Joe E. Dees wrote:
> Date sent: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:49:09 +0000
> From: Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: Interesting Article
> To: extropians@extropy.com
> Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
>
> > At 04:57 PM 9/22/98 -0700, Kathryn wrote:
> >
> > >I was thinking of such theories as Alexei Starobinsky/Alan Guth's 'daughter
> > >universe' theory, in which a false vacuum spot creates a wormhole with a
> > >bubble wall on the end of it that pops off to create another universe. Or
> > >Alexander Vilenkin's 'eternal inflation' theory, which posits repeat 'big
> > >bangs' that duplicate our own. Or Andrei Linde's 'self-reproducing' theory
> > >that involves additional universes in other dimensions.
> >
> > The connection with string or M theory strikes me as tenuous. Re-entrant
> > wormholes at the particle level, maybe - but that's within a single universe.
> >
> > As for the budded cosmoses - Smolin's is a nice current version, and David
> > Deutsch told me that his QT multiverse theory (the Cat is definitely both
> > alive and dead) is not inconsistent with Smolin's, although they seem
> > disjunct on an analytical level - both might be true, or one, or neither.
> >
> > Damien Broderick
>
> Okay, so the definitely dead cat model (and likewise the definitely
> alive cat model - one and the same) is out. This leaves the neither-
> alive-nor-dead model and the both-alive-and-dead model, and the
> strong probability that within the Standard (or any presently feasible
> nonstandard) Model and given both practical and theoretical
> measuring constraints, which one is correct may be Godelianly
> undecideable without involving us in Heisenbergian observer-
> participant tainting. This reminds me of the argument whether God
> is hermaphroditic or asexual; what difference could it make to
> anything else, since we can't use differences in anything else to
> decide it? The absence (or presence) of the invisible is difficult to
> detect; the location of the omnipresent is difficult to isolate.
The Cramer interpretation excludes the foggy neither/both possibilities. Since
Feynman models show that quantum interactions are a conjunction of particles
shaking hands with virtual emissions going both forward and back in time (as an
antiphoton is merely a photon traveling backward in time) which reinforce each
other to create real particles transmitted between, and cancelling out virtual
emissions outside the handshake by destructive interference, that there is never a
state of indecision. The cat is always either alive or dead. The two possible
choices are not both made (thus creating two parallel universes) only one choice
is made, so there is only ONE universe resulting from a quantum interaction, so
multi-verse theory is bunk.
Mike Lorrey