Re: Parallel Universes

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 03:03:21 MST

  • Next message: Anders Sandberg: "Re: Parallel Universes"

    On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 08:03:10AM +0100, Max M wrote:
    >
    > Hmm ... and nobody sees the paradox in that the infinite universes would
    > take an infinite amount of energy? The idea smack of paranormal claims
    > that cannot be tested.
    >
    > Personally I find these parallel universe theories so farfetched that
    > they should be preached not told. They need a good trimming by Occam!
    >

    The MWI is, compared to other interpretations of QM, very clean and
    elegant. It just says that the state vector moves along the Schrödinger
    equation, nothing more. It doesn't introduce an arbitrary collapse of
    the wave function that happens for an undefined reason (the Copenhagen
    interpretation), that superposed states are retconned out of existence
    after collapse (the transactional interpretation), an extremely complex
    machinery behind the scenes (Bohm's implicate order) and so on.

    The mass issue is not really an issue. When a system is in a
    superposition of states (let's say a 4 kg living cat state together with
    a 4 kg dead cat state in a Schrödinger box) the total mass doesn't
    increase to 8 kg. In the case of universes there isn't even a law of
    conservation of energy acting on the global scale in GR; why should such
    a conservation law act across universes? The closest thing is the
    "conservation of probability" that still works in the MWI - the total
    integral of probability of all possible worlds is 1.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


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