Defining total energy as the integral of energy over space implies that an object in one part of space might be able to mysteriously gain energy by reducing energy in other parts of space.
Do we see this in the real world? How useful is the word “mysterious” here?
Ordinary energy conservation laws are local: they do not just state that total energy is conserved, but that any change in energy in a finite region of any size is balanced by a flux of energy over the boundary of that region. I don’t think any such laws exist in “multi-world-space”, which even accepting MWI is basically a metaphor, not a precise concept.
There’s no mysterious quantum motion for the same reason there’s no mysterious energetic motion—because energy / mass / quantum amplitude has to come from somewhere to go somewhere, it requires an interaction to happen. An interaction like electromagnetism, or the strong force. You know, those ubiquitous, important, but extremely well-studied and only-somewhat-mysterious things. And once you study this thing and make it part of what you call “energy,” what would otherwise be a mysterious appearance of energy just becomes “oh, the energy gets stored in the strong force.” (From a pure quantum perspective at least. Gravity makes things too tricky for me)
The best way for a force to “hide” is for it to be super duper complicated. Like if there was some kind of extra law of gravity that only turned on when the planets of our solar system were aligned. But for whatever reason, the universe doesn’t seem to have super complicated laws.
Is there any plausible argument for why our universe doesn’t have super-complicated laws?
The only thing I can think of is that laws are somehow made from small components so that short laws are more likely than long laws.
Another possibility is that if some behavior of the universe is complicated, we don’t call that a law, and we keep looking for something simpler—though that doesn’t explain why we keep finding simple laws.
Defining total energy as the integral of energy over space implies that an object in one part of space might be able to mysteriously gain energy by reducing energy in other parts of space.
Do we see this in the real world? How useful is the word “mysterious” here?
Ordinary energy conservation laws are local: they do not just state that total energy is conserved, but that any change in energy in a finite region of any size is balanced by a flux of energy over the boundary of that region. I don’t think any such laws exist in “multi-world-space”, which even accepting MWI is basically a metaphor, not a precise concept.
So are there mysterious fluxes that move energy from one part of space to another?
Umm, yes ? They’re quite ubiquitous.
Those look more like boring, physical-law-abiding (non-mysterious) fluxes that move energy form one part of space to another.
Not mysterious ones, no—only the ordinary ones that Plasmon mentions.
“Mysterious” here means “via an otherwise unexplained-in-a-single-world mechanism.”
There’s no mysterious quantum motion for the same reason there’s no mysterious energetic motion—because energy / mass / quantum amplitude has to come from somewhere to go somewhere, it requires an interaction to happen. An interaction like electromagnetism, or the strong force. You know, those ubiquitous, important, but extremely well-studied and only-somewhat-mysterious things. And once you study this thing and make it part of what you call “energy,” what would otherwise be a mysterious appearance of energy just becomes “oh, the energy gets stored in the strong force.” (From a pure quantum perspective at least. Gravity makes things too tricky for me)
The best way for a force to “hide” is for it to be super duper complicated. Like if there was some kind of extra law of gravity that only turned on when the planets of our solar system were aligned. But for whatever reason, the universe doesn’t seem to have super complicated laws.
Is there any plausible argument for why our universe doesn’t have super-complicated laws?
The only thing I can think of is that laws are somehow made from small components so that short laws are more likely than long laws.
Another possibility is that if some behavior of the universe is complicated, we don’t call that a law, and we keep looking for something simpler—though that doesn’t explain why we keep finding simple laws.
“We looked, and we didn’t find any super-complicated laws.”