Infinite options does not mean all options. Eg in the set natural numbers 0-infinity the set of infinite numbers between 0-1 (or between any other 2 adjacent numbers) is absent.
So you can definitely have an infinite multiverse where in all of them infinite multiverses exist.
Yes, even in an infinite multiverse, there is no universe where science_memes commenters have sex.
Mitosis in every single one of them.
Infinite options does not mean all options.
Right, as you said the natural numbers is an infinite set but it doesn’t contain fractional numbers between adjacent natural numbers. The set of natural numbers also doesn’t contain letters, or colors, or varieties of geese. You can even add other constraints to the set and still have an infinite set that contains even fewer possible values, like you could have the set of all natural numbers that don’t contain the digit 3.
People make the mistake of thinking that an infinite set of universes means that there is every conceivable version of a universe out there, but that’s not the case. Murphy’s law says that anything that can happen will happen, but that means things are still constrained by what can happen. Reality is constrained by consistent logic, the most basic of which is the identity law, p = p. It is a contradiction for both p and ~p to be true, a violation of reality. So if the multiverse is a reality, it is a single reality that is self consistent, meaning there is no Universe in the multiverse for which there doesn’t exist a multiverse.
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them is 2.
I have not seen not even on paper a universe which allows casual paradoxes like that comment says
because you arent in the universe that has that paper
It’s being suppressed by Big Paper. Or by Big Universe.
Oof that reminds me…
When my partner and I had already been living together for a while, we had one of those “cuddle on the couch and deeptalk” days, when she confided that, while she was not religious in any traditional sense of the word, she felt immensely comforted by the thought of an infinite multiverse existing.
“If there’s an infinite amount of parallel worlds, then I choose to believe that even if I die here, life goes on in another world, so in a sense my being and existence do not simply vanish completely. Same for you! And hey, even if we both die, we’ll get to continue living together in some version of the infinite multiverse!”It was clearly a thought that comforted her a lot, and at the same time a rather intimate belief that she chose to share with me. So, like the idiot I am, I stared her in the face blankly and went “There’s an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, and none of them are 2”.
I really regret that. She let me know later that that one sentence shattered the belief for her. Which is sad, because it’s such an innocent thought. There’s no religious behaviors or conditions or rituals attached to it, it’s just comforting.
It’s comments like this that make me glad I know how to read the room
😭
I usually do, I promise. Anyways, that was 6 years ago. We’re stil going strong, making the most of life in this universe :)
Your comment doesn’t really make sense though, a two doesn’t appear in the numbers between zero and one because it’s not the type of thing that appears in that set. Alternative version of you absolutely are things that appear in a multiverse.
Sorry, I should have gone more into the actual belief. For her it was less of an “if I make a decision that leads to my death in this universe, there surely is a parallel universe where I did not!”, it was “if I die in this universe, thanks to an infinite multiverse, there must be one where I spontaneously start exisitng with all my exact memories from the previous life”.
Ah ok.
Sounds like she’s essentially describing the Quantum Immortality concept. It’s definitely highly speculative but it’s not beyond the pale.
Ouch. I feel that comment on many levels.
That’s a nice belief of hers but it also neglects the negatives of what that implies. If each out had infinite variations of ourselves somewhere in a multiverse, then there are varieties where the two of you continue living a nice happy life together even if one of you dies.
However, there would also be versions where you never met and got together with other people, other versions where you hate each other, other versions where you go through terrible things together or by yourselves, versions where one of you or both are drug addicts living in the street, versions where you become millionaires but don’t want to share your wealth, versions where you become supreme leaders and act like dyspotic authoritarian rulers or versions where both of you just never meet or connect with one another.
If there are infinite variations of ourselves out there, not all of them will be happy comforting stories. Maybe this is one of those versions that are good. Maybe this is one of the best versions.
Or, the conjecture of the multiverse, being non falsifiable, makes it as scientific as the boogie man or the tooth fairy. God of the gaps anyone?
It’s not purely a wild, non-falsifiable idea. It comes from a theory to reconcile the very-much-falsifiable-but-not-falsified results of quantum mechanics. IIRC there are three main theories to interpret the results and all of them are down-and-out weird. Last I looked, one of them at least is controversial about whether or not it could (in principle) be experimentally differentiated from the others.
Is this what you are referring to?
Bell’s Theorem pretty well settles this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell’s_theorem
More or less. There’s a bit more nuance to it, and I was thinking particularly of the case of entangled particles at a distance rather than a self-interfering particle through a slit - but it probably resolves down to much the same mathematics.
Bell’s inequality proves the simple (‘realist’, above) option can’t be true, but the Copenhagen Interpretation is the most accepted interpretation of the alternative. Wikipedia lists three such interpretations, and IIRC “many worlds” is a separate one to the Copenhagen Interpretation. Though again, it’s a bit more nuanced. When I was studying, I think they basically assumed Copenhagen, though not treating that entirely as settled fact, and leaving other interpretations as niche.
This is such anti-intellectual cliche, and it’s a damn shame that a generation of Reddit pseudo-intellectuals parroting a Feynman quote has made it so wide spread.
Which is the anti-intellectual cliché?
The post I replied to.
You mean the post at the top? Or the comment you replied to? Either way I don’t really see the cliché.
Do you mean that something being non-falsifiable making it non-scientific is a cliché? That’s how science works: by having theories that can be differentiated with experiment.
Or, of the post, that multiverses contain every conceivable universe, then why anti-intellectual, when it’s just a silly joke?
The one I replied too. The habit of immediately and smugly going “It can’t be falsified and is therefore the same as the tooth-fairy!” to any ideas that class with their intuition is very much a well worn cliche of reddit style pseudo-intellectual “I fucking love science” types. Bonus points if it is falsifiable.
And yes, falsifiablity is a part of science, but this idea that science means going “if you don’t have a definite experiment that you can perform right now then the idea is stupid and wrong and you’re an idiot for even talking about it” is massively reductive at best and flat out wrong at worst, and if these people applied it in all cases - rather than just to the ones that their gut feeling is against - they’d be throwing out a huge amount of ideas that are most definitely science.
I mean jesus, imagine how arrogant you would have to be to discard all of the very detailed work extremely talented scientists have done in Quantum Foundations as being no different to believing in the tooth fairy.
I see. Thank you for your more explanatory reply. I must not hang out in the right circles, because I haven’t seen that enough to see it as a cliché. Perhaps the commenter was not dismissing multiverse theory because of a gut reaction, but because they’re fed up themselves with popular and un-falsifiable speculation being treated as science.
The incredible thing with these weird results is they are falsifiable - this “spooky action at a distance” that famous pre-redditor Albert dismissed as nonsense. Bell’s inequality, that lies at the heart of the trouble, is experimentally demonstrable.
But there’s a gap between that science and the interpretations of it. And maybe coming from they popular end, it’s easy to see the wilder speculations as nothing more than unprovable imagination.
But in the end, after re-writing much of my comment, I have to concede the point. I feel you’ve made a bit of a straw man to attack, but I agree a thing can seem unapproachable scientifically - non-falsifiable - but still be valid science. Even in this area, IIRC, part of the debate over the main quantum mechanics interpretations is quite whether they can be falsified or experimentally differentiated: and that itself takes time and logic and mathematics… it takes science!
I must not hang out in the right circles, because I haven’t seen that enough to see it as a cliché.
Possibly. Give it time I suppose
Perhaps the commenter was not dismissing multiverse theory because of a gut reaction, but because they’re fed up themselves with popular and un-falsifiable speculation being treated as science.
Perhaps, but you’d have a hard time tying to convince Princeton University that the the paper they gave Hugh Everett a PhD in Physics for is in fact “not science” and is in fact more like “the boogey man or the tooth fairy.” Or trying to convince the scientific community that people like Sean Carroll and David Deutsch and all the other physicists doing work in Quantum Foundations from a many worlds perspective aren’t scientists.
this “spooky action at a distance” that famous pre-redditor Albert dismissed as nonsense.
I’m sorry, but this is just straight up not true; Einstein absolutely did not dismiss entanglement as nonsense
But there’s a gap between that science and the interpretations of it.
Different “interpretations” (really they are different theories) absolutely have experimental differences. Some aren’t performable today, but if that is your criteria, then the Higgs Boson was like the tooth fairy for decades. But even beyond that some are performable, and have been performed, we have done test for dynamical collapse interpretations. Had they come back positive they would have falsified Many Worlds, ie. they are literally a form of falsification.
And maybe coming from they popular end, it’s easy to see the wilder speculations as nothing more than unprovable imagination.
And many worlds is not one of those wilder speculations that is nothing more than unprovable imaginations.
that itself takes time and logic and mathematics… it takes science!
Indeed, which means not dismissing and idea as nonsense without understanding it.
I don’t come without credentials. I have a phd in physics.
I also don’t see any problem with Feynman’s standpoint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkhBcLk_8f0
hits blunt
Given an unlimited amount of tries, anything that has a non-zero chance of happening, no matter how unlikely will happen. But what has absolute zero chance of happening will still not happen.
Aargh! Okay, I’m going to fix this and the fine tuned universe argument all at once.
Nature does not care about your silly numbers and hypotheses. All of our scientific mechanics are models of the observed universe. The ones we call theories are just models good enough to be usefully predictive as to forecast outcomes, allowing us to safely land airplanes, build bridges, make safe pharmaceuticals (or super addictive ones, if we want), split atoms safely to produce power (or unsafely to level cities) and so on.
We care about the math and the numbers because they give us results that are consistent with nature. But nature is doing what it’s doing because it’s behaving as a giant causal engine (ever-smaller forces that drive observable phenomena, at least until we get to Planck scale). So when it comes to the fine tuned hypothesis, to quote a Texas physicist whose name I can’t remember These numbers ain’t for fiddlin’
If there are any storm gods at all, anywhere in the world, to the last, they are content to allow lightning to behave strictly according to static-electricity electrodynamics. And ball lightning happens whether or not we have a model that explains it. (Presently, we don’t.)
If one or more of the many-worlds hypotheses are true, no given universe cares what its science-savvy inhabitants have determined and whether their mathematical models allow for models that are factual. Facts don’t care about your feelings. Facts don’t care about your science either. It’s more that the science does is best to describe what’s going on in the facts.
Irreducible complexity is solved.
PS: This also stabilizes the cosmic horror scenario of Azathoth’s dream, that Azathoth gibbers in the center of the universe dreaming its whole, and each and every one of us is a mere figment, who will vanish to oblivion when eventually he awakes: From what we can observe Azathoth has been dreaming consistently for thirteen billion years, and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to wake up, and his dream is profoundly consistent so that the mathematics we use to send probes from planet to planet, eventually into the outer solar system always works. Azathoth has our back!
Upvoted just because you referenced the Lovecraft Dream Cycle, epic l
Azathoth just happens to be really useful to make idealism and the simulation hypothesis plausible. Either way, the mechanics that govern the universe are profoundly consistent and are not as fragile as our own dreams / our own simple, buggy simulations. So yeah.
As I’ve said before: All hail Azathoth!
Nah but here’s the real staggering part. It should be far easier for universes to form locally conscious beings than it is to form all the pieces necessary to naturally evolve conscious beings. These would mostly be very short-lived arrangements of energy with no hope of surviving but certain arrangements would even have false memories, making them believe that they have existed far longer than they actually have.
They may even have false memories of living on earth.
They may even have false memories of your exact life.
And they would be, by far, more common than any form of actual sustainable life. It is vastly more likely that you have experienced this post as a false memory created inside one of these short-lived consciousnesses than for any of this to be real.
No, it’s not. This is only true if every arrangement of matter is equally likely to come into being randomly. The multiverse is not an infinite non repeating randomized collection. Every possibility is not necessarily present and every possibility is certainly not equally likely. Life emerging evolutionarily through relatively very simple processes in areas where the right amount of usable energy exists and the right amount of certain elements exist in the right forms is relatively very likely and possible. A random assortment of cold stellar gasses or just pure energy self assembling through quantum bullshit into a false consciousness with complex logic and memories and the ability to experiment and test its reality in logical ways is pie in the sky nonsense in likeliness. Airplanes appearing out of nothing and people falling through the Earth because “the atoms just happened to arrange themselves just right” are neat things to argue are technically not impossible in our current predictive mathematical models of the universe. They are not things we have any real evidence are possible and real phenomena on a macro scale.
I’d argue that multiverse theory being true would be a property of the multiverse, not a property of any individual universe, but the ‘infinity not including all possibilities’ part is true too
Given infinite buckets, there’s a bucket where the other buckets don’t exist
Don’t you love it when people say random, illogical bullshit that sounds vaguely sciency and pretends to be deep?
Of course not, I hate jokes
Of course that’s why we use Reddit
Lol, good joke but wrong, even existing an infinite number of Universe, to be stables they need a infinite number of physical conditions, if not they can’t exist. A multiverse, even if there are formong an infinite number of universes, most of them are destroyed in the same moment when are not present this conditions, even so it can exist an infinite number of survivor universes with the correct conditions (∞/n = ∞), paradox conditions are not among these (apart of the infinite itself, used in physics)
Multimultiverse theory does not necessarily mean infinite universes to cover all possibilities, just multiple universes.
Star Trek: Just the two, thanks
Nah there’s definitely different universes/timelines in star trek. The series just have the one main timeline they follow.
spoiler
In TNG theres the dark Romulan war timeline in which Yar doesn’t die in that confrontation with the evil tar pit guy and goes on to prevent war with the Romulans, switching us back to the main timeline where the war doesn’t happen but Yar’s descendant is a Romulan warlord.
I think this is the same timeline in DS9 where evil Kira and all of them exist. It’s mentioned in DS9 that the Kirk in this timeline also switched places with the Kirk in the main timeline at some point but I didn’t watch TOS so I cannot confirm.
The final season of Lower Decks was also a huge step into multiverse theory. So perhaps there is more to come.
Yeah! Until lower decks there was only ever the “mirror universe” (and a few alternate timeline shenanigans that were never clearly a different universe, just a different ‘time line’.)
I want lower decks back 😞
It’s a common trend for people that don’t understand that infinite possibilities do not mean every possibility.
The way I usually explain this to people is that the quantity of even number is also infinite, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever find a value of three in that infinite range.
There is no such thing called Multiverse
If there’s no multiverse then what was Dr Strange fighting? Check mate atheists.
He (a fictional character) fights Fiction
You’re very smart.
There’s a parallel universe in which the fundamental laws of physics are different: the weight of an electron, the gravitational constant, how many fundamental particles there are, the cosmological constant, …
And one where I have a goatee and I’m the evil version of myself, right??
The multiverse either exists or it doesn’t. Individual universes have no influence over that.
so it’s basically %50 %50 except for the universe where it is %49 %51
That universe isn’t the boss of the multiverse and doesn’t get to decide that.
there is a universe full to the brim with chickens, all that chicken space.
