[ExI] Many Worlds (was: A Simulation Argument)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 15/01/2008, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Simply applying the Lorentz transformations from a normal "massed"
> observer's inertial reference frame to our hypothetical massless
> observer's reference frame comoving with one of the photons from the
> Bell experiment: Take the limit as v approaches c; gamma or the
> squareroot of (1-v^2/c^2) approaches zero. For purposes of determining
> spatial displacement of the x coordinate which runs along the photon's
> flight path, one simply multiplies delta x by zero giving zero. In
> other words, the Lorentz transforms say that all distances along our
> photon jockey's flight path are of zero length. In other words from a
> photon's POV, its origin, its destination and every point in between is
> the exact same point, even if from our "massed" point of view, the
> quasar is billions of light years away from the detector.
>
> This resolves the EPR paradox because from the photon's POV, they
> choose their respective polarization angles at the same point in space
> no matter how far apart they might seem to us. To us, they are
> entangled at an ever increasing distance, to themselves they are
> constantly superpositioned in the exact same place along the x
> coordinate. Collapsing the polarity function of one, collapses the
> polarity of the other that is right there with it and there is no
> action at a distance because there is no distance.

That's an interesting take on it, but it doesn't apply to entangled
massive particles rather than photons.

> In regards to the larger issue, IMO MWI is a convoluted and inelegant
> theory.

It may be wrong, but MWI is the least convoluted and most elegant
interpretation (IMO and that of its supporters).

> It tempts Ockham's Razor much as Aubrey de Grey's beard tempts
> a Gillete. I have many objections to it. For one thing, it violates
> conservation of energy. While spontaneous creation of virtual particle
> antiparticle pairs does so too, it only does so for very short lengths
> of time. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle under Special relativity
> says that Delta E * Delta t >= hbar/2.
>
> That is to say that a system only has an energy when it exists long
> enough for it settle on a definite frequency. Other universes should
> only pop into being "spontaneously" if they are not around long enough
> to settle on a definite energy. If they do have a definite energy then
> by thermodynamics, that energy has to come from somewhere. The
> conservation laws are too heavy price to pay to eliminate observers
> from QM.

The conservation laws are empirically shown to apply to universe we
observe. This does not mean that they apply in the same way to the
multiverse as a whole if such exists, or to the process whereby a
universe appears out of nothing if that's what happened.

However, if you want to preserve conservation laws in the multiverse
see this paper recently cited here by scerir:

http://physicaplus.org.il/zope/home/en/1185176174/daat_ophir_en

The "splitting" would then work as follows. There are N identical
versions of you in the multiverse contemplating a quantum event E with
two equally likely outcomes. After E, instead of 2N versions of you
there are still N versions of you, but half of them observe one
outcome and half the other. Thus which each branching the number of
versions of you which have a particular experience becomes a smaller
and smaller slice of the multiverse as a whole, which does not change
in size as a whole, but you never "run out" of versions because N was
infinite to begin with. Thus each quantum measurement does not lead to
a duplication of worlds spreading out at light speed, but to a
differentiation as previously identical observers notice they are in
distinct worlds. I believe this kind of multiverse is observationally
indistinguishable for an observer embedded within it to the
duplicating kind (or to a single universe with a collapsing wave
function).




-- 
Stathis Papaioannou