[ExI] Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: Proof of the Multiverse?

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:28 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 3:47 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> It is proof of a multiverse for the following reason: unless one is
>> willing to go so far as to admit there are effects without causes (which is
>> magical thinking in my view)*
>>
>
> *Logic not magic allows us to conclude that there are only two
> possibilities, an iterated sequence of "why" questions either goes on
> forever or terminates in a brute fact, an event without a cause. I think
> it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being
> processed intelligently.*
>

There's a distinction between an effect without a cause and a brute fact
without a cause. Quantum computers producing answers without the
intermediate steps of the computation "really existing" is of the former
stranger kind: *effects* without a cause.



> *However back in 1986 in his book "The Ghost in the Atom" David Deutsch
> proposed a way to test Everett's Many Worlds idea; the experiment would be
> difficult to perform but Deutsch argues that is not Many Worlds fault, the
> reason it's so difficult is that the conventional view says conscious
> observers obey different laws of physics, Many Worlds says they do not, so
> to test who's right we need a mind that uses quantum properties.*
>

There are many ways to test it. I view Bell's inequalities being
experimentally demonstrated as proof of MWI, or a refutation of special
relativity. So given those results, special relativity -> many worlds.

Also, Copenhagen is MW in denial. According to Copenhagen, the universe was
a multiverse for billions of years, and only stopped operating entirely
like MW when the first conscious being was born.

Furthermore, when one person is alone on the moon, and measures the spin of
an electron, they enter a superposition that lasts for 1.28 seconds (until
the result travels to the rest of us on earth and we collapse them).

Then I'm consider, all the labs on earth are temporarily entering
macroscopic superpositions, from the perspective of all the other labs on
earth.

Copenhagen is simply inconsistent, which is why it's adherents always shy
away from defining exactly when, how, or why collapse happens. Their
failure to do so is why experiments can't be done to refute it once and for
all.


> *In Deutsch's experiment to prove or disprove the existence of many worlds
> other than this one, a conscious quantum computer shoots electrons at a
> metal plate that has 2 small slits in it. It does this one at a time. The
> quantum computer has detectors near each slit so it knows which slit the
> various electrons went through. The quantum mind now signs a document for
> each and every electron saying it has observed the electron and knows which
> slit it went through. It is very important that the document does NOT say
> which slit the electron went through, it only says that it went through one
> and only one slit and the mind has knowledge of which one. Now just before
> the electron hits the plate the mind uses quantum erasure to completely
> destroy the memory of what slits the electrons went through, but all other
> memories including all the documents remain undamaged. *
>
> *After the document is signed the electron continues on its way and hits
> the photographic plate. Then after thousands of electrons have been
> observed and all which-way information has been erased, develop the
> photographic plate and look at it. If you see interference bands then the
> many world interpretation is correct. If you do not see interference bands
> then there are no worlds but this one and the conventional interpretation
> is correct.*
>
> *Deutsch is saying that in the Copenhagen interpretation when the results
> of a measurement enters the consciousness of an observer the wave function
> collapses, in effect all the universes except one disappear without a trace
> so you get no interference. In the many worlds model all the other worlds
> will converge back into one universe when the electrons hit the
> photographic film because the two universes will no longer be different
> (even though they had different histories), but their influence will still
> be felt. In the merged universe you'll see indications that the electron
> went through slot X only and indications that it went through slot Y only,
> and that's what causes interference.*
>

Here is another example of where theories and understanding of
consciousness are needed.


Jason
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