In a Multiverse, What Are the Odds?
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Even if untestable, the Multiverse Hypothesis is immensely valuable in that it serves as a rational replacement for religion. It gives people who have a certain mindset something to believe in. And not just any something, but something exciting that inspires the imagination.
Testable or not, here is the thing. The hypothesis being not testable means that it cannot be shown true, and that it cannot be shown false, either! Moreover, hypothesis is quite persuasive: more so than its negation, to many people.
All arguments against the hypothesis based on testability ("you don't have proof") are also weapons against the negation of the hypothesis. They do not attack the source of its plausibility; they only attack something which it has in common with it negation.
Both the hypothesis and its negation postulate the existence of something: one postulates the existence of an infinite plurality of universes, whereas the other postulates the existence of hidden variables and inexplicable coincidences.
So, even though belief in MH seems to have some of the trappings of faith, it is at the same time rationally convincing to those who find hidden variables and coincidences less plausible than a plurality of universes.
Are you implying that believing in religion does not inspire imagination?
People who have a different mindset from that one find religion inspiring.
It's nice for others to have something that is more in line with how they think.
However, is there a universe in which, say, an object that is isomorphic to number theory in this universe has completely different theorems? Like, suppose that the natural numbers are defined in that universe exactly as we define them in this one, as is addition and multiplication and primeness, but the number 25 is found to be prime rather than composite? I would have to say "no" on that one.
Religion describes God as all seeing all being, the catch phrase is everything, everywhere, etc.
Multi-verse is also something like an omnipresence, an infinite permutation of realities or simple rules that give rise to every possible scenarios.
My one suspicion with multi-verse is that if every possible scenario is possible, isn't there a universe where nothing is possible? Isn't it possible that there's an anti-multiverse universe that cannabalizes other instances of a universe?
Isn't it also possible that there's an equally pro-multiverse universe that creates faster than the anti-multiverse can destroy?
So perhaps like cells, universes are being created and destroyed at an equal rate so that there is only one instance of it (ours).
My brain hurts.
The idea here is that universes are not being created or destroyed any more than, say, the integers are being created or destroyed. They just are.
The universes in which nothing is possible are probably the universes of the empty set, the zero-dimensional space, an N-dimensional point and such. Not much is possible in some universes which are somewhat more complicated than theses.