I know we have some scientists that frequent the forums, and I'd be interested in their thoughts on the subject.
I was thinking that if alternate universes were possible and we found some way to travel between them, would it solve the problems of our world? You don't like the person that got elected, so just move to a universe where the other guy won. A sickness breaks out and starts killing people? Go to another universe where someone has already created a cure.
Is this even scientifically possible, or are the researchers in the article stretching it?
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: ... if alternate universes were possible and we found some way to travel between them, would it solve the problems of our world?
This doesn't tend to work out in Sliders, Star Trek, and Stargate. There seem to be a lot more crummy universes than good ones. Also, if you spread the technology to go between universes, you can get really screwed Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
It would also, for me at least, completely cure any worries I had about death, the after-life etc.
If you died in an accident, there would be a universe where you survived (not you-you, but someone almost identical) - it would be like reincarnation in your own lifetime - like the idea that each life causes another to happen. Plus, if you didn't believe in a soul, the idea that you continue to exist somehow would be very comforting. And, if all things are possible, somewhere out there, there would have to be a universe where everyone lived happily ever after forever...
The problem with travelling from one universe to another is, obviously, that if you met yourself and shook hands, the universe would explode. Or you would get a very bad migraine. One or the other.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Plus, if you didn't believe in a soul, the idea that you continue to exist somehow would be very comforting.
Not for me. I want ME to exist not "exact copy of me." If a gun were put to my head, I would experience no less horror if I had a clone standing next to me and the cloned version of me would be thinking "Thank God that's not me."
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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But say that during the accident that killed you, the universe split. In one universe you died and in one universe you lived. Your conciousness would continue just the same in one of those universes. In fact, if this were so, it could be argued that this already happens every time you have a choice or a near miss. It's not the same as a clone, who would just be a twin. This really would be you. Or, since you're alive, it really is you already.
I don't know. It's just an interesting thought.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Funny enough, David Lewis has written on the exact topic (or sufficiently close to it) that Bella is referring to. That is to say, someone with identical psychological states that you had. He went the opposite way.
posted
Are we talking parallel universes? Or branching universes? Parallel universes wouldn't connect. If I die, I die. There might be another person with my dna in another parallel universe, but he would have no connection to me. In an infinate number of parallel universes you would still statistically have one for every possible outcome, they just wouldn't be connected.
Branching universes could explain a bit evolution and the formation of life. You start with one blank universe with just those subatomic vibrations. Another universe branches off where those subatomic vibrations do something weird. Eventually you get enough branches that a universe with 1 star is formed. That keeps branching until you get ours. Our universe could have life just on our planet, but one that branches off may have it on two, and so forth.
I've been reading too much Baxter and Sawyer lately.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Bella Bee: ... If you died in an accident, there would be a universe where you survived (not you-you, but someone almost identical)
I dunno. There would also be universes where you were brutally crippled, or suffer agonizing pain, or assimilated by the Borg. Down that road, madness might lie.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Ok, so let me note that the science reporting here is really terrible. Hardly a surprise, of course. (Not a hit on Fox, but on popular science reporting in general.) From what I can make out, someone has managed to isolate a macroscopic object well enough that it demonstrates superposition of vibration states; this is an impressive experimental feat and does rule out some of the parameter space of collapse theories - that is, if you believe in collapse rather than many-worlds, you're going to have to increase your estimate of the mass or length scale at which collapse occurs. But it's hardly a demonstration of many-worlds, as such; it's just an extension of the quite ordinary superposition stuff first seen in the thirties to relatively large objects. It doesn't answer the fundamental questions about how to interpret superpositions and apparent collapse, modulo what I said above about the parameter space.
I don't want to be dismissive: This is really an impressive experiment. But the philosophical implications were just as present in the ancient two-slit experiment. Fox is just being sensationalist because OMG, Weird Science Stuff!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I should have said "this Universe and variants". "Uncounted billions" is not the same as 'infinite'. Of Universes containing recognisable variants of rivka, me, and my post, probably the overwhelming majority have rivka agreeing. Nonetheless there are uncounted billions where some synapse in alt-rivka's brain fired at the wrong time and she disagrees; in some of those she will reconsider later. Other uncounted billions - perhaps more - have her mistakenly insert a 'dis' before her 'agree'; many of those will have a later correction by edit. This is the horrifying part of MW theory. Whatever you do, some of you got it wrong. I had a bit of an ethical dilemma, or rather temptation, yesterday: It was quite clear what the right thing to do was, but it was inconvenient. I made the correct decision. But uncounted billions upon billions of me did not; and here I'm not so sure where the majority lies. It is utterly depressing.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: I take no responsibility for my alts. They can go right on worrying about themselves.
Well, I guess I won't share my awesome alt-cookie recipe with you, then. And btw, KoM is totally wrong about quantum mechanics.
Posts: 1 | Registered: Apr 2010
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I wrote a really lengthy response to this, but it was in a different universe. In this one, I didn't.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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MW does not imply infinite universes; the possible branchings are finite, although very large.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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