Meaning in a Multiverse

[Dillinger4]

Anytime.

 

[bluestreak]

*adds loads of stuff to reading list*

 

[Dillinger4]

I fucking loves mindbending science I do.

 

[Demosthenes]

Maybe the universe doesn't divide all the time, maybe only when someone makes a significant choice. Which might be quite rarely.

Some infinities are larger than others.

On the other hand maybe there is no multiverse, - but I certainly hope there is, because if this is the only version there'll ever be of earth, shit.

 

[Dillinger4]

Why does it have to be centered on human choice, Demosthenes?

What would make a choice 'significant'? Will there be a definitive line, established by the universe?

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

surely the problem is that if you with in this universe stepped into an alternate universe then all infinate possiblites would only continue within your own linar form.

you are not you in another universe you are the other universe version of you.

If we take from the fact that human beings are the sum total of our experices from which we derive our notions of self; the other universe you would not have had the same experinces as you did which means invariably they would be different.

If you stepped into that universe you would in essence be two seperate people even if the point of divergance was seconds before the paralle shift. for example no i won't have a fag to yes i will have a fag / slip / alternate universe you did/ did not have the fag you did or did not have.

with regards to the concept of the soul again if we link this back to the consiousness/ uncosiouse discourse then if it is possilble to to download this and up load this into your clone then yes in essence they will be you or a varient of you to the point of divergance being that you then continue to have experinces past the point of the clones creation. but in essence they would be looking at you and establishign their own experince of that as you looking at them would also do.

unless there was added technology which instantly updated them with your new experinces and therefore your alter consiouseness until the point of death at which point they would then continue onwards with your experinces but the point of divergance would in essence still be in place as they would then know they were a clone and also have the exerpince of death.

all new experinces they would have however as you would in essence be theirs and not yours thus meaning that your consiouseness although formed with their own would become little more than a history lesson about your ansesters. they would be having experinces even if that was only being in a vat waiting to be thawed out in the case of death.

 

[Demosthenes]

Why does it have to be centered on human choice, Demosthenes?

What would make a choice 'significant'? Will there be a definitive line, established by the universe?

I don't know tbh.

I just can't make much sense of the idea of there being an infinite number of universes where the gun misfires, or whatever, just created by random chance. It seems like a very wasteful and profligate sort of multiverse, - there's no point in there being all these parallel universes, there's only a point in a parallel universe where someone's choice creates a significant difference?

 

[Dillinger4]

Why are you afraid of random chance?

Why do you think the universe shouldn't be wasteful?



Tbh, I think you are massively missing the point. Maybe its because you are Jesus.

 

[Demosthenes]

Well, although I've occasionally had the impression of having memories of a different life, in general, like I said before, how could I be Jesus?

Jesus was around 2000 years ago.

I'm not afraid of random chance. what made you think I am?

I just don't see it as being likely, if there's a multiverse, that there's a parallel universe for every single possible random event.

If there are parallel universes, it seems to me, that the point of creating the multiverse, is so as to create life as a kind of gigantic choose your own adventure game,/multiple choice intelligence test - take enough wrong turns and death is inevitable, so, then you go back to the beginning. i just don't see any point in the universe dividing to create parallel ones except at cusp moments.

 

[Dillinger4]

I am afraid that, in a multiverse, you are random chance. Sorry.

And you are misunderstanding it.

Its not about 'choice'. Especially not any human concept of choice.

It doesn't really matter whether you care whether you see any point in it, really.

 

[Dillinger4]

*sigh*

I see a perfectly good thread about to descend into lunacy.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Finding out about the possibility of an infinite amount of parallel worlds, has presented me with a problem.

Imagine it is possible to travel between all possible worlds, where every single time line is different. There will be some worlds where it is hugely different. Worlds that are ruled by a Nazi Empire, or destroyed by nuclear war.

Then there will be some worlds that are only marginally different. The person traveling between worlds will find it almost the same as the world he came from, except with one slight difference. In these worlds, no matter what they do, anything can happen. He could find himself living out his most fantastic dreams or the worst nightmares. No matter what they do, all possible decisions are made, there are an infinite number of copies living the opposite of said decision.

And herein lies the problem. In a universe where anything is possible, nothing can make any moral sense. Whatever decisions we make, the outcome does not matter.

Even if we went to kill ourselves out of despair, there would be an infinite number of universes in which the gun misfires, goes through the ceiling above you and say, kills a child.

These questions become more relavent when one thinks of the problem of Human Cloning. Would an exact replica of yourself have a soul? Would we be responsible for our clones actions? In a quantum universe we would have an infinite number of quantum clones. Since some of these may (or must) perform acts of evil, are we responsible for their actions?

This is all an episode from the first series of Star Trek. Spock is the captain, and the Vulcans are these warlike marauders. Actually, so is Sulu. And Kirk has only one hour, minus commercial time, to solve the problem.

As for your thing about killing yourself, it will matter, because this iteration of 'you', lives in this universe, and will in fact die. The fact that some other version of you continues elsewhere, is irrelevant.

 

[Dillinger4]

*sigh*

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The same idea is in a Superman comic from the sixties. I wish I still owned it: I'd be that much richer, here in this universe.

 

[Dillinger4]

A version of you does own.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A version of you does own.

So what. What if I print up a hundred copies of a letter. Then I burn one up. Each letter may say the same thing, but each is a separate thing, a separate piece of paper.

So when I burn one up, even though there are 99 copies left, that one, is gone.

 

[Dillinger4]

A Russian scientist, in the soviet era, is taken on a trip to Las Vegas by his US colleagues. He is amazed by all the lights and colors.

He decides to withdraw every single penny he owns, goes down into the casino, and places it on 32 red. His colleagues are amazed and try to convince him otherwise, but are unsuccessful. He loses, and the other scientists try to console him. He turns to them and smiles, and says 'Ah, but in one universe I am a very rich man'.

This story isn't real of course, but you can see the point.

The whole point of this example is that is conceptual, a way to think about the nature of existence, I guess. There is a whole lot of science behind it.

 

[Dillinger4]

I don't know. I am tired, its friday night, but what I do know is that you example is entirely missing the point, just as much as Demosthenes is.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Well, although I've occasionally had the impression of having memories of a different life, in general, like I said before, how could I be Jesus?

Jesus was around 2000 years ago.

I'm not afraid of random chance. what made you think I am?

I just don't see it as being likely, if there's a multiverse, that there's a parallel universe for every single possible random event.

If there are parallel universes, it seems to me, that the point of creating the multiverse, is so as to create life as a kind of gigantic choose your own adventure game,/multiple choice intelligence test - take enough wrong turns and death is inevitable, so, then you go back to the beginning. i just don't see any point in the universe dividing to create parallel ones except at cusp moments.

If I understand it correctly (and I probably don't) the science behind the theory of the multiverse is that of M theory, or Membrane theory. They idea that a partical/atom/electron suddendly disappears from our space only to appear elsewhere. It follows it might occur when two membranes touch together, and the point at which they touch causes (I say causes, but I don't know if they know which is cause or which is effect) the atom to move from one membrane to the other. The extrapolation from that is that one membrane = one universe within the multiverse. When it reappears somewhere else it's travelled within the other universe, somehow, and when the 'branes have touched again it comes back.

Anyway. As I understand it, the presence of these membranes suggests an infinite (or maybe finite) number of 'parallel' universes, or membranes, where all possible possibilities exist. There is no cause and effect in that if I click my fingers in this universe I don't cause something to happen in another universe, but that there is already a universe where I didn't click my fingers, or where I did and broke one of them in a freak weak finger accident etc.

The point is, I think, that it is based on understanding where the hell these atom partically things go when they disappear. The theory wasn't thought up to try to understand our place as humans within the universe, on the whole, or to give us a free card to 'pick your own adventure'. It grew out of a scientific question about disappearing stuff.

And the key to getting your head in the right place to think about this sort of thing is to not see our membrane, or universe, as the one at the centre - because there isn't a centre because it doesn't, for a start, exist in 3-dimensional space as we understand it.

I expect maybe 5% of what I have written above to even vaguely resemble what M theory is actually about.

I make it up as I go along you know

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A Russian scientist, in the soviet era, is taken on a trip to Las Vegas by his US colleagues. He is amazed by all the lights and colors.

He decides to withdraw every single penny he owns, goes down into the casino, and places it on 32 red. His colleagues are amazed and try to convince him otherwise, but are unsuccessful. He loses, and the other scientists try to console him. He turns to them and smiles, and says 'Ah, but in one universe I am a very rich man'..

Great. In this universe, the scientist is broke.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The whole point of this example is that is conceptual, a way to think about the nature of existence, I guess. There is a whole lot of science behind it.

It's like Heaven. You're suffering here, but you can console yourself with the thought that there is a Better Place.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I don't know. I am tired, its friday night, but what I do know is that you example is entirely missing the point, just as much as Demosthenes is.

It's not. No matter how many universes there are, all of your consciousness exists in this one.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

It's like having an identical twin brother who's living it high on the hog in Japan.

As far as your life is concerned, so what?

 

[bluestreak]

You know this is my take on it - it's all very interesting to think about b ut it doesn't matter in the end.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

You know this is my take on it - it's all very interesting to think about b ut it doesn't matter in the end.

I'd agree. Maybe there are a million me-s in a million universes. Maybe one of them is a king, one a beggar, one a toad. But on Monday, I still have to go to work.

 

[Dillinger4]

Its a shame you don't get it then.

 

[Demosthenes]

Why doesn't it occur to you that it's you who's missing the point.

Is that impossible?

 

[Dillinger4]

On this thread, the chances are pretty slim, as I wrote the OP.

The point is it is a way of conceptualizing Quantum possibility, but you and johnny cannuck cannot take it to that level of abstraction and just think about your own lives.

 

[Dillinger4]

It doesn't matter. But really in the grand scheme of things, we don't matter. The universe is indifferent.

 

[Demosthenes]

that's just your assumption. And there are plenty of scientists who think that the balance of evidence suggests that mentality plays a part in the creating the universe. And that is the point that you appear to be missing.