. And yet, despite his detachment from academic life (some might say from all of life), Everett’s PhD work eventually became enormously influential.
One way of thinking about his ideas on quantum theory is that our difficulties in getting a description of quantum reality arise from a tension between the mathematics – which, as we have seen, tells us to make calculations involving many different possible stories about what might have really happened – and the apparently incontrovertible fact that, at the end of an experiment, we see that only one thing actually did happen. This led Everett to ask a question that seems at first sight stupid, but which turns out to be very deep: how do we know that we only get one outcome to a quantum experiment? What if we take the hint from the mathematics and consider a picture of reality in which many different things actually do happen – everything, in fact, that quantum theory allows? And what if we take this to its logical conclusion and accept the same view of cosmology, so that all the different possible histories of the evolution of the universe are realised? We end up, Everett argued, with what became known as a ‘many worlds’ picture of reality, one in which it is constantly forming new branches describing alternative – but equally real – future continuations of the same present state..."
Well, it kind of does, depending on exactly how you define the term. One of the implications of inflation theory is that the original superluminal inflation is still going on, and will always be going on, and what we consider to be "the universe" is but one tiny bubble of "stabilized" space that decayed from the inflationary energy, and is presumably surrounded by a nigh-infinite number of other bubbles with different physical laws that will never interact with each other because the space between them is still full of self-replicating inflationary energy expanding faster than light, and which is perpetually spawning still more bubbles as the false-vacuum spontaneously decays into lower-energy states to trigger a chain reaction. You could easily consider every one of those other "bubbleverses" to be a parallel universe, with it's own physical laws and causality that will never intersect our own.
Of course that has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of parallel universes posited by the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which absolutely would spawn a potential infinitude of "other yous" with every quantum "decision". And neither has anything to do with the third major posited type of parallel universe which stipulates that our universe is a 4-dimensional membrane existing in within the 11+ dimensional metaverse posited by many QM theories, and that other membranes likely also exist, and may occasionally collide with our own, causing "big bangs" from the release of energy on impact.
Any one of those, or even all three, might exist, but so far as I know only the first is a necessary implication of currently accepted cosmological theory, and thus it has sort of inherited the "parallel universe" crown.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Remember, if you meet anti-You, just bow, not shake hands.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
If there was, then that means that free will means nothing and everything is determined by fate.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Says who?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I thought Schroedinger's cat was cakked 'Pixel'
at least in Hazel Meade Stone's universe
I would not have thought that information and intelligence were synonyms....
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This idea that every possible choice I make spawns a whole other universe where I made a different choice has always seemed ludicrous. This sort of thing implies that my choice of every word in this sentence causes a universe -a whole universe with planets and black holes and telemarketers and tofu- to pop into existence, just because I decided to use 'tofu' earlier instead of using "marmalade" or some other word.
This means either the theory is wrong, or that causing a universe to exist is completely trivial and of no particular meaning. Which in turn implies that THIS universe that we live in is just a casual happenstance of some being's choice. Which means the big bang and everything else that we know and that every human being has ever known about anything is just absolute pap.
That may be the case but it's easier to accept the theory is just wrong.
Sig for hire.
What do you think of epicycles? Don't they predict well enough? Isn't it just new-age bullshit and bafflegab to say the earth moves around the sun, when you can look up in the sky and see with your own eyes the sun moving? The logic is unassailable!
The whole concept of "duplicate you" just smacks of new age bullshit "spirituality" which suckers in the weak-minded and ill-educated with baffle gab and fancy words.
Nine out of ten mes agree!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It is possible to create extremely complex systems by combining very simple building blocks. A game like chess has rules you can explain to a child but takes a lifetime to master. Fractals are complex images computed by repeatedly applying a simple mathematical function. People can be complex even if they are built from nothing but physics.
You're assuming that if people consist of nothing but physics, that physics would be able to explain people. In other words, that the properties of the building blocks would explain all properties of a complex system. I think that is not the case, certainly not in practice and perhaps not even in theory.
First of all, deriving the properties of the whole from the properties of the components could be too difficult for people to perform in practice. Half a century of AI research might sound like a lot, but it is really far from an exhaustive search. Even a much simpler problem like computer chess hasn't been fully solved; it took half a century just to get chess algorithms at the same level as human players, but they're still far from perfect.
Second practical problem is that tiny variations in the configuration of building blocks can have big impacts on the system as a whole. For example, weather systems are chaotic. In a computer program, changing a single instruction among millions can have big consequences. So studying physics would at best give you the ability to predict how an unconfigured brain works (like an embryo's?), not an arbitrary brain that has formed lots of connections based on the experiences of the person in question.
A reason to doubt deriving all behavior is possible in theory is that there are unprovable statements in math. So even if you know all the rules, for non-trivial rulesets (such as arithmetic) you cannot prove all the consequences of those rules.
Different matter distributions == a universe in which said parallel universe which is inherently different than what we see around us.
I think there is some confusion over what "parallel" universe means. This is generally taken to be a universe which has been an exact parallel of our own universe up to some point after which it diverges i.e. everything is the same up to some point in time. In the quantum multiverse interpretation of QM this happens for each possible result of collapsing the wave function.
I've never heard of this ever being associated with multiple 'universes' from inflation because QM requires that the universes interact before they separate (this is how it explains the self interference of a single particle) whereas inflation requires that the universes be causally disconnected after their creation i.e. inflationary universes are just different universes, not parallel ones. So I think the author of the article got himself rather confused.
Even if an infinite number of universes exist, that does not imply that any of them are remotely similar to ours. For that implication to hold you must also assume that our universe is finite, or at least a drastically lower order of infinite such that the total number of possible states that our universe could be in is substantially less than the total number of universes that exist with the same geometry and physical laws.
Of course meaningfully comparing different orders of infinity isn't something you can do with high-school arithmetic, but it's a pretty common thing to do in advanced mathematics.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And how is that affected by the fact that modern theoretical physics is leaning towards the understanding that matter and energy are themselves forms of information, rather than physical "stuff"?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nonsense. Just because we don't understand something today doesn't mean there is no explanation. At present we don't even have a comprehensive physics based understanding of chemistry for compounds more complicated than H2 - the mathematics becomes far too complicated far to quickly for even our most advanced supercomputers to simulate. Nor do we have more than the most flawed and simplistic understanding of the chemistry driving the cellular mechanisms of even the most basic bacterium. To say today that physics is incapable of explaining intelligence is like a caveman saying that physics is incapable of describing the path of a thrown rock. At the time it was true, but the problem was not that mystical forces were governing the world, but simply that cavemen did not yet understand the rules governing the world well enough to describe even such simple things.
Obviously that's not to say that mystic forces *aren't* in play, only that it is far to soon to say anything at all on the subject. So far as I'm aware; however, we've yet to see a single shred of evidence that any such mystical forces exist. At least nothing that can survive a double-blind study. Though there is a case to be made that magic may by its very nature be difficult or impossible to "catch in the act", so to speak.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually they are - I posted a much more in-depth discussion towards the top of this topic is you care to search for my name, but the basic gist is that inflationary theory presumes that the universe we see is a bubble of "stabilized" spacetime that resulted from a the spontaneous decay of inflationary energy into mass, energy, etc. It is *extremely* unlikely though that the self-replicating inflationary energy was entirely consumed by the chain reaction of decay, and even a single speck remaining would continue to expand faster than light so that within moments it would be vastly larger than the entire bubble of spacetime we call "the universe". Further spontaneous decay of inflationary energy would create additional expanding "bubbleverses", all eternally separated by inflationary energy expanding far faster than lightspeed. And every one of those uncountably numerous bubbles would be a universe in it's own right, potentially having completely different physical laws than ours based on the particular details of the manner in which the inflationary energy decayed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Completely unrelated concept. There are at least three distinct kinds of parallel universe that might exist - you are discussing the kind that would result from the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics , which has absolutely nothing to do with the kind that results from inflationary theory. I gave a much better discussion near the top of the page if you're interested.
As for your example, you disprove nothing. Consider, in step three I might spit out the coffee instead of swallowing it - nothing about sipping the coffee implies that I will swallow it, and causality flows in either direction through the spitting-out timeline as well. Two universes would split from the moment that I decided to either swallow or spit, and both timelines would be completely internally consistent in both directions. Such is the nature of quantum mechanics - things still flow equally well in either direction (barring a few subatomic asymmetries which have been experimentally discovered), but you cannot decisively predict the outcome from the initial state.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Statistical extrapolations of repeating arrangements of matter based on the projected size of the multiverse has nothing in common with spirituality.
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Just like any of the other interpretation of the measurement collapse (Copenhagen), it has no evidence speaking for it. It just an interpretation of what we see in the mathematical equations. There is some way one *might* go to test it but at the moment we have nothing but the math (and I have my doubt about the proposed experience but it is for another thread). It is fun to speculate on what the consequence of MWI, especially if you might stumble on a way to make it testable, but I wish people would stop calling it a theory. At best it is a testable claim.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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An "assumption" is another way of saying "take it on faith". :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
TFA is basically a response to a talk on parallel universes given by Max Tegmark at the recent AAS conference. But it seems Ethan didn't read Max Tegmark's book (Our Mathematical Universe), because he only tries to address one of Tegmarks 4 levels of the Multiverse. The TLDR is that according to Tegmark the Multiverse is infinite, so there are other yous.
you must also assume that our universe is finite
The universe is finite, it's size is defined by the rate of cosmic expansion, we know this because we can observe it.
The Universe is probably infinite but we have no way of knowing other than math.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That said, we don’t know quite a few things about this inflationary state, and what this does is bring up a huge number of both uncertainties and also possibilities:
Comes across as a disclaimer, can't prove him right or wrong, while allowing a lot of leeway.
The "measurement made by a conscious being" is not the deciding point. It just makes it more interesting. The quantum implications of the uncertainty principle doesn't require a consciousness to 'make a measurement' that would cause a wave function to collapse to a single solution. It happens all the time with normal interactions. The only unique thing about a consciousness being involved is we can decide to set up the conditions where it will happen and then we notice it. No one spends a lot of time on what we don't notice...
I think almost all of this discussion comes under the second heading of: http://www.suck.com/daily/1997...
We are just trying to describe and define it based on our consciousness and from what our senses can feel about it.
And given our consciousness and our senses are themselves artifacts of the universe. I think we will never be able to understand and describe outside of the thin domain of our own being.
Léa Gris
"even the fantastic one of parallel Universes and alternate versions of you and me. But is that last one really admissible? The best modern evidence teaches us that even with all the Universes that inflation creates, it's still a finite number"
Why is a person that doesn't understand the difference between the terms "parallel" and "multiple" even writing an article on something they so clearly don't have the first clue about?
One might see this article as an argument in favor of an infinite universe, as that is no less probable than that zillions of universes exist but not *all* possible universes exist. I suggest something entirely different, an idea I cannot entirely explain at this time: Inferred computation applying to the power set of the natural numbers. Without discussing that prematurely, I can say that it leads one to consider that the phenomenon by which our universe appears to be "computed" (Wheeler's "It From Bit") would also make *all* possible computation appear to be computed. Essentially that would mean all possible universes exist. The idea also embraces the concept of a block universe - a universe that is eternal and only seems to us (within it) to have a certain finite age. It is utterly reasonable that an infinitely old universe that appears to have expanded far beyond the confines of our event horizon would also seem to have already expanded for an infinitely long time.
If information is outside matter and energy, information how to process information (i.e. intelligence) can also be outside of matter and energy.
Information creates what we call matter and energy out of nothing.
Correction - the *observable* universe is finite, but we can't see any edges within that space, implying that our little bubble of spacetime is larger than that. How much larger we can only speculate based on our understanding of the physics of the early universe.
I believe current theory is that the inflationary period began shortly *after* the beginning of the Universe 13.8 billion years ago, then some brief time later our "bubbleverse" was spawned by a bit of decaying inflationary energy. And since inflationary energy doesn't expand at an infinite rate, that means there's a finite number of other bubbleverses that could have been spawned so far. That number is increasing at an ever-increasing rate, and we have no theoretical basis to assume it will ever stop, so *eventually* there will be another you and I out there in another bubbleverse having this same conversation - but, apparently these folks calculations suggest that there are not yet nearly enough for that to be happening at this moment.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Sure. We also haven't been able to build a stable, energy-positive fusion reactor. That doesn't mean such a thing isn't possible, hell our theory explicitly tells us that it is, it just means we haven't yet solved the engineering problems.
Where biology is concerned we haven't even managed to construct a comprehensive model of a living organism at the level of organ interactions - we're constantly discovering new interactions we hadn't expected. Hell, we're still discovering new mechanical components - just last year we discovered a new layer to the eye that nobody had ever noticed before. At a cellular level we've only barely begun to scratch the surface of understanding how things operate. So far as we can tell everything obeys the same handful of physical laws we already know, but the mechanisms are so mind-bogglingly complex that we're probably at least centuries away from being able to create a comprehensive mathematical model.
And until we have constructed such a mathematical model, capable of describing *exactly* what should happen within a cell, organ, and organism if only the normal laws of physics apply, we can't say a damned thing about whether there are metaphysical forces at play as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Seriously.
a) We have no evidence that even one "parallel universe" exists.
b) If "parallel universes" do exist, we don't really know what that means or what the overarching physical laws are that govern them, their distribution, their number because -- wait for it -- we have no evidence that even one parallel universe exists.
c) So somebody makes up a theory that takes an interpretation of quantum mechanics (which does exist, or at least for which there is actual evidence), extends it by fiat to describe one particular possible way that -- subject to a mountain of unprovable assumptions -- parallel universes might exist, and assumes that we know enough to be able to do the quantum statistical mechanics of the multiverse and determine whether or not they are infinite in number and whether the infinity is aleph null or aleph prime or whatever, and then makes a pronouncement that they cannot possibly justify because (oh my gosh) we have no evidence that even one parallel universe exists and hence we have no observational basis for determining their statistical distribution or the statistical distribution of some meta-universal dynamics .
Once upon a time science actually was based on observations. Well, actually, once upon a time it was all Platonic Forms, bullshit philosophy, but then the human race supposedly grew up just a little bit during the Enlightenment. Apparently we are now taking a giant step for mankind -- backwards.
Next stop, the Star Wars universe and the Tolkein universe. I'm not in them, but they sure are fun to read about as fiction, pending a glitch in the matrix...
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
People that actually have and use some of the former....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And fail. If you put complex thing together from simple things, that the rules of the simple things do explain everything that the complex thing can do. That is basic mathematics. There are no "emergent" properties of matter and energy, just surprising ones, but they are already there in the rules that govern the simple parts. You also mistake how science works: It does not do exhaustive searches, because they are infeasible. Science critically needs intelligence to get anywhere.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Unless they exist in a loop. Then there is no first. Then one can scale the loop up to infinity.
There are many rooms in Hilbert's Grand Hotel, and even though nobody ever brings cigars in through the front door, there is always a fresh cigar waiting in your room every morning.
Unless and until there is a glitch in the matrix, there isn't any really good reason to think we are a simulation in some sort of meta-universe, and some excellent information-theoretic reasons to think that we aren't. The estimates of "probability" here are completely meaningless because the Bayesian priors are utterly disconnected from any possibility of proof. If this, that, and the other thing are all true, then we are probably a simulation. If there are multiple universes at all (whatever that even means) and if we make a small mountain of assumptions about the rules that govern them (all unprovable) then there is no you in any of them, unless of course the distribution of universes isn't uniform or defies the odds and there is. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If pigs had wings, they could fly.
The only sad thing is that people are even pretending that this is science. You have it pegged -- it is science fantasy written by a cynical but very funny philosopher to mock human frailty when it comes to making absurd arguments without evidence.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
For chemistry, we do have a theory how it works that has been validated for simpler molecules and that has every appearance of being correct for larger ones as well. For Intelligence, we have nothing at all. That is a bit of a difference.
But it is no use arguing with a pysicalist. You people misuse it as surrogate for religion, making the same mistakes that religion does: You ignore observable reality.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Thanks, apparently some people here have a working mind. You are right of course, that making theoretical, mathematical models for the human mind has bee ongoing for a long, long time and has consistently failed for all this time. AI research is just the latest discipline to deliver absolutely nothing in that regard.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Since when does "we don't currently have a working theory" mean "it must be magic"? As it happens I'm inclined to believe there is a mystical component to consciousness. I certainly hope there is, or else the continuing expanse of knowledge is going to enable some real horrible atrocities to be reliably committed.
However, at present we don't have the slightest shred of evidence to suggest such a thing. All we know is that we're faced with a mystery vastly more complex than our current knowledge can address. We can't even solve the physics equations behind a single protein molecule, or even an ethanol molecule for that matter. A brain is so far beyond us we may never be able to accurately model it. That doesn't mean it's magic, it just means we're ignorant.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And hence you support my argument. Living matter is the other thing we do not know whether it is even physically possible as, as you rightfully point out, there is no theory explaining it that is purely physics-based. And all attempts to create from non-living matter have failed. Sure, doing it is just a decade or a few away, but has been so for a long time and consistently fails to materialize. Sounds awfully like true AI. But you are wrong again: We do _not_ know that living matter follows the laws of physics. That is a pure assumption, and about as valid as the assumption that "there is a god". In other words ridiculous. The only thing we know is that living matter, once killed, does follow the laws of physics. You cannot even measure that with the required precision in a living organism, because doing so kills it. What we also know is that living matter mostly seems to follow the laws of physics, but there is a rather large margin of uncertainty that we cannot reduce.
What you seem to miss here is that the laws of physics are absolutes. Have even a tiny deviation from them and you have something extra-physical. We even know where this may come in: Quantum effects are "true random" (a scientific form of saying "we have no clue, just some statistics"), and the human brain has an exceptionally large amount of them influencing its working in the synapses. That does look like an interface like nothing else does. Even tiny deviations in the probabilities, applied in many places at once, would be enough to control the whole thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The only one here that said anything about "magic" is you. I am merely pointing out that there is pretty compelling evidence that the physicalist model is incomplete and that it is stupid to insists that it is actually complete and accurate, as are the conclusions drawn from it.
Sure, that is a meta-analysis I am doing here, an decidedly not beginner's stuff.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is a rehash of the Boltzman's Brain paradox, which doesn't require quantum mechanics, just infinity and statistical mechanics. It's a line of thinking in physics that goes back at least 80 years and probably back to the late 1800s. This doesn't mean it's wrong or bad, just that generations of physicists have thought about this (usually with a beer or two) and there's not a hard physical answer to the question: do I exist somewhere else in the universe?
It comes down to one little bit in that article: the universe could be infinite, and may have been infinite since before the big bang. The rest is the same line of reasoning about the improbability of growing toward infinity (gravitation at first, limits on inflation now) that we've been looking at for many generations. We're pretty sure we're not growing into an infinite universe. We still have no idea if the universe started off infinite. Addressing that is a bit outside of what we can currently do.
I'm not even sure there's a me in THIS universe.
J
I would not have thought intelligence is information how to process information.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Virus has been created artificially, over a decade ago. Arguments why virus is not "life" are all "artificial".
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I did not say life was purely physical - I said we had no rational reason to believe otherwise. We're still a long, long way away from understanding the physical aspects, and until we do there is no rational reason to assume there's more to it than that.
You also seem to be operating under the assumption that a metaphysical component must be something that exists separate from the physical, even while pointing out that quantum mechanics actually grants the physical incredible freedom of action. I would liken that perspective to assuming that the physical is lifeless "clay", and that life animates it like a puppetmaster sending it's commands from "elsewhere". Another, equally possible perspective is that it is the clay is itself alive - every photon, electron, and atom possessing a tiny spark of consciousness, and everything we consider to be life is actually an expression of those sparks getting together and collaborating in their tiny mindless way to form ever more interesting ways to express themselves - eventually combining their individual dim sparks into a shining beacon of human self-awareness so bright that other sparks pale into invisibility under its reflected glow, leaving the unformed clay looking lifeless in comparison. That is a somewhat Taoist perspective, and has the advantage that at no point in the evolution of life do you require a miraculous transition by which life is formed from non-life, every step is simply a progression of life finding forms with greater expressive potential and, once self-replicating molecules were developed, sharing those discoveries with their peers.
AI is something else again - actual strong, self-aware AI (as opposed to the formulaic pseudo--conscious AI which is, like fire, still becoming incredibly powerful and potentially uncontrollably dangerous) may never be possible in software, where it is isolated by a layer of rigorous logic from the vast potential of quantum uncertainty. On the other hand, eventually we're going to understand the purely physical aspects of life well enough to be able to build a new "consciousness antenna" from scratch - and that will be an interesting day. Will the mere existence of such an antenna be sufficient motivation for a "puppetmaster" to inhabit it? If not, is there something else we could do to coax one in? Or perhaps the purely physical potential will be enough to allow it to become animate, acting in a soulless caricature of life driven by random quantum chaos. Could we tell the difference? Or, if life is born of the universe rather than imposed upon it, perhaps we shall truly succeed in creating new self-awareness from whole, living, cloth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not so - "magic" is traditionally the catch-all for "not-science", which is *exactly* what we're discussing. If something is outside the realm of logical, replicable understanding, it's magic. If it can, potentially, eventually, be understood and replicated, then it is the domain of science - regardless of whether it's born of atoms and photons bouncing around, or vast inter-dimensional otherness manifesting through the cracks of quantum mechanics.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Even if an infinite number of universes exist, that does not imply that any of them are remotely similar to ours. For that implication to hold you must also assume that our universe is finite, or at least a drastically lower order of infinite such that the total number of possible states that our universe could be in is substantially less than the total number of universes that exist with the same geometry and physical laws.
Of course meaningfully comparing different orders of infinity isn't something you can do with high-school arithmetic, but it's a pretty common thing to do in advanced mathematics.
Tegmark is pretty much the most cited guy about this stuff and explains it better than anyone else:
The Universes of Max Tegmark
it would be a parallel niverse, then?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.