I’ll make my more wrong confession here in this thread: I’m a multiple worlds skeptic. Or at least I’m deeply skeptical of Egan’s law. I won’t pretend I’m arguing from any sort of deep QM understanding. I just mean in my sci-fi, what-if, thinking about what the implications would be. I truly believe there would be more wacky outcomes in an MWI setting than we see. And I don’t mean violations of physical laws; I’m hung up on having to give up the idea of cause and effect in psychology. In MWI, I don’t see how it’s possible to think there would be cause and effect behind conversations, personal identity, etc. Literally every word, every vocalization, is determined solely by quantum interactions, unless I’m deeply misunderstanding something. This goes against the determinism I hold to be true. I don’t see how my next words won’t be French, Arabic, Klingon, etc, and I don’t see how what I consider to be normally isn’t vanishingly unlikely to continue for an indefinite period of time.
I’ll admit that works been busy, so I haven’t worked through EY’s latest posts, so if there’s been some resolution in this in the anthropic threads, I’d appreciate a quick summary. Sorry if this is more of a question than answer; it’s for that reason that I second a forum. I like blogs for articles, but they don’t work for discussion as well as forums do, and forums better allow people to post questions.
I would describe my view on the free will question as basically being Dennett’s in Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. But that seems to be confounded by what I expect to be the utter randomness that would emerge from the MWI. I don’t worry about having free will; I am concerned about having some sort of causal chain in my actions. I don’t disavow that I’m confused, I just don’t think I’m confused over free will.
There is deep similarity, that I expected to carry over: in both cases, you have some subjective feeling, and in both cases the nature of physical substrate in which you exist doesn’t matter the slightest for the explanation of why you have that feeling. The feeling has a cognitive explanation that screens off physical explanation. Thus, you can be confused about physical explanation, but not confused about your question, since you have a cognitive explanation.
I’m not sure I quite follow. So I have the feeling of confusion, which I attribute to not understanding the ramifications of the physical explanation of quantum effects that the MWI provides. What’s the cognitive explanation for this?
Your claim is that MWI predicts things we don’t see. If this is true then it is a really big deal- you’d be able to show that MWI was not just falsifiable (which is still a contentious issue) but already falsified. Suffice to say someone would have noticed this.
Anyway it is true that MWI does entail that there is some non-zero possibility that your next words will be in Klingon. But the possibility is so small that the universe is likely to end many, many times over before it ever happens. Unfortunately, this does suggest you have to give up your notion of robust, metaphysical causation since (1) shit ain’t determined and (2) there are no objects (the usual units of causation) just overlapping fields. There are some efforts to maintain serious causal stories despite this but since no one really knew what was meant by causation before quantum mechanics this doesn’t seem like that big a loss.
In any case, these sacrifices are purely philosophical, MWI changes nothing about what experiences you should expect (except possibly in regards to anthropic issues) and makes no new predictions about run of the mill everyday physics.
[i]Anyway it is true that MWI does entail that there is some non-zero possibility that your next words will be in Klingon. But the possibility is so small that the universe is likely to end many, many times over before it ever happens.[/i]
This all could just be an issue of me being massively off on the probabilities, but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English? And in this particular example, there are a number of universes that have branched off that I would have spoken Klingon. I’m not understanding the limitation that would demonstrate that there are more universes where I spoke English instead (i.e. why would there be a bell curve distribution with English sentences being the most frequently demonstrated average?)
And I do want to more clearly re-iterate that I’m not talking about Everett’s formal proof, but the purely philosophical ramifications you mention (and also, I haven’t got some earth shattering thesis waiting in the wings, I’m just describing my confusion). QM is fact, and MWI is a way of interpreting it. For whatever reason, I’m interested in that interpretation. So chalk it up to me thinking through a dumb question. I don’t believe I’ve falsified a mainstream QM theory. I do feel I’ve demonstrated to my satisfaction that I don’t fully understand the metaphysical implications of MWI. It sounds easier to just chalk it up to “it’s the equations”, but I do find the potential implications interesting.
This all could just be an issue of me being massively off on the probabilities, but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English? And in this particular example, there are a number of universes that have branched off that I would have spoken Klingon. I’m not understanding the limitation that would demonstrate that there are more universes where I spoke English instead (i.e. why would there be a bell curve distribution with English sentences being the most frequently demonstrated average?)
Not all “possibilities”, as you describe them, are equally likely. If I enter 2+2 into my calculator, and MWI is correct, there would be some worlds in which some transistors don’t behave normally (because of thermal noise, cosmic rays, or whatever), bits flip themselves, and the calculator ends up displaying some number that isn’t “4″. The calculator can display lots of different numbers, and 4 is only one of them, but in order for any other number to appear, something weird had to have happened—and by weird, I mean “eggs unscrambling themselves” kind of weird. (Transistors are much smaller than chicken eggs, so flipped bits in a calculator are more like a microscopic egg unscrambling itself, but you get the idea.)
MWI basically says that, yes, someone will win the quantum lottery, but it won’t be you.
This and the other probability discussions above have greatly helped me to understand what MWI was getting at. I wasn’t fully grasping what the limitations were, that MWI wasn’t describing limitless possibilities happening infinitely.
but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English?
No. So QM says that at time t every sub atomic particle in your brain has a superposition- a field which gives the possibility that that particle will be found at that location in the field. There is no end to the field but only a very small area will have a non-insignificant probability magnitude. Now scale up to the atomic level. Atoms will similarly have superpositions- these superpositions will be dictated by the superpositions of the subatomic particles which make up the atom. You can keep scaling up. The larger the scale the lower the chances of anything crazy happening is because for an entire atom to be discovered on the other side of the room every particle it is made up of would have to have tunneled ten feet at the same time to the same place. This is true for molecules that make up the entire brain mass. Whatever molecular/brain structural conditions that make you an English speaker at time t are very likely to remain in place at time t2 since their superposition is just a composite of the superpositions of their parts (well not really, my understanding is that it is way more complicated than that, suffice to say that the chances of many particles being discovered away from the peak of their wavefunction is much lower than the chance of finding a single electron outside the peak of its wavefunction).
For our purposes many worlds just says all of the possible outcomes happen. The chances you should assign to experiencing any one of these possibilities are just the chances you should assign to finding yourself in the world in which that possibility happens. Since in nearly all Everett branches you will still be speaking English (nearly all of the particles will have remained in approximately the same place) you should predict that you will never experience un mundo donde personas hablan espanol sin razones!
Heh. Right now, I’m pretty sure the QM does preclude robust, folk understandings of causation. But tell me, what is it that causation gives you that you want so badly?
Thanks, again, this is the type of explanation that helps me to much better understand the possibilities MWI was addressing. And causation just gives me the reasonable expectation that physics models, biology theories, do adequately model our world without worrying about spooking action throwing too big of a monkey wrench into things.
It’s true that MWI doesn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that your next words might be in another language, but neither does any other QM interpretation. They all predict just the amount of wackiness that we see.
The other interpretations allow for the possibility, but MWI seems to argue for it to definitely occur, in some universe branch.
I think it’s the “wacky but not TOO wacky” world that I find pretty fascinating in QM. I just haven’t seen a description that just seemed to nail it for me. Obviously, YMMV.
I don’t quite understand what you’re confused about. Why would MWI make you start talking in anything but english?
If you flip a hypothetical fair random coin 1000 times, you’ll almost certainly get something around 500 heads and 500 tails. Getting anything like 995 heads would be rare.
The coin can be entirely nondeterministic in how it flips, and still be reliable in this regard.
Well, there’s no physical limitation against me speaking something other than my birth language. Using the coin analogy, my tongue position, lips position, and airflow out of my throat are the variables. Those variables, across all distributions, can produce any human word. Across infinity, there will be worlds where I’m speaking my birth language, and other ones that I’m not, for my next statement. MWI seems to me to eliminate the prior state from having an influence on the next state of my language machine. If all probabilities do occur in the MWI, I see the probability of me continuing to speak English to be the 995 heads case (which is still possible, I just see it as unlikely). I don’t think MWI “makes” me do anything, I just think the implication is that all possible worlds become reality. It really comes down to the prior state’s apparent lack influence; that’s what confuses me. Once that’s gone, I just see causality in human actions going out the window.
You’re confused about probability, causality in QM, and anthropics. (Note in particular that your objection can’t be particular to MWI, since even in a collapse theory, the wacky things could happen).
MWI seems to me to eliminate the prior state from having an influence on the next state of my language machine.
The current state of your brain corresponds to a particular (small neighborhood of) configurations, and most of the wavefunction-mass that is in this neighborhood flows to a relatively small subset of configurations (i.e. ones where your next sentence is in English, or gibberish, rather than in perfect Klingon); this, precisely, is what causality actually means.
Yes, there is some probability that quantum fluctuations will cause your throat cells to enunciate a Klingon speech, without being prompted by a patterned command from your brain. But that probability is on the order of 10^{-100} at most.
And there is some probability, given the structure of your brain, that your nerves would send precisely the commands to make that happen; but given that you don’t actually know the Klingon speech, that probability too is on the order of 10^{-100}.
The upshot of MWI in this regard is that very few of your future selves will see wacky incredibly-improbably-ordered events happen, and so you recover your intuition that you will not, in fact, see wacky things. It’s just that an infinitesimal fraction of your future selves will be surprised.
I’ll make my more wrong confession here in this thread: I’m a multiple worlds skeptic. Or at least I’m deeply skeptical of Egan’s law. I won’t pretend I’m arguing from any sort of deep QM understanding. I just mean in my sci-fi, what-if, thinking about what the implications would be. I truly believe there would be more wacky outcomes in an MWI setting than we see. And I don’t mean violations of physical laws; I’m hung up on having to give up the idea of cause and effect in psychology. In MWI, I don’t see how it’s possible to think there would be cause and effect behind conversations, personal identity, etc. Literally every word, every vocalization, is determined solely by quantum interactions, unless I’m deeply misunderstanding something. This goes against the determinism I hold to be true. I don’t see how my next words won’t be French, Arabic, Klingon, etc, and I don’t see how what I consider to be normally isn’t vanishingly unlikely to continue for an indefinite period of time.
I’ll admit that works been busy, so I haven’t worked through EY’s latest posts, so if there’s been some resolution in this in the anthropic threads, I’d appreciate a quick summary. Sorry if this is more of a question than answer; it’s for that reason that I second a forum. I like blogs for articles, but they don’t work for discussion as well as forums do, and forums better allow people to post questions.
This is a confusion about free will, not many-worlds.
I would describe my view on the free will question as basically being Dennett’s in Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. But that seems to be confounded by what I expect to be the utter randomness that would emerge from the MWI. I don’t worry about having free will; I am concerned about having some sort of causal chain in my actions. I don’t disavow that I’m confused, I just don’t think I’m confused over free will.
There is deep similarity, that I expected to carry over: in both cases, you have some subjective feeling, and in both cases the nature of physical substrate in which you exist doesn’t matter the slightest for the explanation of why you have that feeling. The feeling has a cognitive explanation that screens off physical explanation. Thus, you can be confused about physical explanation, but not confused about your question, since you have a cognitive explanation.
I’m not sure I quite follow. So I have the feeling of confusion, which I attribute to not understanding the ramifications of the physical explanation of quantum effects that the MWI provides. What’s the cognitive explanation for this?
Your claim is that MWI predicts things we don’t see. If this is true then it is a really big deal- you’d be able to show that MWI was not just falsifiable (which is still a contentious issue) but already falsified. Suffice to say someone would have noticed this.
Anyway it is true that MWI does entail that there is some non-zero possibility that your next words will be in Klingon. But the possibility is so small that the universe is likely to end many, many times over before it ever happens. Unfortunately, this does suggest you have to give up your notion of robust, metaphysical causation since (1) shit ain’t determined and (2) there are no objects (the usual units of causation) just overlapping fields. There are some efforts to maintain serious causal stories despite this but since no one really knew what was meant by causation before quantum mechanics this doesn’t seem like that big a loss.
In any case, these sacrifices are purely philosophical, MWI changes nothing about what experiences you should expect (except possibly in regards to anthropic issues) and makes no new predictions about run of the mill everyday physics.
Hi Jack,
[i]Anyway it is true that MWI does entail that there is some non-zero possibility that your next words will be in Klingon. But the possibility is so small that the universe is likely to end many, many times over before it ever happens.[/i]
This all could just be an issue of me being massively off on the probabilities, but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English? And in this particular example, there are a number of universes that have branched off that I would have spoken Klingon. I’m not understanding the limitation that would demonstrate that there are more universes where I spoke English instead (i.e. why would there be a bell curve distribution with English sentences being the most frequently demonstrated average?)
And I do want to more clearly re-iterate that I’m not talking about Everett’s formal proof, but the purely philosophical ramifications you mention (and also, I haven’t got some earth shattering thesis waiting in the wings, I’m just describing my confusion). QM is fact, and MWI is a way of interpreting it. For whatever reason, I’m interested in that interpretation. So chalk it up to me thinking through a dumb question. I don’t believe I’ve falsified a mainstream QM theory. I do feel I’ve demonstrated to my satisfaction that I don’t fully understand the metaphysical implications of MWI. It sounds easier to just chalk it up to “it’s the equations”, but I do find the potential implications interesting.
Not all “possibilities”, as you describe them, are equally likely. If I enter 2+2 into my calculator, and MWI is correct, there would be some worlds in which some transistors don’t behave normally (because of thermal noise, cosmic rays, or whatever), bits flip themselves, and the calculator ends up displaying some number that isn’t “4″. The calculator can display lots of different numbers, and 4 is only one of them, but in order for any other number to appear, something weird had to have happened—and by weird, I mean “eggs unscrambling themselves” kind of weird. (Transistors are much smaller than chicken eggs, so flipped bits in a calculator are more like a microscopic egg unscrambling itself, but you get the idea.)
MWI basically says that, yes, someone will win the quantum lottery, but it won’t be you.
This and the other probability discussions above have greatly helped me to understand what MWI was getting at. I wasn’t fully grasping what the limitations were, that MWI wasn’t describing limitless possibilities happening infinitely.
No. So QM says that at time t every sub atomic particle in your brain has a superposition- a field which gives the possibility that that particle will be found at that location in the field. There is no end to the field but only a very small area will have a non-insignificant probability magnitude. Now scale up to the atomic level. Atoms will similarly have superpositions- these superpositions will be dictated by the superpositions of the subatomic particles which make up the atom. You can keep scaling up. The larger the scale the lower the chances of anything crazy happening is because for an entire atom to be discovered on the other side of the room every particle it is made up of would have to have tunneled ten feet at the same time to the same place. This is true for molecules that make up the entire brain mass. Whatever molecular/brain structural conditions that make you an English speaker at time t are very likely to remain in place at time t2 since their superposition is just a composite of the superpositions of their parts (well not really, my understanding is that it is way more complicated than that, suffice to say that the chances of many particles being discovered away from the peak of their wavefunction is much lower than the chance of finding a single electron outside the peak of its wavefunction).
For our purposes many worlds just says all of the possible outcomes happen. The chances you should assign to experiencing any one of these possibilities are just the chances you should assign to finding yourself in the world in which that possibility happens. Since in nearly all Everett branches you will still be speaking English (nearly all of the particles will have remained in approximately the same place) you should predict that you will never experience un mundo donde personas hablan espanol sin razones!
Heh. Right now, I’m pretty sure the QM does preclude robust, folk understandings of causation. But tell me, what is it that causation gives you that you want so badly?
Thanks, again, this is the type of explanation that helps me to much better understand the possibilities MWI was addressing. And causation just gives me the reasonable expectation that physics models, biology theories, do adequately model our world without worrying about spooking action throwing too big of a monkey wrench into things.
Sure. And don’t worry about causation, you can inference and make predictions just fine without it.
It’s true that MWI doesn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that your next words might be in another language, but neither does any other QM interpretation. They all predict just the amount of wackiness that we see.
The other interpretations allow for the possibility, but MWI seems to argue for it to definitely occur, in some universe branch.
I think it’s the “wacky but not TOO wacky” world that I find pretty fascinating in QM. I just haven’t seen a description that just seemed to nail it for me. Obviously, YMMV.
I don’t quite understand what you’re confused about. Why would MWI make you start talking in anything but english?
If you flip a hypothetical fair random coin 1000 times, you’ll almost certainly get something around 500 heads and 500 tails. Getting anything like 995 heads would be rare.
The coin can be entirely nondeterministic in how it flips, and still be reliable in this regard.
Well, there’s no physical limitation against me speaking something other than my birth language. Using the coin analogy, my tongue position, lips position, and airflow out of my throat are the variables. Those variables, across all distributions, can produce any human word. Across infinity, there will be worlds where I’m speaking my birth language, and other ones that I’m not, for my next statement. MWI seems to me to eliminate the prior state from having an influence on the next state of my language machine. If all probabilities do occur in the MWI, I see the probability of me continuing to speak English to be the 995 heads case (which is still possible, I just see it as unlikely). I don’t think MWI “makes” me do anything, I just think the implication is that all possible worlds become reality. It really comes down to the prior state’s apparent lack influence; that’s what confuses me. Once that’s gone, I just see causality in human actions going out the window.
You’re confused about probability, causality in QM, and anthropics. (Note in particular that your objection can’t be particular to MWI, since even in a collapse theory, the wacky things could happen).
The current state of your brain corresponds to a particular (small neighborhood of) configurations, and most of the wavefunction-mass that is in this neighborhood flows to a relatively small subset of configurations (i.e. ones where your next sentence is in English, or gibberish, rather than in perfect Klingon); this, precisely, is what causality actually means.
Yes, there is some probability that quantum fluctuations will cause your throat cells to enunciate a Klingon speech, without being prompted by a patterned command from your brain. But that probability is on the order of 10^{-100} at most.
And there is some probability, given the structure of your brain, that your nerves would send precisely the commands to make that happen; but given that you don’t actually know the Klingon speech, that probability too is on the order of 10^{-100}.
The upshot of MWI in this regard is that very few of your future selves will see wacky incredibly-improbably-ordered events happen, and so you recover your intuition that you will not, in fact, see wacky things. It’s just that an infinitesimal fraction of your future selves will be surprised.
Thanks, this really helps to clarify the picture for me.