Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary
nautil.us
nautil.us
The idea that our established views in math and physics are all selective and narrow is certainly correct but I'd like to see where the alternative is. Feels like nihilist rambling.
Remember the old stereotype[0] of physicists that thought that because they understood physics, they were automatically experts in every field - and so began dispensing "wisdom" to all of the actual experts?
I guess physicists aren't the only ones who are susceptible to this.
This article makes important points about the relation of physics and mathematics. I agree that physicists pick and choose "smooth" and solvable system and then claim to reveal the secrets of the universe.
Geometry used to be studied exclusively by philosophers, but after a long string of successes the group of people who specialized in it got renamed to "mathematicians." Likewise at one point natural science was called "natural philosophy." Philosophy is the mother of the sciences but once the kids get established they move out of the house.
>physicists pick and choose "smooth" and solvable system and then claim to reveal the secrets of the universe.
If you are looking for knowledge about the universe, one hundred percent of it will be found in the form of "ideas comprehensible to humans." All of the secrets of the universe that we know are obviously going to be the knowable ones. If you spend time studying things that aren't knowable then by definition you are wasting your time, even if there is an ontological category of "unknowable but true."
But no, apparently we should all stay in our lanes and respect experts in different fields to know everything. It's DESTRUCTIVE and DISGUSTING.
Chaos is not the same thing as randomness. Chaos is defined as "completely deterministic, but a small change in the state at one time will produce a large and rapidly growing change in the state at later times," which implies that if you knew today perfectly you could predict the future forever, but if you are even a little bit wrong it will be magnified, eventually, in to being totally wrong.
I enjoy the multiverse theory because of how it makes infinity more imaginable for me and how time does not need to align between universes to recreate the current moment in one universe. The current moment in this universe can even theoretically happen again in the exact same universe when understanding infinity with all the variables aligning again.
Fatalism is how I view reality. If there is a deity, that being is deterministic as well and could effect our lives but still would make it fatalism for us. Although, I fundamentally think Spinoza is correct on the logic & philosophy of god and thus I think there is no deity(s).
For what it's worth, chaos is defined to mean something specific in physics: a system that is deterministic, but where a small change in today will grow in to a very big change in tomorrow, to the point where any error in your knowledge will eventually grow in to being completely wrong. To reiterate, chaotic systems are all deterministic.
If you're not talking about the world but are instead talking about your experience of the world then chaos means whatever it means in that field of study, I guess. But if you want to understand the universe then physicists are the people you'll want to listen to, so you should know what chaos means.
Me writing, "it describes a system that is too complicated at the current moment in time to unravel into a deterministic system" uses the word "unravel" as how humans are incapable of understanding all the cause & effects in the current moment of time; when they define it as chaos but may eventually be able to understand all the cause & effects.
I have no understanding to why you wrote your last paragraph in the original comment to me and how the comments transpired from then to now; other than you have a fragile ego to how I prefer to use my expression of the word chaos.
Bold claim. I would like to ask physicists what chicken tastes like? Or why the mountains are beautiful? Or where the other 73% of our existence is?
It would be like a coder saying his codebase is 3/4 missing, let alone the runtime, OS, processor, being completely speculative, but then claiming to be an expert matter on computing.
No, you might very well be a micro expert relative to other micro experts in your small corner of your codebase, but on the universe of existence at large?
Perhaps some respect and humility to the whole process are due. ;)
I should also mention that the 1/4th number is comparable to a "by weight" estimate, but what physicists study is the laws of physics which are not measured in that way. Nobody on Earth knows how much physics there is left to discover or if that is even a well formed question.
To reallocate the code metaphor, at some point you step back from the monitor and realize you are certainly discovering how Photoshop was written while completely ignoring the images it creates, documenting the MP3 format, but ignoring the music, describing how the tree grows, while missing the forest.
<3
But it’s awe that is subjective, while the universe is completely objective.
But see https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/30/statistical-rule-o..., which has been discussed on HN not long ago.
I don't think that this is correct.
A point of confusion might be that the surroundings of the experiment might influence it and the surroundings would depend on whether it is a workday or a weekend, etc. But this is a bad experiment. The correct interpretation is "if my experiment is isolated so that external events do not influence it (like all good experiments), then I will get the same results no matter whether I do it today or wait until tomorrow". Another way to phrase it is "there is no dependence on the variable 't' in the fundamental laws".
The "to" implies purpose, and there's no evidence of this. That fact that we exist could only happen in a universe that we can exist in, but this says nothing about why the universe is like that.
"One answer to some of these questions is Platonism (or its cousin Realism). This is the belief that the laws of nature are objective and have always existed"
Platonism is a type of Realism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism)
And the idea that the laws of nature are objective and have always existed does not equate to Platonism. It doesn't mean they are therefore Platonic Forms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism
"The multiverse is another answer that has recently become quite fashionable. This theory is an attempt to explain why our universe has the life-giving laws that it does"
It's really misleading to present the multiverse notion as an attempt to explain a universe suitable for life.
There are many other reasons people have proposed it. For example, in the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
"...while the multiverse would answer some of the questions we posed if it existed, who says it actually exists? Since most believe that we have no contact with possible other universes, the question of the existence of the multiverse is essentially metaphysics."
I think that's misleading - there are stronger theoretical grounds for hypothesising it than what this suggests. I'm not saying there's evidence for it, I'm saying that the quoted statement misleadingly makes it out be an empty speculation.
"Some people say that science studies all physical phenomena. This is simply not true. Who will win the next presidential election and move into the White House is a physical question that no hard scientists would venture to give an absolute prediction. Whether or not a computer will halt for a given input can be seen as a physical question and yet we learned from Alan Turing that this question cannot be answered. Scientists have classified the general textures and heights of different types of clouds, but, in general, are not at all interested in the exact shape of a cloud. Although the shape is a physical phenomenon, scientists don’t even attempt to study it. Science does not study all physical phenomena. Rather, science studies predictable physical phenomena. It is almost a tautology: science predicts predictable phenomena."
I don't agree with that characterisation. Just because it can't give complete predictions of phenomena does not justify saying it doesn't study those phenomena. Just because we can't predict halting doesn't mean we don't study halting at all. The fact that we know for certain that we can't predict halting demonstrates that we study, and have a certain level of understanding of, that phenomenon.
...and I've run out of time to read more of the article.
Multiverse postulates multiple universes with different laws of physics, while many worlds postulates worlds with the same laws, just different results for quantum events.
You could even have many-worlds inside multiverse. And some multiverse's with and without many worlds.
Some examples
"The theory is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, ... multiverse theory or just many-worlds. [...] MWI is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
For those who don't know, the Everett mentioned in the following is the person who came up with the Many Worlds view.
"The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", by Raphael Boussoa and Leonard Susskind Abstract: We argue that the many-worlds of quantum mechanics and the many worlds of the multiverse are the same thing, and that the multiverse is necessary to give exact operational meaning to probabilistic predictions from quantum mechanics. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.3796.pdf
"Identity and probability in Everett's multiverse", by P Tappenden. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 51, Issue 1, 1 March 2000, Pages 99–114 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/51.1.99
"The Structure of the Multiverse", by David Deutsch 1. Introduction The idea that quantum theory is a true description of physical reality led Everett (1957) and many subsequent investigators (e.g. DeWitt and Graham 1973, Deutsch 1985, 1997) to explain quantum-mechanical phenomena in terms of the simultaneous existence of parallel universes or histories. https://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/quant-ph/0104033
> (paraphrasing) The terms "multiverse" and "many worlds" are used interchangeably by many.
You two aren't really disagreeing. The parent commenter was just highlighting that there are two totally separate concepts that are associated in public vernacular with a single word.
As best as I can tell the multiverse he describes is not the type with varying laws of physics. He's using yet another definition of the term.
I specifically defined what I meant by multiverse in my first message. You can't nit pick my words by giving them a new definition, then argue that my words don't work for that new definition.
I mean you did object to this article right? Not some other one, that used a completely different definition of the word?
"The multiverse is another answer that has recently become quite fashionable. This theory is an attempt to explain why our universe has the life-giving laws that it does. One who believes in a multiverse maintains that our universe is just one of many universes. Each universe has its own set of rules and its own possible structures that come along with those rules."
See where it says "The multiverse is" and "This theory is", as if the multiverse notion is only that?
and the full text of my response to that point was
> It's really misleading to present the multiverse notion as an attempt to explain a universe suitable for life.
>
> There are many other reasons people have proposed it. For example, in the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
That theory simply has nothing whatsoever to do with this article, other than the name.
Why are you bringing up a random theory that has nothing to do with article at hand? Is it just because the name reminded you of it?
It is unfortunate that two completely different theories both have the same name, but there's nothing I can do about that. You simply have to pay attention to which one is being discussed.