Nov 12
Thanks to you, I am currently having an existential crisis relating to parallel universes. Ever since I heard about them last year, I’ve been fascinated, and pretty keen on the idea, however your article Parallel universes born again in the September 22 issue really got me thinking about some of the possible implications arising from an infinite number of parallel universes, with new ones forming all the time. Is this only my universe? Does everyone else have their own universes, that have split from mine, and I am only involved with certain ‘versions’ of each person I know. Am I in multiple universes at once? What does this mean?
My head hurts.
In a good way.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
James
If a tree falls in a parallel universe, does anybody hear it?
Oh god…
So, ‘many worlds’ theory basically proposes that every possibility happens. But ‘you’ only see one, because that’s the universe you are in. So, in theory, you shouldn’t be upset if your football team loses – in another universe, they win.
That bit I can grasp easily enough. But then my brain decided to come up with another question – if every possibility happens… Does that mean that there ARE parallel universes, AND there AREN’T parallel universes? But there aren’t, only because there are?
So much for sleep…
In reply to your question, Steve: yes, they do. And no, they don’t.
So it’s like quantum physics – the tree exists in all possible states at the same time? The cat is both dead and alive, and the tree falling is both noisy, and not noisy, depending on the universe in which it falls?
Yeah, it’s part of quantum mechanics/physics/whatever. Some guy used it to discard probability theory, which, from the small amounts I read about it, was pretty horrible. My physics teacher tried to explain it last year, but it was just way over our heads. In fact, not even proper physicists really understood it, I understand. So if this works out to be true, it’ll be pretty awesome.
Best not to think about it too much though, lest our brains melt away…
Some of the Discworld novels are pretty good with parallel universe concepts and the like… Jingo and The Night Watch spring immediately to mind. A repeated concept is the trousers of time: for any decision, there are two paths, and both happen in different universes
Surely choice is just an illusion to distract us from our deterministic fate, though? If you were to rewind time, and press play again, it would work out exactly the same, because all the causes are exactly the same, leading all the effects to be the same.
It wouldn’t make sense that with all the exact same causes, for one path in a ‘choice’ to be taken in one case, and another in the other. If, the instant before the ‘choice’ was made or determined, both universes were exactly the same, then what magically happened so that they worked out differently an instant later?
I propose that instead of new universes ‘forking’ from each other, all possible permutations, in the form of a continuum of universes, existed since ‘the beginning’, and the instant ‘the beginning’ occurred, each universe had the necessary differences to cause the multiple different paths that seemingly arose from different ‘choices’.
Then again, determinism is depressing. It means we’re helpless. And we feel helpless, because feeling helpless is what we were destined to feel since ‘the beginning’. Maybe being naive would be much more fun. Or maybe there’s a universe where the rules of determinism do not apply.
Time for bed.