re: Many Worlds

Mitchell Porter (mitch@thehub.com.au)
Fri, 16 Jan 1998 09:38:58 +1000 (EST)


Damien B quotes David Deutsch:

> `You may be wondering how we can persuade our counterparts in 10^500-odd
> universes to start working on our factorization task. Will they not have
> their own agendas for the use of their computers? No... Shor's algorrithm
> operates initially only on a set of universes that are *identical* to one
> another, and it causes them to become differentiated only within the
> confines of the factorization engine. ... There are, no doubt, many other
> universes in which we programmed different numbers or never built the
> factorization engine at all. But those universe differ from ours in too
> many variables - or more precisely, in variables that are not made to
> interact in the right way by the programming of Shor's algorithm - and so
> do not interfere with our universe.'
>
> Is that the sort of issue you were thinking about, Mitch?

I'd like to know what it means for one universe to "interfere with"
another.

-mitch
http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch