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

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 5:06 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 2:14 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 1:48 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> Which may actually be just the one state that will result in the final
> >> result, but we have no way to know what it is at that time.
> >
> > Then we can't explain the intermediate steps of the computation, and
> hence, can't explain how quantum computers work.
>
> Sure we can.  The ability to explain a class of systems in general, is
> not the same as the ability to know precisely all of a specific
> system's internal states at the exact moment those states exist.
>

That's exactly what's required to write an algorithm.


> > If you interrupt the computer and observe the quantum computation before
> it finishes, you will observe just 1 of the 2^(N/2) possible intermediate
> values, but that is not because only one value existed. It is because the
> superposition has spread to you, and you have put yourself into a
> superposition of 2^(N/2) distinct states, each one remembering having
> observed a single 1 of the 2^(N/2) possible intermediate values, but there
> is a version of you for each of those possible values.
> >
> > This is what misled early quantum physicists into thinking the
> superposition collapses to only "one thing." and proposing that conscious
> observation "collapses the wave function" to randomly choose a single
> outcome at random to become real. What was really happening, however, is
> that the superposition simply never went away. We just become part of it,
> like any other physical object would become part of a superposition, when
> it interacts with something that is in a superposition.
>
> In other words, you're assuming Many Worlds to prove Many Worlds.  I
> trust it is obvious why I find that unconvincing.
>

Do you have an alternative explanation for why when we allow the
computation to proceed unobserved, it *must* be in a superposition
representing all states (as otherwise the math of the cancellation doesn't
work out) and yet if we interrupt the computation and peek at that
superposed state before it completes, we end up seeing just one possibility
(with all the others seeming to vanish at random)?

Or will you affirm David Deutsch's observation that he's never seen anyone
who assumes Copenhagen give a reasonable explanation for how a quantum
computer works?



> As to me being part of the superposition - fundamentally, I only know
> absolutely that I, a thing that is having the thoughts that I am
> having, exist.  All sensory data and memory data could be faked.
> Accepting the sensory and memory data that are available to me, that
> still leaves the simplest explanation for things involving me that
> there is only one me.


Simplicity is about elements of a theory, not objects in reality. If the
latter, then you should assume you are a Boltzmann brain dreaming this one
instant of time.

But nature's shown no frugality when it comes to the number of objects in
reality -- only a strong preference for such objects to be explained by
simple theories.

The burden of proof is on those who would claim
> there are multiple "me"s, such as me being inside and part of a
> superposition.
>

If you believe the Schrodinger equation then that is your evidence. You
must add additional unsupported assumptions beyond the Schrodinger equation
if you want to eliminate all the other parts of the superposition.


> Going another way - is, then, everything that interacts with or
> observes a superposition, part of that superposition?  That stretches
> "superposition" to near-meaninglessness: the entire observable
> universe might as well be one giant superposition.


Exactly. You have rediscovered the so-called "universal wave function"

"[The universal wave function] must contain amplitudes for all possible
worlds depending on all quantum-mechanical possibilities in the past and
thus one is forced to believe in the equal reality of an infinity of
possible worlds."
-- Richard Feynman


  If we are inside
> the superposition, then what has - as you put it - "become real" to
> us?


What would be real for any particular mind then, is the set of
histories/universes compatible with everything that mind state happens to
know at that present time.

There is no one reality or one history, rather each observer's mind state
would map to an infinite number of distinct histories which happen to
contain that observer's mind state.

As Hawking explained:

"The top down approach we have described leads to a profoundly different
view of cosmology, and the relation between cause and effect. Top down
cosmology is a framework in which one essentially traces the histories
backwards, from a spacelike surface at the present time. The no boundary
histories of the universe thus depend on what is being observed, contrary
to the usual idea that the universe has a unique, observer independent
history. In some sense no boundary initial conditions represent a sum over
all possible initial states."
-- Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog in “Populating the landscape: A
top-down approach” (2006)



So far as we are concerned - the one instance of you that is
> observing the one instance of me, whether or not there are other
> instances of us - the superposition has indeed gone away.
>

Are you familiar with the Wigner's friend thought experiment? How do you
account for Wigner's friend being in a superposition, from the perspective
of Wigner?

Jason
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