From: Damien Broderick (thespike@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Feb 13 2003 - 19:43:17 MST
Anders Sandberg said, in this and similar universes:
> My current late evening impression is that the worlds where you see a
> non-classical behavior have measure zero - i.e. are never experienced.
>
> Hmm, I *thought* I understood it, but
> http://neon.airtime.co.uk/users/station/m-worlds.htm#Q23
> suggests I might have been wrong.
That FAQ concludes:
< Note: no finite sequence of outcomes is excluded from happening, since the
concept of probability and randomness only becomes precise only as N goes to
infinity [H]. Thus, heat could be observed to flow from a cold to hotter
object, but we might have to wait a very long time before observing it. What
is excluded is the possibility of this process going on forever. >
I suppose the obvious answer to my question is that usually everything we
see is compiled of Vast numbers of small events. In any given universe, many
photons might indeed not take the least path, but the tendency of the rest
actually *is* to do so (that is what we *call* the least path; if it were
something else we'd call that the least path [maybe] ), hence the compounded
effect is that in any given universe a light beam takes the shortest
possible path under the prevailing circumstances, say. How this works for
*individual* photons when they are observed escapes me, though.
However, as I've speculated previously, if we set up some perturbable system
so that quantum effects are amplified (the Cat, say, or a psychokinesis
experiment like the one run at Fourmilab), any given universe must by chance
experience stretches of aberrant events. Since superstitious error leads
some people to expect `mind over matter' to occur, many universes will
contain parapsychological experiments. In some of those universes, an
anomalous sequence of binary events (for example; but a levitating table is
harder to explain) will happen during an early experiment. This is taken as
confirmation of the theory, but subsequent observations fail, in almost all
worlds, to `confirm' the PK effect. In a few worlds, as chance would have
it, another sequence does follow. Those parapsychologists get excited; their
beliefs seem corroborated. And so on.
(Where this fails as an account of PK, Ganzfeld experiences and other lab
parapsychology results, FWIW, is that very few universes could be expected
to show repeatability even of this accidental sort. Our history does show
it, yet there seems no reason why we should inhabit such a peculiar
far-out-on-the-tail cosmos.)
Damien Broderick
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