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Comment by layer8 | Hacker News Reader

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layer8·

Quantum mechanics doesn't imply at all that everything possible is actual. That is a misconception.

I do agree that it makes sense, but not because of what quantum mechanics says.

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Yes, it doesn't imply, but parallel universes is one of possible interpretations.

If you are referring to the many-worlds interpretation, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. There is no implication in many-worlds that every conceivable world exists as a branch of the actual wave function.

I fail to see how this doesn't lead to "every possible world". Maybe some edge cases are ruled out, but it seems to imply every possible world as far as what that means to the imagination.

It is constrained by whatever you take as the initial conditions. The quantum state of the universe is a specific and precise thing, as well as how it evolves over time. It can be taken as a vector in Hilbert space that evolves according to the Schrödinger equation. There is no implication that the resulting path will have it visit every point in Hilbert space, or that the slices of the wave function that represent individual “worlds” somehow cover all worlds present in the unvisited points.

This sounds like "technically no but in practice yes". Like a TV screen cannot display all visible colors, but it's close enough that we consider the job done.

The math does imply infinite universes. There are many physicists who believe that all these worlds do exist.

And a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzKWfw68M5U&list=PLsPUh22kYm...

Infinite universes doesn’t imply every possible universe. I don’t disagree about them existing.

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