Weaknesses of the Many-Worlds Interpretation - Ask a Spaceman!
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- Опубліковано 13 гру 2022
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What is the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics? How does decoherence play a critical role? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this idea? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Keep those questions about space, science, astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology coming to #AskASpaceman for COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF TIME AND SPACE! Music by Jason Grady and Nick Bain. - Наука та технологія
Sean Carroll would say it’s not a probability of something happening- it’s the probability of where you are in the wave function of the universe. I believe that’s a much different interpretation than what you’re presenting.
I think instead of asking us commoners if we would get in the box, we should ask the originators of many worlds and true believers if they would get in the box.
Show billion dollars first, assuming
Examples of data compaction methods are the use of fixed-tolerance bands, variable-tolerance bands, slope-keypoints, sample changes, curve patterns, curve fitting, variable-precision coding, frequency analysis, and probability analysis.
I'd say the probabilities become relative frequencies: An event with probability 0.25 will come true in ¼ of all universes, and so on.
This exact issue was explored in the TV show "Devs".
It's been explored in a lot of sci fi.
My current electronic device is a VIC-20..... Love your videos and insight Paul
Thank you, Paul, once again you shed light on a subject that I struggle with. Sean Carrol is a fantastic science communicator but other than him and Everett I do not hear other science communicators evangelising the theory. I also see it as too convenient to explain away something we have no grasp on. Having said that, I do find it intriguing and I would hate to dismiss it out of hand. PS I know Everett was not a science communicator and that he has passed away….
And this is how the idea for Loki season 1 got brainstormed
How is energy conserved as the universe splits uncountable times and is there any way to look back in time at the energy budget of the universe for a trend in the overall energy of the universe? If Many Worlds does not make any unique potentially testable predictions, what value does it have?
I can't explain consciousness with _or_ without many worlds. It's probably the single most baffling thing to me. A major factor is that we _don't_ have continuity of consciousness. You experience discontinuities of consciousness every single night. Quantum immortality is something that I've thought about, but while it's theoretically possible with many worlds, I'm not going to trust it with my life on the line.
Also, while I believe many worlds, I don't believe in discrete splits. Different quantum states have different amplitudes determining their probability. In many worlds, these quantum states extend upwards indefinitely until they cover the entire universe, except they won't actually do that since it takes time for causality to cross space, enough that it will never actually reach due to the universe's expansion. I instead picture the worlds as bubbles that expand at no more than the speed of light. Everything in that bubble is entangled with each other, but not with anything outside the bubble since there haven't been any interactions yet. Where two bubbles intersect, the number of states within the intersection is the product of each individual bubble, one for each combination of outcomes.
Isn't it the case that most quantum outcomes don't really change the macroscopic picture? So an air molecule can zig or zag, or a brain neuron can fire or not, but the temperature of the room and my perception and decisions are not generally going to change. Add to that entanglement with the rest of the universe and perhaps it leads to an overall inertia for the majority of those many worlds to not be very different. (If they exist at all...)
That bet was an enlightening illustration. It reminds us that we weave through a twisted world path of successes and failures. Cause and effect seems to have no impact in the quantum world. Only in the macroscopic world. And yet, there's some connection to the quantum world. Are we each on our own world path, or are we connected to the planet's world path? Very puzzling.
how do you square the probablistic outcomes with the certainty of outcomes? Because you don't know which world you'll end up jn, so as far as you are concerned, its probabilistic, but as far as physics is concerned, its determinstic because the MWI can be summed up as "Wave function's evolve according to the Schrodinger equation, the end".
How consciousness works in the many worlds interpretation. I have never thought of that!
Wouldn’t the double slit be the example of this interaction. Each electron you fire interacts will all other universes electrons as the split happens causing it to appear as though they’re all interacting giving the wave pattern. Sounds very fractal.
Regarding the idea that continuity of consciousness being incongruent with the many worlds interpretation: Isn’t it possible that human consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that does not exist on more a fundamental level? Like couldn’t the human perception of continuity of consciousness be similar to how the human perception of motion in a video is created by viewing numerous still photos? On one level, this phenomenon exists, but on more fundamental levels, it does not.
If you believe in a continuous wave function the splits would be infinite. A bigger problem I see with multi-worlds is that if two quantum events take place within a causal light cone, four worlds would need to created to handle all combinations. In other words the Universe would need to know about all quantum events occurring and split accordingly.
Would @Sean Carroll take this bet?
"Oh no, he's putting us into Schrodinger's Cat-Murder Box D:"
I wouldn't take the bet, but can you make me into a cat either way?
Would the entire universe split instantaneously with each quantum event or would the splits occur at the speed of causality?
Could get very messy.
Duplication at the speed of light may not suffixe. Synchrone or asynchrone . What about time being discrete instead of continuous?
Here is my question about many worlds: Where does the energy come from to create all of the universes?
I was going to ask this exact question.
@@aforementioned7177 I have been asking it for years. Cannot get an answer.
Arm chair expert here, but I feel like relativity has a role to play. What is a meter/second? Depends on your perspective. What if the same can be said of energy? Even if the energy is finite, infinities can still exist within it, relatively speaking.
Where does the energy come from to create an electron in a superposition of two states? Shouldn't we require double the energy?
Simple: each universe has a portion of the original's energy proportional to its amplitude. When zooming into one of those resulting universes, you need to rescale things from the new perspective which makes it look like it has all of the original's energy.
The Many Worlds Theory is where parsimony goes to die.
So what happens to the Ptobability? Every possible outcome is playing out in its own particular Universe, so all probabilities are equal are they not?
Nope, if the probability is higher it basically means it happens in more universes.
In the Copenhagen interpretation, the probability of an event is calculated from the amplitude of its wave function. In many worlds, different "worlds" also have different amplitudes based on the amplitudes of the outcomes they contain. This _could_ be seen as "more universes" if discretized, but I prefer the continuous form since it more closely aligns with the microscopic level.
Simulation hypothesis if you ask me: number universes=0
The way I understand it I am not "being split" it's just that copies of my universe with me in it are created all the time, which does not affect me in any way. Just like if I die in this universe but a copy is created with me a millionaire, it doesn't change the fact that Im dead in this universe and I can't experience all the joys of being a millionaire, my some sort of a clone can. So I probably dont understand your argument at all.
In many worlds the universes can not interact. The you that died will never know the you that wakes up a billionaire. They are, for all intents and purposes, different beings.
No, you are reversing things by implying that the you that died and the you that wakes up a billionaire were already in two different universes BEFORE the experiment, but that is not the case, there is one version of you before the experiment, and two versions of you afterwards, one is dead and the other is a billionaire. There is however, a 100% chance that you will wake up a billionaire in a universe, yet nobody would take the bet.
@@Gerard1971 yes, but the different versions can never interact, never have any knowledge/information about the others existence.
@@VTLille Yes, but I don't see how that is relevant if many worlds were an actual thing rather than just a mathematical model. The problem is because the universes cannot interact, we cannot know whether many worlds is even a real thing, but the fact that nobody would take this bet means that everyone assumes that the world before the experiment and the one in which you are dead are one and the same, and nobody believes that the other world exists, or whether being a billionaire in that world is even a meaningful thing. I think that is the point Spaceman was trying to make.
@@Gerard1971 very true.
Well... there is some suggestion that they do interact or at least the possibites may interact.
People are generally familiar with the double slit experiment - shine light through 2 narrow slits and on a far screen one sees bands of light and dark where waves of light through different slits either constructively or desctructively interfer with one another.
The extension to this experiment is to reduce down the intensity of the emitting beam until just one single photon of light is being emitted at a time... one might think a single photon must travel through one or other of the two slits, and form two bands that have somewhat diffuse margins due to diffraction. Were that the case then modern quantum physics would largely have ceased 100 years ago and the above interpretations of quantum mechanics would not be an issue.
Provided one does not place a detector beside each slit to verify which slit our single photons are travelling through, then the result is the same bands of light & dark (once one observes for long enough to record the outcomes of lots of single photons going through). But how can a single photon interact with seemingly no photons possibly going through the other slit at the same time to cause constructive or descructive interferance?
The answer seems to be that the photon interacts with the possibility of having gone through the othe slit, or put anoher way it interacts with the possibility of having gone through the other slit in a different world. Setting up a detector beside each slit removes the possibiity of virtual interactons as all possible universes at that point will have had the same photon definitely going through the same slit (of course if we are in the half of all universes where we confirm our photon goes through the other slit, then all related universes are fixed in having had that same outcome and so no interference occurs).
Hey, Paul! Show me the billion in bearer bonds that fits in a single briefcase (so much easier to carry instead of cash), and I will take the deal! I read a proposals that MWI is testable. You put brave (or stupid, same thing) soul in the box and trigger the experience over and over, filming it along to way until they die or 10 or 100 times whether satisfies that MWI is real. Or you have to stop until to be prosecuted for either murder or aided a suicide. I will pass the later experiment.
Seems like we need a quantum Lagrangian mechanics version of the many worlds interpretation where all possible Universes are real. However, reality is described as the union of extant and potentially extant. Only one of the infinite number of possible Universes is extant. The rest are potential. Since all Universes are real, in some sense, no need for wave functions to collapse.
Yeah, sure. Seemed more reasonable when this was just an idea in my brain, before I wrote it down.
this sounds like a zeno's paradox
In 50% of the universes, I become a billionaire and in 50% of the universes my loved ones will have to live with me being dead. I don't think that's a trivial moral question.
The many worlds theory is there to satisfy the math, not reality. The map is not the territory, and the math is not the reality.
The outcomes really don't need to be a billion or death.
What if two entangled particles are sent in opposite directions, and never interact with anything ever again for billions of years?
How does the rest of the quantum multiverse know what branch it’s on?
I personally don't see the "many worlds" of the theory actually being complete universes. Only as bubbles containing every particle that has been influenced by the original event. If these two particles never interact with anything else, then their "bubble" never expands beyond those particles, and to the rest of the universe it's like there was never a split. On a different scale, any splits made in the sun from its fusion won't actually split the earth itself for at least 8 minutes until the first particles carrying the information of those splits make it here.
There seems to be a problem of infinity
And thus the invention of Googleplex....
I have quadrillions of copies of me being produced every moment in time and I can't find my keys in any of them
A big bang is a lot. This is far more. No energy needed?
I guess there can be a number of variables that muddy the water as well- the intelligence of the decision maker- I could take my dog and give her the same choice- she would be oblivious to the potential outcomes and it would simply be a random decision. Just like 25 year old Chris might have taken the gamble for a $1B against working for 40 years whereas 50 year old Chris pauses as retirement and the end game is on the horizon- seems like more to risk.
So at the micro scale we have infinite parallel worlds splitting off for every quantum event. At the cosmological scale we have an infinite multitude of universes to explain away the anthropic fine tuning problem. Each has been forwarded by the priesthood of reductive materialists to save their holy grail of local realism. Funny that.
Thank you for the great video, Paul! I'd prefer Roger Penrose's idea for cyclic universe...
best bet ever! Where do i sign? Kappa
Only collisional experience mostly, some eruptive disruptive andsome' said he omniously !\? 😏
Irrelevant. In infinite universes you die and in infinite universes you wake up a billionaire. The only guarantee is that results occur, not that you will wind up in one universe or the other. The guarantee is that A result must occur, not one or the other. Your consciousness will only be aware of one result, but that does not imply that the result in question is guaranteed, only that IF you are aware of a result, that will be the result you are aware of. again, this does not imply that the other result doesn't happen, only that you are unaware of it happening.
I think you're failing to take infinity into account, or maybe to truly comprehend how it applies in totality. (then again, if you haven't been confused by it, you clearly don't understand it yet.) In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
What'll really bake your noodle is that with infinite universes being created because of those quantum variables going left and right, you have infinite universes collapsing under some quantum variable that went left instead of right and poof, that universe unraveled.
How do you maintain your sense of you? There's an infinite number of universes out there where I didn't to balance out the infinite number of universes where I did. I'm not worried about other me, he'll be fine, or not, but that's his problem. I have my own problems to deal with that he/they won't. This is what I mean by I don't think you're properly applying infinity in its totality.
Great video and worthy subject matter!
From your video I understood how to become a billionaire. I have to buy a lottery ticket and build a machine that will kill me during the lottery draw if my ticket doesn't win. I need to go to sleep before the lottery draw. In this case, I have a 100% chance of waking up a billionaire.
Just wondering how many proponents of the multiverse have taken this chance? :)
"have a 100% chance of waking up a billionaire" only applies as an average across all possible universes. In this universe still 50% chance of not. However if you do wake up, then you happened to be in the half of all quintillions of quintillions of universes where that happens - in the other 50% of quintillions or quintillions of universes Paul Sutter gets to keep his billion dollars and for no real personal risk to himself. I conclude that Paul has the better odds here: gain a billon dollars directly or get to live another day
I would totally take the bet.
Because if I win, I could do it to someone else mwahah.
Here is the killer of the multiworlds delusion. What is the physical mechanism that creates these many worlds. As an atheist it would be easier to believe in an alleged god than a cascading run away creation of infinite creations of .............. you get the point.
"Belief" here harks back to our "natural order" sense of a plan or at least in Newtonian mechanical determinism. Consider that we are each the random mixing of the 23 chromosomes from each of our parents, so that makes us individually a 1 in 2^23 chance. This clashes with our intuitive sense that we are just a simple 50:50 likelihood of being a son or daughter of our parents, rather than the 1 in over 8 million.
We are more unique than this as we each average 42 random mutations in the 3 billion base pairs of our genomes, of which about 2% make up our approximate 20,000 genes. That’s not much, but accounts for all of our evolution.
Now consider the low possibility that in past times a person through random background radiation acquired cancer and died before meeting a partner and proceeding to have children. Ask one generation back and our parents probably did not experience the early death of a new suitor before got around to marriage and children. However consider back to "biblical times" 2000 years ago: that's 80 generations or 2^80 ancestors = 10^24 people. So while clearly not how one should calculate number of ancestors as we all start being relatives of one another sufficiently long ago, the chance of us individually being who we are from the perspective of 1CE would have been less than 1 in 2^23 x 2^80 = 1 in 2^103 = 1 in 10^31. This seems impossibly low odds, and yet for a certainty we are individually all 100% real and here debating this.
If we accept such odds of our genome without being overcome with nihilistic depression on our unlikeliness, then consider from perspective of the end of the last ice age 25,000 years ago. That would be about 1,000 generations and our individual likelihood 1 in 2^23 x 2^1000, or 1 in 10^307. If we can cope with that number of potential possibilities, then would it matter to us if a multiverse split had happened every second since the Big Bang (approx. 4.35*10^17 seconds ago). Even if we consider a multiverse split occurring every single measure of Planck time (5*10^-44seconds thought to be the smallest meaningful interval of time) then there have only been about 8*10^80 measures of Planck Time since the Big Bang.
Seems we can imagine a mathematically adept caveman calculating the possibility of us being here now as 1 in 10^307, but struggle with there not being lesser number of potential multiverses splits? But I agree solving quantum gravity to create a Theory of Everything that explains a mechanistic underlying foundation to quantum mechanics seems a more likely possibility, and one that wll cause our descendants less headaches about this !
Evolution of the quantum state of the universe according to the Schrödinger equation.
What is the physical mechanism that creates quantum superpositions? The observed behaviors of quantum mechanics according to Many Worlds nothing more than quantum superpositions viewed from the inside. Either you as a macroscopic being are never in a quantum superposition, or there are multiple versions of you. Most people vastly prefer the first option, and so they need to find ways to prevent superpositions from getting that large.
Too crazy for me.
Depends on who you ask. Someone with a lot to lose probably wouldn't take the bet but the homeless drug addicted guy on Skid Row would take that bet in a heart beat. Just saying.
I'd take the bet and I don't even know how the universe works.
IMO, Many Worlds doesn't sound any crazier than the fact that the universe acts like the ultimate computer that readjusts time and space just to keep the speed of light constant. Every moving particle in the universe has its on equally valid reference frame, so I see no reason why a similar logic can't be applied here when it comes to interpreting what's real/happening, even though we can't explain it yet.
To me, the bigger issue is how to reconcile how it's been established that the relativity of simultaneity is real, yet QM claims that events are uncertain when there's a perspective that exists which already knows their outcome. For example, to some distant observer, our future already exists, so they know what will happen to us.
That it's meaningless pointless untestable and has no explanatory power?
Light and sound are my favorite mysteries to understand. I can't get enough thanks. 🌬️🎇📏📐⚖️🕐🔥🌼. 🗝️🗝️🗝️🔥👀