Problems with the multi-verse theory

[farmerben]

I have two major objections to the multi-verse theory as espoused by people like Sean Carroll.  A few times I have talked with physicists who believe in the multiverse and they dismiss my objections as if I just don't know what I'm talking about and am not making a real point.   These are my two arguments.

1.  The set of Pythagorean right triangles is an cardinally countable infinite set.  If anything possible can be found in an infinite set. then anything possible is a Pythagorean right triangle.  The same argument works for uncountable sets.  The length of sides and angles of triangle is uncountable.  Therefore everything is a triangle.   

2.  In optics a typical sheet of glass will allow 95% of photons to pass and 5% to reflect.  It depends on angle and a few variables but we need not go into all that.  The same result is obtained if you send one photon at a time into the glass.  Every photon splits the possible universes in two, one in which it reflected and one where it didn't.  There are only two possible states yet one of them appears 95% of the time.  So whenever a photon hits glass does the inverse split in 2 or does it split in 20 so the equation is balanced and we have 19 universes in which the photon was transmitted and 1 universe where it didn't?

 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, farmerben said:

I have two major objections to the multi-verse theory as espoused by people like Sean Carroll.  A few times I have talked with physicists who believe in the multiverse and they dismiss my objections as if I just don't know what I'm talking about and am not making a real point.   These are my two arguments.

1.  The set of Pythagorean right triangles is an cardinally countable infinite set.  If anything possible can be found in an infinite set. then anything possible is a Pythagorean right triangle.  The same argument works for uncountable sets.  The length of sides and angles of triangle is uncountable.  Therefore everything is a triangle.   

2.  In optics a typical sheet of glass will allow 95% of photons to pass and 5% to reflect.  It depends on angle and a few variables but we need not go into all that.  The same result is obtained if you send one photon at a time into the glass.  Every photon splits the possible universes in two, one in which it reflected and one where it didn't.  There are only two possible states yet one of them appears 95% of the time.  So whenever a photon hits glass does the inverse split in 2 or does it split in 20 so the equation is balanced and we have 19 universes in which the photon was transmitted and 1 universe where it didn't?

 

You lost me in 1.  I could see anything possible as being possibly representable by some set of right triangles (finite? infinite?), but not necessarily a single triangle which it seems is what you are positing.

 Your 2nd seems a good point but I’m not certain that the number of universes split into necessarily would have to correlate with the odds of path taken.  

Edited December 4, 2024 by darthgently

[boriz]

No. No actual new universes are created. Yes. Quantum theory is preposterous. No. No better theory has yet been discovered. Indeed of all scientific theory's ever proposed, QT is by far the most successful. Yet we still don't understand why. Many universes is just an intellectual tool to help think about QT. A bit like physicists use the spherical chicken in a vacuum, and mathematicians use the square root of negative one. Neither of which is real and both of which are very useful.

Think of Schrodinger's cat.  After the cat has been put into the box and the lid closed, the inside of the box becomes a container for a probability function. Now imaging late that night, after everyone has gone home, a dog gets into the lab and manages to knock the lid off the box. Does the function collapse? Or does the function just expand to include the dog. The dog now being in a superposition of the states 'saw a dead cat' and 'saw a live cat', and the new function container is the whole of the inside of the lab?

Then a security guard peers into the lab window and observes the dog. Does that collapse the function, or does the function just expand again to include a guard that both 'saw a dog that saw a dead cat', and  'saw a dog that saw a live cat', and the function container has grown again to include the corridor outside the lab? And so on until the entire planet is in superposition, and later, the entire universe?

Preposterous right? Welcome to QT.

 

[monophonic]

On 12/4/2024 at 4:07 PM, boriz said:

No. No actual new universes are created. Yes. Quantum theory is preposterous. No. No better theory has yet been discovered. Indeed of all scientific theory's ever proposed, QT is by far the most successful. Yet we still don't understand why. Many universes is just an intellectual tool to help think about QT. A bit like physicists use the spherical chicken in a vacuum, and mathematicians use the square root of negative one. Neither of which is real and both of which are very useful.

The biggest issue I have with quantum theory is, if my highschool textbooks' definitions are to be believed, it is not even a theory at all. It is an observation. A very thorough and comprehensive observation by now, but it can not even try to answer why things happen the way they happen.

There are all the interpretations of quantum theory, like multiverse, the one with the wave functions collapses, and whatnot. They could be theories, if there have been any experiments devised that could prove or disprove them. Without those experiments, they are hypotheses. (In multiverse there are infinite universes where that is the correct plural, btw.)

[Superfluous J]

On 12/4/2024 at 7:59 AM, farmerben said:

Therefore everything is a triangle.

This is false. It's false because this

On 12/4/2024 at 7:59 AM, farmerben said:

If anything possible can be found in an infinite set

is false.

Anything possible cannot be found in an infinite set. An infinite set of 0's cannot contain a 1. An infinite set of trees cannot contain a Thursday. And an infinite set of right triangles cannot contain anything other than right triangles.

On 12/4/2024 at 7:59 AM, farmerben said:

In optics a typical sheet of glass will allow 95% of photons to pass and 5% to reflect.  It depends on angle and a few variables but we need not go into all that.  The same result is obtained if you send one photon at a time into the glass.

I am personally convinced that this (and most things Quantum) is proof of (or at least a strong hint that) we're living in a computer simulation and nobody bothered to program that part.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Superfluous J

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, monophonic said:

The biggest issue I have with quantum theory is, if my highschool textbooks' definitions are to be believed, it is not even a theory at all. It is an observation. A very thorough and comprehensive observation by now, but it can not even try to answer why things happen the way they happen.

There are all the interpretations of quantum theory, like multiverse, the one with the wave functions collapses, and whatnot. They could be theories, if there have been any experiments devised that could prove or disprove them. Without those experiments, they are hypotheses. (In multiverse there are infinite universes where that is the correct plural, btw.)

Its an lots of formulas and an model who match observations as we know. 
The problem is that if something works in math does not make it true. Easiest example is that x=-2 is also true for x in x^2=4. 
With money is called creative accounting. 

I say the quantum multiverse is pretty much the same, yes the equations works, but its convoluted and the numbers of new universes would be mindbogglingly large as any quantum event for any particle in the universe would spawn one since just after the big bang. 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

8 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

This is false. It's false because this

is false.

Anything possible cannot be found in an infinite set. An infinite set of 0's cannot contain a 1. An infinite set of trees cannot contain a Thursday. And an infinite set of right triangles cannot contain anything other than right triangles.

I am personally convinced that this (and most things Quantum) is proof of (or at least a strong hint that) we're living in a computer simulation and nobody bothered to program that part.

I was reading some supporting arguments related the reduction of entropy in communication systems.

There was proof of reduced entropy across generation pf DNA and Information Management systems. This supports the simulation. 

Laws of Info dynamics was pretty interesting.

As far as the original OP 

1.  The set of Pythagorean right triangles is an cardinally countable infinite set.  If anything possible can be found in an infinite set. then anything possible is a Pythagorean right triangle.  The same argument works for uncountable sets.  The length of sides and angles of triangle is uncountable.  Therefore everything is a triangle.   

I dont know how to atrack this really other than the way that Jay approached it. 

You cannot apply this method of logic to the argument. It really is an apples to oranges attempt to rationalize something very few can even conceptualize. I often think of the lay aspects of these ideas and applaud the attempt attack the root ideas.

I would like to rephrase the root of why a little differently

The existence of an infinite set does not necessitate that everything possible (will) manifest within it. 

We know that the existence of some things preclude / excludes  the existence of others  based upon the laws of our known universe. Observation playing a role.

Then I move onto Jay's example of infinite sets that cannot contain sets.

In optics a typical sheet of glass will allow 95% of photons to pass and 5% to reflect.  It depends on angle and a few variables but we need not go into all that.  The same result is obtained if you send one photon at a time into the glass.  Every photon splits the possible universes in two, one in which it reflected and one where it didn't.  There are only two possible states yet one of them appears 95% of the time.  So whenever a photon hits glass does the inverse split in 2 or does it split in 20 so the equation is balanced and we have 19 universes in which the photon was transmitted and 1 universe where it didn't?

Sorry I can be a little verbose. I keep trying to clean it up for clarity and end up adding more lines.

In quantum mechanics, when a photon encounters glass, its wavefunction describes a superposition of two states: reflection and transmission. The 95% transmission and 5% reflection probabilities emerge because the quantum wavefunction evolves according to the Schrödinger equation and interacts with the material properties of the glass. These probabilities are not arbitrary—they result from the quantum amplitudes associated with the interaction.

In our observable universe (often called the "classical world"), when a photon is measured, its state collapses, and we see it either transmitted or reflected. Over many trials, the statistical outcomes align with the probabilities: 95% transmission, 5% reflection.

In MWI, there are only two possible branches for this event—one for each outcome. The probabilities (95% and 5%) do not mean there are 95 transmission universes and 5 reflection universes. Instead, they indicate the relative "weight" of these branches, which corresponds to the probability of each outcome as described by the wavefunction.

The "weights" reflect how much of the overall quantum state corresponds to each outcome. These weights help explain why, even in MWI, a person observing photons over time would see statistical frequencies matching quantum predictions (95% transmission, 5% reflection)

 

I think this is what people associate with choices. Of each choice is perceived as a binary model. (evolutionary people are good at breaking down the individual choices of a decision) 

There are essentially two possible outcomes reflected for each person / particle / choice.

I don't really know of we are simulated or if the MWI is real, but I enjoy the concept involved. 

I will sometimes look at abstract concepts with a perspective that intentionally misaligns with current ideas.

Like all the black holes lead to the same place?!

However, I try not to go too far down the rabbit hole while applying skewed logics.

[Pthigrivi]

Im not a physicist but I do enjoy reading and learning about it. A number of close friends are though and in chats with them the most consistent answer I get is "it doesn't actually matter", and by that they mean it's like asking what the best metaphor is for roman history. None of these theories are accurate descriptions of real behavior, they're just simplified stories that might or might not be useful as illustrations. No verbal description really means anything if it's not testable. There are of course elements of these interpretations that are testable, but if the predictions they make are experimentally indistinguishable then there's no real difference from the standpoint of pure physics. Without falsifiability it becomes more of a philosophical question than a physics question. It's a question of how we think about the world rather than how the world itself is. 

Even with that said though I get the impression that Everett/many worlds isn't a very popular interpretation among physicists (though maybe that's changed in recent years?) The poll below was some years ago and I don't think this had a huge sample size but the graph below sounds about right from what friends tell me. Copenhagen is probably the most popular mainly because it isn't trying too hard to say "this is how the world is". It's more of a 'shut up and calculate' answer, allowing that the results don't make intuitive sense to beings raised on classical thinking but who cares if the math works. 



The interpretation I've liked for the last few years is pretty similar to many worlds but it's not exactly that the universe is infinitely splitting into different realities with every quantum event, its that the universe itself is fundamentally composed of probabilistic potential. (I think this is within the "Relative Facts" branch of Everett interpretations). There are no classical systems and wave function collapse isn't ever completely "real", it just looks real to us. It's kind of like how a baseball looks like a solid object but in actuality its mostly empty space and attracting and repelling forces. Even the particles have no fundamental solidity, but are themselves energetic potentialities. The whole universe is basically one big wave (or collection of waves, depending on how you look at it) and we as observers are merely a subset of potential realities. The real question then is why does our reality feel so singular? Why do events feel like events rather than fuzzy maybes? I think its because as human bodies we are already composed of and interacting with a practically infinite number of entangled events. We are the summation of everything we interact with and with that many dice rolls preferred outcomes tend to become more apparent. It's kind of like how if you flip a coin 10 times you'll often get 7 or 8 heads, but if you flip a coin a million times you're likely to get a result much closer 50%. It's not that the coins are any less random, or that you're particularly likely to land on exactly half a million, it's that the resolution is higher and more deterministic looking. The reality we see is composed of random events but when zillions of them are entangled as they are at the scale of a human body or experimental apparatus things appear less random in the same way. So when the particle hits the detector in the double slit experiment its not that it magically collapses and becomes a fully discrete object in the universal sense. It merely becomes entangled with a larger system that includes the observer and their equipment. It's not choosing left or right, it's just become entangled with a pocket of reality in which left or right appeared to happen. Another observer might see the particle go the other way, but they're not fully living in fully separate universes, they're just seeing a small part of the universe from a different perspective. Another way of saying this is 'reality is relative'.

Edited December 12, 2024 by Pthigrivi

[Pthigrivi]

12 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I am personally convinced that this (and most things Quantum) is proof of (or at least a strong hint that) we're living in a computer simulation and nobody bothered to program that part.

Somewhat tangental but I did my thesis on death rites and architecture and its kind of funny how views on what constitutes 'life' and 'spirit' evolved. For most of the last 5000 years people believed the spirit lived in the breath, mainly because if you stopped breathing you were pretty much gonna die. We didn't have the technology to preserve life after breath and so ancient Egyptians just pulled the brain out through the nose and stuck it in a jar. Later as the enlightenment and industrial period arose we started to think it was all about the heart--an internal machine which maintained life and once it stopped you were dead. Then as technology and scientific understanding grew we became much more fixated on the brain, because at our current level of technology thats the one thing we can't fix or replace. This is all a way of saying we view the world through our own particular historical lens. We live in the computer age, so it seems somewhat convenient that we would extrapolate the most important technology we have to the whole universe. We live in a computational era so we see the world with computational-tinged glasses. 

Edited December 12, 2024 by Pthigrivi

[magnemoe]

17 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Somewhat tangental but I did my thesis on death rites and architecture and its kind of funny how views on what constitutes 'life' and 'spirit' evolved. For most of the last 5000 years people believed the spirit lived in the breath, mainly because if you stopped breathing you were pretty much gonna die. We didn't have the technology to preserve life after breath and so ancient Egyptians just pulled the brain out through the nose and stuck it in a jar. Later as the enlightenment and industrial period arose we started to think it was all about the heart--an internal machine which maintained life and once it stopped you were dead. Then as technology and scientific understanding grew we became much more fixated on the brain, because at our current level of technology thats the one thing we can't fix or replace. This is all a way of saying we view the world through our own particular historical lens. We live in the computer age, so it seems somewhat convenient that we would extrapolate the most important technology we have to the whole universe. We live in a computational era so we see the world with computational-tinged glasses. 

This, pretty perfected mirrored in the clockwork model 150 years ago. Yes Mercury orbit is not accurate and some electrical effects don't make sense but we mostly nailed how the universe work  
And they mostly did outside of biology and chemistry and obviously quantum.