You are offered a deal in which you are asked to flip a coin ten times. If any one of the flips comes up tails, you are swiftly and painlessly killed. If it comes up heads ten times in a row, you are given a banana. Do you take the deal?
For the purposes of this thought experiment, we may assume it is a perfectly fair coin, and that you like bananas, although not any more so than would generally be considered healthy. We may also assume for simplicity that your life or death is of absolutely no consequence to anyone but yourself: you live in secret on a deserted island, isolated from contact with the outside world, where you have everything you need other than bananas. We may finally assume that we know for certainty that there is no afterlife; upon death, you simply cease to exist in any form. So, there is an approximately 99.9% chance that you will be dead, which by hypothesis implies that you will feel no regrets or feelings of disappointment. And if you survive, you get a banana. What do you think?
Now change the experiment a little. Instead of flipping a coin, you measure the x-component of the spin of an electron that has been prepared in an eigenstate of the y-component of the spin; according to the rules of quantum mechanics, there is an even chance that you will measure the x-component of the spin to be up or down. You do this ten times, with ten different electrons, and are offered the same wager as before, with spin-up playing the role of “heads” for the coin. The only difference is that, instead of a classical probability, we are dealing with branching/collapsing wavefunctions. I.e., if you believe in something like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there will always be a branch of the wavefunction of the universe in which you continue to exist and now have a banana. Do you take the deal?
I suppose the question is moot in the second case since there will inevitably be a universe in which you take the deal and a universe in which you don’t.
And thus, there is a probability there-in, that the small portion of the wavefunction that has been “pinched” into another Universe, has to be parametrically Time-stamped?
You had better hope that the other Universe has the same number of Proton/Neutron ratio’s, and the ‘other’ Universe is in Expansion, expanding at the same rate?
If for instance you happen upon another Universe that is ‘out-of-phase’, then the total number of photons present, may fall WAY below the low-energy limit of our early Universe, and that of course will mean big trouble?
How can you fit a standard size banana from ‘this’ Universe, into a Universe that is probably no larger than a standard size current Proton?
The probability function is matter determined?..the branching off (many worldline collapse function?)surely is a stastistical function of ‘our’ unique Universe?
Not to mention that there is a more than likelyhood that the branched off Universe would contain no Electrons that are Orbiting stable Atoms?
I’d eat the banana before I travelled!..rather that take risky !chance”
Since in 999 universes out of 1000 branches of the multiverse, I’d be dead, it probably isn’t worth it.
In both cases, absolutely. Nothing to live or die for in the first, except maybe a banana, and in the second case a banana-in-hand is guaranteed.
Actually, sounds like one hell of a deal.
Anonymous is on to something.
I suppose I’d have to believe in the many-worlds interpretation really, really strongly.
I read a paper quite some time ago that proposed an experiment like this as a way to test the “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics. Does anyone remember this particular paper?
To make it a stronger test, of course, we should decrease the survival probability substantially — if you perform a quantum Russian Roulette experiment with a survival probability of 10^10 or so, and you survive, then you at least will have a pretty strong conviction of the truth of the MWI.
Of course, if you have a colleague of yours perform the experiment, it’s unlikely to prove anything to *you*, though you would would do well to get him to name you as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy…
We can have even more fun with this: suppose you perform this experiment without telling anyone that you are going to do so. After you survive, you inform the world that the MWI is correct, as your survival demonstrates with high probability. A skeptical world asks you to repeat the experiment, and when you do so, well, in most branches of the wavefunction, you are dead, and the skeptical world shakes its head and goes back to whatever else it was doing. But in *your* branch of the wavefunction, you survive again — so what can you now claim you have demonstrated to the skeptical world?
If you carry this logic just a little further, the MWI seems to imply that at least to the extent that the random vicissitudes of life are governed by quantum processes, each of us will eventually only experience a branch of the wavefunction in which we live as close to forever as is quantum-mechanically possible. If we think of long life as good, then the MWI says that we really *do* live in the best of all possible worlds…
By the way, the paper I probably had in mind is The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?, by Max Tegmark.
Here is Tegmark’s website with related articles…
How does the MWI explain that we fall asleep each night? Wouldn’t there be a universe branching off in which we never lose our consciousness, and this is the one we should be “trapped” in?
invcit –
If you go without sleep long enough, you die. If you are awake and observing now, then the only past histories possible are those in which you got enough sleep to remain alive, and the *typical* past histories are those in which you got a *typical* amount of sleep. It’s only the cases in which you go to sleep *and never wake up* that you can exclude from your calculations, in this notion of the MWI.
First case: No, I don’t take the chance. I still have some stuff I’d like to do, and though bananas are ok, I’m not bananas about them.
Second case: No, I don’t take the chance. For one, observing the spin will fundamentally change me. The notion of multiple states existing post-observation doesn’t make sense to me (but perhaps that reflects more on me than quantum mechanics). And regardless, I’m not even sure quantum mechanics explains such a momentous decision accurately! And I am SURE that quantum mechanics doesn’t explain some things. Say, gravity.
I take that back. I’m not sure quantum mechanics doesn’t explain gravity. But somebody might be.
But seriously, folks - let’s distinguish between the ‘You’ that exists in the Youniverse and the many alternate ‘yous’(youse guys?) that exist elsewhere in the multiverse. If all these multiverse yous are meaningfully associated with You why don’t You share the experiences of these yous? Why would the many-world yous share Your experience if You don’t share theirs? When You die you simply appropriate or override the continuity of an alternate you? Which particular alternate you’s experience would You appropriate or override?
The idea is that at every moment (every moment is an ‘event) You branch off into a zillion new versions of Yourself. Why would You follow one of an infinite selection of continuities of experience up to the point of your death then suddenly switch to an alternate continuity? Why do we assume that dying is, as an experience, different in essence from any other experience? If You are terminated in the Youniverse, the splitting-from-You process would end, although previously generated yous might carry on. Even if, at the instant of Your death there was a final splitting, the spilttee yous would be no more associated with You than any previous yous were.
In short, why would the existence of alternate yous be of any relevance in terms of Your own continuity given that they are independent of and inaccessible to You?
I wouldn’t take the deal.
Alex: I’m not sure I buy your explanation. It sounds more like consistent histories than many worlds. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is *something* fishy about discontinuity of consciousness combined with many worlds.
This thought experiment, which Max posed some time ago as noted above, was one that, more than anything, made me think the many-worlds interpretation is just nuts. You can make the experiment quite precise (i.e. by a nuclear bomb connected to a geiger counter, so it is painless and instantaneous). The notion that you would repeatedly ‘pull the trigger’ and surive struck me as completely absurd. Worse yet, suppose I just aim a gun at my head. In some universe, no matter how improbable, *something* will prevent me from dying (e.g., the bullet will just tunnel to the other side of my head, without harm.) Now, there are many more possibilities where I am horribly maimed but do not die, so this is inadvisable, but I think it is the logical conclusion of the ‘quantum suicide’ train of thought. I think we can all agree that this sort of twisted immortality is disturbing.
But by strange coincidence I was just thinking of it today (before I saw this blog), and realized that it may also be argued to apply an infinite universe: in an infinite universe there are infinitely many copies of exactly the same surroundings you see now. Suppose we take a finite region around us, and assume we are in some definite quantum state out of the possible set of states of that region. Then there are infinitely many other such regions in that same quantum state. Now suppose you take the bet, but in the copenhagen interpretation. The wave function in each of the copies in the ensemble collapses into either the ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ state. Only the alive ones will have you continue to exist, so you will experience one of those. Does anyone see any essential difference between this and the ‘many worlds’ version of quantum suicide? I don’t. I suppose I must then either reject an infinite universe (which I do otherwise believe in), or accept that the end of my life will be a sequence of horrendous but life-saving miracles, or accept that my previous dismissal of many-worlds is premature because something is wrong with the basic argument. I’m not fond of any of the three options. Can anyone help?
My version of the thought experiment (which I first heard from philosophers) was secretly a pro-MWI argument. Yes, most people would not take the bet in the quantum case, even though there is some amplitude that they would live forever, and this is supposed to demonstrate that nobody really believes in the many-worlds interpretation. But most people wouldn’t take the bet in the classical case, either, and I honestly don’t see the difference. In either case there are two possibilities: you don’t exist, or you have a banana. Whether those possibilities are classical alternatives or branches of the wavefunction doesn’t seem especially relevant to me. So I conclude that it’s just not a very probative thought experiment.
I think that the way we act right now includes a reluctance to be dead in the future, even if we are absolutely sure that once we’re dead we won’t be regretting anything. The fact that the only surviving versions of me, either in branches of the wavefunctions or far away in an infinite universe, will be doing fine just doesn’t change my feelings very much.
I don’t need a thought experiment to prove that there are multiple universes branching off a possible decision. I have driven in the streets of Boston. Every intersection is a demonstration of chaotic universe branching, where my car (the Electron) got through the intersection unharmed.
I think the crux of the question is whether you would be more likely to take the bet in the Everett vs. the Copenhagen interpretation. I would be. Imagine the experiment with a star-trek transporter instead of QM:
First, the transporter just teleports you across the room by disassembling your constituents and reassembling them across the room. Fine, you feel safe (Depending, perhaps, on your philosophical predilictions).
Next, set the transporter to make *two* copies on the left and right side of the room. I think there was an episode like this. Now you feel doubly safe getting in, but might be confused as to which side of the room ‘you’ will end up on. Of course both of you will claim to be ‘you’. But nevermind this.
Now, make it simple again by, at random, turning off transport to the left or right side. Now you are back to case 1, but you randomly reassemble on one side or the other. Again you feel no fear.
Penultimately, add a third option, so that half of the time the transporter will make both copies rather than one or the other. As per previous logic, you should feel even safer.
Finally, suppose 50% of the time the ‘reassemble’ sequence is never activated at all, and 50% of the time it is activated in the left side. Would you feel safe going through *this* transporter 10 times?
the last two seem to me to be just analogous to the Everett and Copenhagen interpretations.
My serious answer would be no because no matter how much I support MWI there’s always a significant possibility I’m completely wrong about it.
An interesting question for those people who believe this experiment would prove MW is probably correct (and I might well be one of them) would be whether they think it implies that it is impossible for a conscious entity to die. I think it’s _just_ about possible to have one without the other but I’d have to think about it some more.
Sean: Just in case you read my entry at #12 and give a hoot.. I’m not arguing against the multiverse - just against the common notion that the multiverse is an argument for immortality. I like the multiverse model; it’s elegant and no more anti-intuitive than the notion of an infinite classical universe or of a finite classical universe existing nowhere in the middle of nothingness. I’m neither a physicist nor a mathematician and so my understanding of these matters is much less sophisticated than that of most of the participants in this blog.. but, whatever it’s worth, I appreciate your ability to explian QM to the layman and am happy to know that there’s a name physicist out there who has the b#**s to get philosophical from time to time.
I think that Tegmark made a mistake when he claimed that according to the MWI you should always survive such ”quantum suicide experiments”. In principle, one has to deal with a static wavefunction. I.e. even though the wave function evolves according to the Schrödinger equation, the ”wave function of the entire multiverse” does not evolve in time. In fact, there is no meaningful notion of a time parameter across the entire multiverse.
So, in principle, you have to deal with an ”a-priori” probability distribution over all possible observer states. The correct way to calculate probabilities of experimental outcomes is to consider the a-priori probability of the observer finding some experimental outcome.
If the probability of dying during the experiment can be ignored, then the probabilities are conserved. I.e., the sum of probabilities of all possible outcomes equals the probability of doing the experiment. In this case one can define conditional probabilities in a meaningful way as ratios of the two a-priory probabilities after and before the experiment.
Tegmark’s mistake was to assume that the conditional probability is fundamental and that it can be used even in case the experimentor dies depending on the experimental outcome (according to him ”dead states” don’t count and the conditional probabilites had to be renormalized, so that you are alive after the suicide experiment with probability 1).
Instead, the experimentor should assume that at any particular moment of his life he is sampled from a (static) set of states. The probability distribution is fixed by the laws of physics plus structure of the multiverse. The reason why we experience a flow of time is simply because any generic observer state has a memory of being in states related to him by a time translation operations. So, all the observer states are equally real; there is no need to postulate a ”time pointer” making some states real and then moving on to time translated ‘’successor states”.
“Do you take the deal?”
No.
This idea is similar to one floated by computer scientists called “anthropic computing”. For instance, here’s how it would work for the problem 3SAT, which is NP-complete: given a formula φ, use a quantum procedure like the above to guess a random assignment x. If x does not satisfy φ, kill yourself. If you believe in the many worlds interpertation, then there’s guaranteed to be a universe in which you’re still alive and looking at the right solution, meaning you’ve solved this instance of φ in polynomial time.
Turns out this is idea has been put to some practical use in the theory of computing. More details are in an interesting survey by Scott Aaronson called “NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality”.
Hi Sean!
Does this imply that “making the decision to take the deal” suddenly splits the universe up into multiple possibilities? I’d rather think that if the multiverse exists, the universe is going to split whether or not I am going to take the deal or not. Thus in the deal you lay out, there will be versions of me that take the bet and versions that do not.
I thought this is funny though, since it seems like a way to fit a deteministic picture into a quantum mechanical setting.
If you believe in many worlds doesn’t that then mean that in some worlds you will have taken the chance and in others you didn’t? Therefore, you will have taken the chance.
“Turns out this is idea has been put to some practical use in the theory of computing.”
It’s also a practical method of population reduction.
Joking aside, the abstract to the paper the commenter mentions is at
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072
By the way, my favorite sentence in the paper itself is
“Admittedly, if phi is unsatisfiable, you might be out of luck.”
Here is a question I have formulated sometime ago, as there hs been a few references to:Consciousness-Dreams-and specifically, Quantum Computers.
This is the first time this question has seen the light of day, except for a small number of computer savy whizzkids, and a few friends who I thought would get the first level, but not probe the deeper meaning? which I asked in an informal way.
So next time your close to a Quantum Computer Theorist, who is dazzling you with the AI-ID and other computer related banter, let them finish, then hit them with this:
Out of two choices what would Quantum Computing best define sleep,Unconciousness as an “Offline” or “Online” event?
Think about Computer termonology, think deep!
I personally see no operational difference between collapse of the wave function and MWI in which any observer for some reason is constrained to feel only one branch of the wavefunction after a measurment (and not a superposition). Those other branches, which remain forever inaccessible, are purely a semantic exercise as far as I can tell, so I really don’t see any difference between the two versions of the question. Even for classical probabilities we can pretend those other possibilities “exist” in some number of made-up “universes” we cannot access, should not make any difference.
I guess that just means I don’t believe in the MWI enough…
moshe,
It was a philosophical exercise for Sean?
I think we are afraid too, and there is some potent force of survival that takes over( try and hold your breathe till your dead?). Letting go, is never easy with matter fixations?
If we thought for a moment, that we could through some idea of future lives (reincarnation), make amends, what use would there be to fix anything that we might had made by making the wrong choice?
It’s a question about empowering oruselves with the responsibility “now” without invoking some magician, eh?
But lets say you did look to the future, where you might have decided, the choice made was not a good one retrospectively, the possibility might then exist, that altering any new future from that perspective, could have new repercussions?
But wait! Your dead?
Not possible. If I had everything I needed, other than bananas, the island would not be deserted.
I would have lots of young friends!
And I and my twins in the Multiverse would be content without our bananas, because along with the girls we got mangos. (Assuming that this was a tropical isle, and not a polar one).
Assuming that I put a high value on remaining alive in the near future, then of course I don’t take the deal — the obfuscations are irrelevant. States are superimposed with coin flips just as much as they are with spin measurements — it’s just that the latter are micro-analyzable. And probabilities are calculated by counting the number of worlds in which the event occurs. It doesn’t matter whether the worlds are alternative possibilities or superimposed realities — these are just different models for formally equivalent sysems.
“If you believe in many worlds doesn’t that then mean that in some worlds you will have taken the chance and in others you didn’t? Therefore, you will have taken the chance.”
No, actually, there are no worlds in which the chance is taken because this is a hypothetical.
Sean writes:
“So I conclude that it’s just not a very probative thought experiment.”
Indeed, this is a straightforward conclusion for anyone who understands probability, modal logic, the nature of models, etc. Apparently, however, few people understand these despite their fundamental simplicity. To determine a probability of an event, count up the number of worlds in which the event occurs. It doesn’t matter whether these are “possible worlds” — mutually exclusive outcomes — or “multiple universes” — superimposed actualities. In either case, 1 out of 1024 worlds contains you holding a banana and 1023 don’t. Whether to take the deal depends upon the relative values that you assign to worlds in which you a) exist and have a banana, b) exist and do not have a banana, c) do not exist — one need not address all the philosophical issues as to what values we should assign in order to address the puzzle; clearly we do assign a much higher value to existing than we do to having bananas.
I should have written “In either case, 1 out of 1024 worlds contains you holding a banana and 1023 don’t if you take the deal, and n out of n worlds containing you not holding a banana if you don’t take the deal.” So we’re comparing (V(alive)+V(have banana) + 1023*V(dead))/1024 to (V(alive)+V(don’t have banana)), where V(s) is the value we assign to state s. If we assign a value of 0 to being dead and to not having a banana, this reduces to
[deal] (V(alive)+V(have banana))/1024 vs. [no deal] V(alive) or
[deal] V(have banana) vs. [no deal] 1023*V(alive)
So you should take the deal only if being alive is worth less than 1/1023 of having a banana.
ah, so we are defining the mathematical framwework around these philosophical points of view? The logic?
While it began as a “thought experiment” the very basis of the question raised(?) were based on what had already come before us?
All the “histories” had already been defined in a “normal distribution.” Now you have to remember how one gets to this point and you place it in perspective, and in context of Bell’s Theorem?
So having encapsulated this history, one leans towards “choices made” and how responsible we are with them? A theoretical position?
Okay, so as an example like Solvay in 1927 makes itself known. The exercise is, “self describing” in process?
No.
Although the “many worlds theory” is a great concept, it falls apart when time is yanked out of the equation.
Worse, the “many worlds” theory states that ANY branching point creates a new
universe. Again, theoretically nice on a limited scale, horrendous on the macro scale (somewhere I got a banana but a meteor slammed into my house and kills me - great).
What I find disturbing about the “many worlds” theory, is that if it holds true for this world, then it must hold true for the alternate world. Do these worlds continue or collapse at some point? Or do they merge back in with the “true” universe?
What I hate about the “many worlds” theory is, if indeed time is not unidirectional, then there can be many pasts as there are many futures. All leading up to you either getting/not getting that banana.
Personally, I fall in the “everything happens at once and time is merely how we perceive things” group. Makes everything nice, neat and tidy.
Feloneous
Although there may be replicates of me in the “other worlds”, I am only aware of my existence in this one. So don’t take the bet (unless bananas can be passed from one world to the next!)
Anthony
As Sean pointed out in a previous comment, it is likely that the quantum suicide thought experiment has more to do with the interpretation of probability theory than with quantum mechanics.
Indeed, when Tegmark says that if you survive the quantume suicide many times you must acknolewdge the truth of the MWI, what he really says is that your subjective probability assignment of the event “the MWI is true” has risen to a value very close to one. This is so only if the a priori probability of the MWI being true is not many times smaller than your probability of surviving the quantum suicide. You have to believe at least a little to the MWI to interpret the experiment in this way. If you don’t, nothing prevent you to interpret it by saying that you are a damn lucky guy. To say the truth, I don’t think assigning a probability to a belief is sensible at all. What probability would you give for the Riemann hypothesis to be true ?
The use of probability is sensible only when there is a randomness generator somewhere.
Amusingly, there seem to be two parallel ‘Anthony’s posting with the same name; comments 14, 17, and this one were not made by the same person as #37.
Anyway, to those (such as Sean) who ascribe no importance to the ‘other worlds’ in this experiment, it seems to me that this is identical to ascribing no difference between, in my argument of comment #17, having the teleporter’s ‘reassembler’ turned on or off: i.e. you would be equally comfortable stepping into a teleporter that simply disassembled you, then shut down, as one that disassembled you then reassembled you elsewhere. If you are reassued by the fact that ‘you’ will appear on the other side of the room, then surely you will be equally reassured whichever side of the room you reassemble on, and the whole argument goes through. We could also set up the teleporter to reassemble you very far away with no change in the argument. Thus I think dismissing the ‘copy of you’ that continues to exist (somewhere else in the multiverse) as meaningless is only reasonable if you also dismiss your post-teleportation self as meaningless. But this would imply something that you identify as ‘you’ which goes above and beyond the organization of the materials of your body. Perhaps that is the case, but is that what you think?
Anthony (A.?), in my mind there is a difference between “other worlds” which are causally connected to mine, and those which are not. Your teleporter is then not necessarily analogous to either the other branches of the wavefunction or other worlds outside my lightcone, both of which I am having trouble assigning sufficient degree of reality to comfort me in my one tangible universe.
The teleporter example sounds much more concrete, for example presumably I saw it at work before stepping into it… to make it more analogous to the cases above, imagine in contrast someone told you that the person who stepped into the teleporter and vanished “really” keeps on existing in some other branch of the wave function, or somewhere similarly inaccessible (heaven?), I for one would be very suspicious…
Kill the person withholding the banana and take his coin, too. Win-win.
We thus comprehend a fundamental difference between physicists and chemists. Physicists are constrained from discovery by extant theory. Einstein’s annus mirabilis was greeted with years of yawns. Chemists have rules… but we also have waste crocks and are inured to cleaning glassware.
Was a ruined Abbe refractometer too great a sacrifice for discovering SuperGlue? Adam’s catalyst began as burned linoleum. Do we toss back organic metals because the grad student slipped two decimal places in attempting Zieglar-Natta polymerization of acetylene? Do we abandon Zieglar-Natta catalysts because the technician was lazy about cleaning out the autoclave between runs, enabling the discovery? (The boys were 1963 Nobel Laureates. The technician got bupkis.)
Management has alternate universes screwed up, too.
Greg Egan wrote a book around this issue. Quarantine. The main character keep ‘pulling the trigger’ over and over and occasionally freaks out over the idea that there’s all the other versions of himself that are being wiped out every time.
Somewhere years ago i heard this thought problem expressed not in the either/or coin flip metaphor, but in both roulette and craps game constructs. From revisiting it here back in with the coinflip banana version i am reminded that the set and setting we present as first information makes a bit of a difference in the outcomes. When given a craps presentation, the multiple choices and outcomes elicit a wide variety of response choices, and much like Anthony’s “Star Trek” construct. It might be interesting to work this through as a poker game with nine players at the table and each has pretty good hands, mmmmm..
My point (and I do have one) is that the common logic behind the quantum-suicide argument — “you don’t really believe in the many-worlds interpretation, because if you did you’d be willing to die in many branches of the wavefunction to obtain some reward in other branches” — is a little bit faulty, not because of anything about quantum mechanics, but because of how individuals here-and-now go about making decisions for the benefit of their future selves. These thought experiments rely on a certain fungibility in the notion of the univalent “self.” The transporter is the best example — if it makes two copies of me, which is really “me”? I think the strictly correct answer must be that neither is me — they are some future reconstructions based on me. But the implication is that the person I will become in five minutes, even in the real world without any transporters, is also not “me” in some strict sense. And the implication of that is that I shouldn’t be strategizing to necessarily improve the lot of my future self any more than of anyone else in the world. And all of this may be strictly logically true, but it doesn’t reflect the way people actually behave — I do care about my future self, even if I understand that the unique continuity between my present and my future consciousness is just a convenient illusion that would be shattered by a transporter machine operated by a mischievous chief engineer. From this I conclude that my unwillingness to risk quantum death to get a banana doesn’t really count as an argument against the many-worlds interpretation.
Oh, I see, it does look like the issues to do with continuity of the self get conflated with the interpretation of QM. To design a better diagnostics of one’s faith in MWI any scheme that trades worldly comfort for the some promised heavenly bliss can be used, where the unseen and inaccessible heaven can stand for unseen and inaccessible branches of the wave function if one wishes. There are lots of such schemes around…
(It is clear by now I am not playing this game in good faith, as I mentioned above I see no problems getting solved by postulating this ontological monstrosity, just an opinion…)
Actually, it can’t be ’strictly logically true’ — you logically can’t get an ought from an is, so logic doesn’t tell us what we should do, it only allows us to logically manipulate “shoulds”, or values, that are already determined. And to do that, two issues must be addressed:
1) The value of surviving. There is no logical basis for the survival ‘instinct’, or urge — this is something that is built into us, as a matter of our evolutionary history. While the urge is much more malleable in us than in, say, cockroaches, because the processing mechanism is much more complex in us, it is still a matter of our nature. No matter how we have reasoned about it, if we see someone walk into a ‘teleportation’ booth, be scanned, and then be destroyed, we’re going to balk about being put into the booth — it’s an emotional reaction.
2) The notion of identity over time. This is a convention of sorts; there is no logical basis for the claim that the me of a second from now is the same as the me of now — they certainly aren’t in identical configurations, or even composed of identical materials. And by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, “I” will be considerably different. Suppose that, every night while asleep, I am scanned, duplicated, and then the the original is destroyed and replaced with the duplicate, which later wakes up unaware of the difference. Does this “matter”? Suppose I find out that this happens every night — should I be afraid to go to sleep? Logic is of little help here. And likewise it is of little help in deciding whether we should care about ‘alternate’ selves — our emotional reactions to these scenarios tells us nothing about MWI — MWI logically cannot be distinguished from another model for the same data, so we shouldn’t be sucked into thinking that poorly formed intuitions and faulty analysis can serve as a test.
Indeed and of course. It’s really rather pathetic that anyone imagines that their personal fear has any bearing on metaphysical truth.
By this I mean that it’s a matter of logic that no empirical test (such as whether some scenario scares us) can distinguish between models for the same data — else they wouldn’t be models for the same data. Branching vs. superposition with collapse are different ways of conceptualizing the exact same phenomena.
I like this experiment, and the statement “we are dealing with branching/collapsing wavefunctions.”
#6:”we should decrease the survival probability substantially — if you perform a quantum Russian Roulette experiment with a survival probability of 10^10 or so, and you survive, then you at least will have a pretty strong conviction of the truth of the MWI.”
After 10^10 trials of quantum suicide, I am still alive? Then I will abandon QM theory, not believe MWI.:-)
I mean, I measure spins of 10 electrons, at t=0. I found 10 spin-ups and get my banana. Then I will start to think that “|+x>=|+z>?, is there really quantum uncertainty?” Or I will think “did the world change abruptly at t=0?”
Yeah, 10 electrons aren’t enough to doubt validity of QM.
Will to use 10^10 electrons change the story? I guess not…
What if the half-life of proton is actually 1s, instead of 10^35 years? Because our universe is particular branch.(10^35 years is what physicists calculated and what they are believing.)
We found QM. —> Adopted MW interpretation. —> Arrived at non-QM’al world.
“We found QM. —> Adopted MW interpretation. —> Arrived at non-QM’al world”
No, we found QM, performed experiments, arrived at non-QM’al world. How we interpret an experiment doesn’t alter its actual outcome.
Just because in one world I get a banana doesn’t make the other 2^10-1 worlds any less deprived of my gestalt, my Me-ness. That’s a pretty big loss for just a banana, even taking in consideration my ego.
A fairly interesting treatment of this is ‘Meanwhile’, an interactive webcomic by Jason Shiga. (The guy also does a number of other geeky comics. His site is pretty good fun. At least, for me.)
In case the interface confuses you, you basically follow the story along the tube, taking branches as choices. When a tube goes off a page, click the tab where it leaves, and then continue on the page you arrive at from exactly the same point where the previous tab was.
Feloneouscat:”there can be many pasts” Maybe this meant what I said “the half-life of proton is actually 1s.” Many comments to read…
truth machine:”an experiment doesn’t alter its actual outcome.” Sorry, meaning is? Right. But the experiment was performed, after assuming MW interpretation is true.
Logically I would of course refuse the deal. If (a) MWI is correct then, as has already been pointed out, in some other Universe I have already taken the deal and some me somewhere has gotten a banana. In fact an infinite number of me, since this deal has been offered to me an infinite number of times. If (b) MWI is not correct and I lose, then I’m dead and perhaps it’s the experimentalist side of me but there are many things besides bananas which I enjoy in life (even on the hypothetical island)– thinking about ideas such as MWI, for example. So I can only lose by taking the deal.
As for the philosophical conundrum of how I plan for my future self (in this, the only Universe of which I have an experience or memory) again it’s simple — there are again two possible options: either it’s all an illusion (e.g the example above where I am destroyed and recreated each night; or pesky transporter operator) in which case nothing I do or don’t do will make any difference or I can actively work to impact the relative comfort of my future self by going to the store and buying a banana for my future self to enjoy in the morning (modulo interference with my plans by a hurricane or a banana loving partner who absconds with my fruit in the middle of the night). If it’s all an illusion, my trip to store is irrelevant. If not, I might as well get off the couch and buy the stupid banana if I want breakfast in the morning.
My apologies to St. Augustine for essentially rephrasing his arguments.
Finally, I’m not sure I understand the arguments for MWI. In order for this interpretation to make any sense, it has to assume a complete and consistent theory at the most fundamental level — which we obviously don’t yet have (quantum gravity in particular). We (scientists, philosophers, humans) have a tendency to extrapolate from our current (imperfect) understanding of something, forgetting that what we don’t yet know can change everything. The ether made sense based on what we knew about wave propagation. Extending what we understand about QM is a lot of fun, but probably extremely premature. Certainly not worth a banana.
Kevin writes:
A loss to whom? If I leave a room, the lack of a me in the room is no loss to me. When talking about things like loss, it’s vital to establish the subject. Failing to do so leads to such absurdities as debates over “what is the purpose of life”, which verges on grammatical incoherence, much like asking “what is the expectation of health” as if expectations and health were universals, needing no specification of subject or object.
cat writes:
I don’t know about you, but I’m speaking plain English. If I mix two chemicals after assuming that George Bush will be impeached, I’ll get the same result as if I had instead assumed that aliens will land on Earth next week. Making assumptions, which is about our mental states (which translates into physical states of our brains) doesn’t affect the outcome of the experiments we perform (it may affect which experiments we choose to perform, but that’s a different matter).
To Fzplus: ‘Meanwhile’ is fun — thanks!
P.S.
Cat wrote
Perhaps it would be easier to discern my meaning if you didn’t chop off the front of my sentence: “How we interpret an experiment doesn’t alter its actual outcome.”
macho writes:
That example has nothing to do with illusion — as I noted, your body state is constantly changing; the “you” that wakes up tomorrow is not the “you” that goes to sleep, given the basic facts of physics and biology; the example was just to make the change more radical so as to bring the issue into focus. Your thinking here is riddled with false dichotomies. For instance,
Whether or not I am some sort of agent of libertarian free will, going to the store and buying a banana makes a banana available to me in the morning whereas not doing so doesn’t — it makes a difference whether I do so, even if I am a deterministic machine (and thus which of the different outcomes will obtain is in some sense fixed). The only rational way to approach this is to recognize both that we are machines and that we are intentional agents — that these are different levels of description for the same set of phenomena. Daniel Dennett has explored this at length during his career, and his latest book “Freedom Evolves” is recommended to anyone who actually wants to understand this stuff (as opposed to being free to make whatever claim pops into ones head on the subject).
truth machine writes:
Talk about your false dichotomies, sheesh.
Your philosophy has to remain current with experimentation, in order for it to be correct mathematically?
Have a Happy New Year
More here, and in English.
“Talk about your false dichotomies, sheesh.”
Of course one can both want to understand things and want to say whatever pops into their head, but that rather misses the point. Sheesh indeed.
“Your philosophy has to remain current with experimentation, in order for it to be correct mathematically?”
Why do you put question marks at the ends of statements?
If something is inconsistent with experimentation, it is incorrect empirically, not mathematically. In any case, MWI is not inconsistent with experimentation.
Why do you put question marks at the ends of statements?
Because this is new territory for me, and I am unsteady like a young pup trying to find it’s legs.
If something is inconsistent with experimentation, it is incorrect empirically, not mathematically.
Logic forming is also new territory.
If we were to talk and express ourselves in ways that were held close to current trends and models of thinking and topic here previously, then the logic would closely follow the math?
If you didn’t, you would then be inconsistant not only empirically, but also mathematically as well?
I am reminded of the roads leading to String/M theory, that is supposed to be very abstract and not in touch with reality.
If I express a new model for consideration, then it would have to be empirically and mathematically consistent?
How can you move into new territories without having some basis from which to work? “Shoulders of Giants”
“All those who came before us.” Now, we see where it is going 
I apologize for my continued persistance.
I am “trying to learn” to see how a teacher would continue to work(has been updated) to improve the philosophical process.
Introduction of “new Maths”. New experiments. How would these “by themself” change the philosophical process? Would they?
truth machine writes:
A loss to whom? If I leave a room, the lack of a me in the room is no loss to me.
The loss is to the universe without me, not to me. You see, I’m so magnanimous, I can’t bear the thought of universes without me.
A room that you have left keenly feels the loss.
If all this talk of bananas and star-trek tansporters is muddying the waters with too much ‘philosophy’, here is a nice simple science question. I have a fabulous new theory of quantum gravity. It unifies the forces, resolves cosmological singularities, and predicts the fine structure and other dimensionless constants to 5 digit precision. It makes stunning predictions for LHC physics, all of which are confirmed triumphantly. But there is one catch: it inevitably, unavoidably, includes a vacuum state of lower energy than our own, to which our universe can decay. The (quantum!) tunneling rate is such that once per year per cubic lightyear, a true-vacuum bubble will form and expand at the speed of light. The energy density in the bubble wall will instantly destroy everything in it’s path, including people like us.
Now, is my theory ruled out? In the Copenhagen interpretation (in a finite universe; see below), surely: the chance of us surviving this long would be infinitesimal. In Many Worlds, I would say maybe not: the seemingly problematic are no cause for concern since they are perfectly unobservable; perhaps in some ‘other universe’ someone just got obliterated by a bubble wall passing through this room, but who cares? It was not us. Our history of observations is perfectly consistent with the theory.
To be more provocative: in my earlier post I argued that I could not see any essential difference between many worlds and an infinite universe. So, is my super-duper theory viable in an infinite universe but not in a finite one (or sufficiently small size)?
To be even more provocative: does the existence of this highly compelling theory, which is viable only in the MWI (or perhaps infinite universe), give evidence for the MWI, which is otherwise just ‘philosophically’ different from Copenhagen, or for an infinite universe, which is only ‘philosophical’ since beyond our horizon?
Anthony (#14): “..the many-worlds interpretation is just nuts..” .
Maybe, as it now stands, but give it a little time to evolve.
_________
Macho (#53) “We.. have a tendency to extrapolate from our current (imperfect) understanding of something, forgetting that what we don’t know yet can change everything.” .
So true, so true - but, by definition, we have nothing other than our current understanding to extrapolate from. Extrapolation good. Extrapolation is a kind of testing; the extrapolated POV can put an hypothesis in a new and often informative context and can provide credibility to the hypothesis or debunk the hypothesis at an early stage. MWI invites extraordinary extrapolation which may be especially vulnerable to your “what we don’t know yet”. What we don’t know yet might, on the other hand, make current extrapolations look timid and tentative. (IMO)
Anthony A., this is an interesting example, if this scenario materializes all we learn is that events with infinitesimal probabilities (according to the otherwise compelling theory) do seem to happen. One can draw all kinds of conclusions based on that, including the MWI or the infinite universe, or divine intervention, or simply that the theory is wrong. I am not sure what would the consensus be, but personally I would need more than one piece of evidence to postulate such an enormous redundancy.
But, it seems to me that barring the occurence of this scenario, the hypothesis that events with infinitesimal probabilities happen is already falsified. We don’t see our world to be random, we do see order wherever we look. If such events exist why would they be restricted to one clean signal like in your scenario, why don’t we see miracles happening all around us?
If such events exist why would they be restricted to one clean signal like in your scenario, why don’t we see miracles happening all around us?
Probabilities are independent. That one unlikely thing happens to happen has no bearing on anything else.
Yes Aaron, but the new element in this game is the “infinity” , that makes very unlikely events possible to begin with, then what distinguish an unlikely event from ten of them? there is no scale in the problem.
The more I think about this the more reasons I find that Tegmark was wrong. Consider this modification of the suicide experiment. Suppose that instead of being killed you are made unconscious for a limited time. Then, according to Tegmark’s reasoning the MWI would predict that you find yourself in the conscious branch just after the experiment with probability 1.
So, one really has to look at the whole multiverse and consider the probability distribution over the set of all possible versions of the observer. Tegmark’s argument makes the hidden assumption that the observer never suffers memory loss or always remains conscious. This is clearly not true, MWI or no MWI.
The reason why you should not take the deal, even if you believe in the MWI, is because the states in which you gain have a very low probability. You don’t change the probability by killing yourself in the wrong branches. There doesn’t exist a ”law of conservation of memory” in physics which guarantees that you will always experience a time evolved successor state.
sisyphus: I agree completely — extrapolations are essential to testing our current models and theories and pushing our understanding to a deeper level. As you point out, our current understanding of general relativity is much wilder than 18th century speculations, based on Newtonian gravity, on the existence of a star so massive that nothing could escape its gravitational field. But the point is that if you already know that your theory is incomplete, betting your life on it is foolish.
Is no one else bothered by the consistent use of “belief” in MWI? It may or may not be correct, but I neither believe nor disbelieve in it. Phrased this way the quantum suicide experiment smells very strongly of koolaid, not science.
Macho: As I indicate in #12 I wouldn’t take the bet either. Sean says (#15) that the thought experiment source is philosophers, not scientists.
I have a lot of problems with MWI as it is at the moment; what bothers me most is the matter of the location of the experience of being. I’m going to review the material I have on MWI when I have some free time - maybe in a couple of weeks.
I hope that MWI succeeds; it has astounding implications.
Regards
One has to re-read the original thought experiment a number of times?
Sean amazing experiment, but lets say that Iam undecided about the actual experiment set-up?
1)Where is the “Banana” before the experiment starts?..what proof are you going to provide to any person willing to take this challenge, that Banana’s actually exist!
2)If you provide a satisfactory explanation that as a reward, “banana’s” do exist, and thus the experiment has a worthwhile function.
3)”If you are isolated from everything”, then obvious this include’s Banana’s, the fact that you have “everything” except Banana’s is no justification of instigating the “thought” experiment, why take a risk of something you can do without.
4)The paramiter of “heads/tails” are intricately linked to a Hidden/Unknown parimiter of future event “outcomes”.
If you toss the coin (for simplicity before collaborating the spin of electron!), and get heads for 5 throws of the dice, each outcome is a ‘future’ event reward. On the sixth throw you come up tails, you are killed. This is also a ‘future’ time ordered event outcome, or is it?
There is a small chance the event of you being killed throwing a tails, (which has its own wavefunction)..occuring at the first throw?..thus how could you have thrown 5 straight Heads?..then a tails, when there was an initial probability that you may have been exterminated after the very first throw?
Past Present and Future, are Time ordered events which dictate a before and after.
6)There is no known way to express the spin state of Electrons as in the “Present”.
Every single measure of an Electrons spin, carries a very HIGH Probability that the Electron does not have a time-stamp, pertaining to a “PRESENT-TIME”.
I believe Weinburg and Feynman stated that there is only one electron (or chance ther-of?), and it is NEVER located in the present-time. It has always either existed in a PAST-TIME, or it will surely exist in a FUTURE-TIME, but never,never..found to be in the Present.
So now we have the two paramiters of assosciated spin, up and down, or + or -.
To make the experiment worthy for a satisfactory out-come, we now have to make a time-ordered calibration of Time,this is to say:
Do the experiment whereby ’spin-up +’ is a “future” (projected-unknown) outcome, and ’spin-down -’ is a past definate (absolute/occurred) event.
All possible combinations (+/-) have to be considered, even events where, spin-up/heads, occured in a “Future-tense”, and are determining the choice of “Present-time” limitations of experiments, by ensuring that we can NEVER know if Electrons are ones that have tunneled from the future to the past, or from the Past to the future.
As far as I know, the Electron is still fooling us?
Think of a man sitting on a serene beach, suddenly Banana’s start appearing all around him, filling the surrounding beach and his locality.
Q:Does he get up and move elsewhere, or does he hold his ground and trust his mental ability to ignore “unreal” events?
Paul:
No! What happens next is that the alarm goes off and he wakes up.
Count Iblis writes:
Okay, but you wouldn’t find yourself in an unconscious state, you can’t because you’re unconscious!
I think this talk of probabilities is precisely what Tegmark is talking about in being careful to distinguish “inside” and “oustide” views. Assigning probabilities to states is an interpretation of QM we’re allowed to make by virtue of being sufficiently “outside” the system in question, which doesn’t apply to his suicide experiment.
Hi Indiana,
We certainly can’t find ourselves in an unconscios state. But that doesn’t mean that are allowed to throw away unconscious states when calculating probabilities of experiments. There is a very small probability that during an operation anaesthetics will fail to work. Does the MWI imply that for a person undergoing an operation the anaesthetics will fail to work with probability 1?
To briefly respond to Anthony in #65: I don’t think that counts as an experimental difference between MWI and collapse interpretations. In neither case is your vacuum-decay theory ruled out, but in both cases it has strong evidence against it. Even if the MWI is true, I’m not going to be very happy with a theory that is only consistent with the data if we live in an incredibly unlikely branch of the wavefunction. And even if Copenhagen is true, the only scientists around to be making judgments are those who haven’t been killed by vacuum decay, so we should really be looking at conditional probabilities as observed by that sample. Of course the “strong evidence against it” might be wrong, but that’s always the danger with arguments based on naturalness rather than strict disagreement with observation.
Sean: I disagree. In the Copenhagen interpretation, if I wait ten years, I should have destroyed by 10 bubbles, and my disbelief in my theory grows and grows with each passing year, even if I do away with the initial improbability of my existence by conditioning on the fact that I exist now.
I think we can clearly distinguish the two by making the universe finite. In that case, the probability of their being *any obervers at* all decreases exponentially with time. Since we exist, I think the theory would be ruled out at confidence 1-p, where p is the probability that even a single ‘observer’ (which we could conservatively take to be a Ly^3-yr) is still around after 13.7 Gyr.
In MWI, if we accept the reasoning behind the quantum suicide thought experiment (i.e. that when ‘I’ die I seamlessly continue in one of the branches where ‘I’ live), I would say I have no reason at all to doubt my theory, because although it implies that I am in a highly improbable branch, it also supplies a completely convincing reason for why I am there. (Yes, this is anthropic.)
The key point is that in Copenhagen, the ensemble is imagined, whereas in MWI, it ‘really exists’; in my mind, this is the whole distinction that the quantum suicide experiment is bringing out.
In an infinite universe, there appears to be, as I noted before, some interchangeability between the different branches of the wavefunction and the different copies that exist in the infinite universe. (In fact this is the basis for a new interpretation of quantum mechanics that I have been reading, and got me thinking about the whole matter.)
Although it is not apparent in what I have written, I actually think there must be something quite wrong with the quantum-suicide reasoning itself. But I have not decided what it is.
Also, I would quarrel with your distinction between ‘ruled out’ and ‘has strong evidence against’. All theories must be ruled out probabalistically, as all experiments have errors. It is nice if we can made the probability as small as we like by doing more, better experiments. In multiverse cosmology, this is not always possible; but in the present case it is (just wait longer), and I see no reason to shy away from saying the theory is ruled out (in Copenhagen).
Anthony A., I’m still unconvinced. Both cases are equally improbable. The odds that we are on the branck of the wavefunction that allows us to still exist are equally improbable as the odds that we haven’t already been swallowed up. Furthermore, the odds that , at a given instant, a bubble will blow up and swallow us up are also equivalent.
This debate between Copenhagen and MWI, and attempts to explicate it using quantum suicide experiments seems to me to be an attempt to predicate the existence of the universe on human perception. I don’t see how it is a sensible approach to do so.
Larry Niven’s story, “All the Myriad Ways”, is the paradigmatic fictional equiivalent of your problem.
I think Anthony is right. According to the quantum-suicide reasoning reasoning (which I believe is wrong), the ”improbable branch” is not improbable relative to the observer.
I think that our ”naive” way of evaluating probabilities breaks down in these sorts of experiments where the number of observers isn’t conserved. If you consider being copied and then one of your copies is copied again. So, you end up with three copies. The three copies are identical and asleep in different rooms. The moment they wake up they can see in which room they are. Suppose that the two copies that arose from copying one of the copies again end up in rooms 1 and 2 while the opther opy ends up in room 3. What is the probability of waking up in a particular room?
A Tegmark ”following the branches” type of reasoning goes as follows. After the first copy is made you have a chance of 1/2 of being the copy that will be copied again. So, the probabilities are 1/4, 1/4 and 1/2.
But of course, this result is completely nonsensical. You have a physical process that transforms you into three identitical copies. It doesn’t matter how exactly this process works, as long as you end up with three identical copies, the probabilities are simply 1/3.
So, one should not naively try to follow a branch and update probabilities along that branch. Instead one should look at the entire multiverse and calculate the probability of finding oneself in a certain state. That state will, in general, include memories of having been in different states previously.
In general one should ask questions like: ”What is the probability of finding spin up in the z-direction when I remember having polarized the spin in the x-direction a minute ago”. As long as the observer isn’t killed or copied depending on the outcome there isn’t any difference between this and the usual way of calculating these things.
In case of suicide experiments, the probability of finding yourslelf in a state in which you remeber have survived such experminets is much lower than states in which you don’t have recollections of participating in these experiments.
I had to commit Quantum suicide once, I had never heard of this at the time.
I was not offered a bet or given a choice. I had to work out what I had to do and I had to do it at the right moment. It’s the hardest thing there is to do, to try break your own neck when you don’t want to die. I stood there with a t-shirt over my head, which covered one eye, held my head in my hands and twisted my head round, of course this is not enough to break my neck, so I had to keep readjusting my hands and feet so I could force my head around further and further. My heart was absolutely pounding like it’s going to pop.
I was not trying to kill my self; I was breaking my neck in order to turn my brain over. When it reappeared after it had vanished, it was upside down, so I had to break my neck, turn my brain over, reattach my spinal column, without dieing of course .If I had died this system would not exist.
If I had a choice, I would never take that deal. It’s not worth it for a banana, if it’s to save everyone and everything, at the risk of losing my own life then it’s still not worth it.
If I have no choice, then I have no choice.
About Antony in #65 and #79 and Sean in #78, I remember reading Tegmark’s paper and considering a similar situation, which one may call ‘doomsday particle scenario’, related with speculation (in which I dont believe, bustjust for the sake of the argument) about a possible ‘end of the world’ triggered by high energy experiments in accelerators,for instance initiating a chain reaction turning the earth in ‘quarkonium’ (sure you read about that stuff in the news, say of newscientist). Now the strange situation would be if there is a threshold energy or intensity for such a thing to happen, but eventhough we have a perfectly good theory predicting that there should be particles coming out of the experiment with energies higher than that threshold, we never see those particles, so there is a cut-off that shouldn’t be there. The situation may be quite disturbing for astronauts in the space station, who would find themselves in a quantum branch looking out of the window to a sphere of quarkonium, or a black hole or whatever, intead of ye olde good earth. Just in this line of SF storyline that may be construed as an answer to the Fermi paraddox, maybe advanced civilizations go with open eyes into experimentation that will have somecatastrophic outcome branches, for the sake of Sean’s bananas (this may be some technosuperbananas), so we, like the astronauts would be most certainly in branches were the green fellas had checked out.
Now even behind the veil of anonymity I must say I don’t believe a word of all that, while in the spirit of Antony #79 it is clear that the fact that the earth has not undergone caastrophic events despite cosmic rays etc… of can’t be used to disprove the possibility, the moon and the other planets are doing just fine and there is no evidence of strange massive dark objects (a befallen planet) around. That doesn’t of course the cosmological scale kaboom scenario of Antony.
Still it seems interesting to think about this things.
Pablo
Living in secret on a deserted island? How about I give them a banana to kill me, and forget all this nonsense?
stop all this nonsense. everyone has already done this in all its parameters in mli because space/time is infinite. bananas give me indigestion in this universe.
It doesn’t matter what I do, because in any case, every possibility will take place in some alternate timeline. (If you buy that sort of thing.) But, c’mon, you’d have to be a moron to take the deal. Who cares if other “me”s get a banana if I get killed? Screw them, I’m not dying for their fruit.
What kind of a banana is it? Is it nice, firm, fresh and tasty or is it turning black, getting all soft and squishy?
I’d buy a banana with the coin.
depends on my situation- if i got nothing much to lose, Ill take the bet - hoping that if i can learn to surf through the universes then the banana is only the tip of the iceberg. If I can do that, then I can win the lottery, cure world-hunger, end poverty, set up a benevolent society, illuminate that which was hidden, and eventually learn to exploit quantum reality to the point that I can literally make reality do what I want by simply fast-forwarding as it were through the various universes until i get to the one i want.
i suppose.
i wouldn’t take the deal because i am afraid of taking risks i don’t understand.
R. Plaga has published an interesting paper in Phys. Lett. B recently, in which he applies a Tegmark ”quantum suicide” type of reasoning to show that some of the arguments for physics beyond the standard model may be invalid.
Count,
I don’t have to tell how confusing this stuff all is.
More on name.
Why the Higher energies?
John Ellis was good enough to transform our views, to the need required in cosmological conditions? It’s there these issues although quickly dissipated, raise more questions as to the conditions for that “new physics.”
Plato,
Yes, the proposals for new physics at high energies can yield new problems. But the fact is that there are problems with old physics and somehow it must break down at higher energies…
Of course more on name.
I think one needed to understand this movement, or how the false vacuum is understood, and how the true vacuum is created.
Without this, has the idea of the Coleman-De Luccia instanton been refuted?
So someone who may, or may not, be me may (or may not) get a universe encompassing banana? I’d rather have a pineapple if it’s all the same?
I’d be the one to take the coin, and go get my own danged banana with it.
What if one of your MWI incarnations is in a world where MWI is not true?