[ExI] Free will was: Everett worlds

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting John Clark:

> Nothing is breathing fire into Schrodinger's equation, and nothing is
> breathing fire into the English word "cow" either, that's why "cow" can't
> even say Moo.


You are correct that cow spelled in English can't say "moo". But what  
about cow spelled in DNA, then transcribed into RNA, and then  
translated in protein? Both the word "cow" and an actual cow are  
strings of information. The only difference is the alphabet, the  
length of the string, and the language it is written in. So the  
representational word-symbol "cow" is written with English letters  
where as a real functioning cow that can say "moo" is written in  
nucleotides, amino acids and water.

Everett's theory could very well be right but would require the  
ontological existence of infinity as a physical quality. Our Hubble  
volume alone has an information capacity of approximately 7*10^186 by  
Bekenstein's bound. That's a lot of information for just one universe.  
And MWI seems to require the continuous open-ended spawning of
new universes of similar information content, often differing by a  
single bit of information.

Another issue with Everett's theory is that, if consciousness is truly  
unnecessary for the functioning of MWI, then how can you explain the  
experimentally verified phenomenon of the Quantum Zeno effect?  
Briefly, quantum states do not transition while they are being  
observed. So a radioactive atom would never decay so long as someone  
was continually observing it. Why would the universe always wait for  
you to look away before splitting into multiple quantum states?

Stuart LaForge