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

[John Clark]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

* >> Occam's Razor is about an economy of assumptions not an economy of
>> results. The existence of many worlds is not an assumption, they are a
>> result*
>
>
> * > The existence of many worlds is very much an assumption. *


*No. It would be unfair to say that Hugh Everett conjured up an infinite
number of worlds because he thought it would be cool, instead he asked
himself what would be the result if we had bare-bones no-nonsense quantum
mechanics with no extraneous bells and whistles, what if Schrodinger's
Equation really means what it says? And the result was a great many worlds.
Please understand I'm not claiming the existence of the multiverse is a
proven fact, but I think the idea needs to be taken seriously because: *

*1) Unlike Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds theory is
clear about what it's saying. *

*2) It is self consistent and conforms with all known experimental
results. *

*3) It has no need to speculate about new physics as objective wave
collapse theories like GRW do.*


*4) It doesn't have to explain what consciousness or a measurement is
because they have nothing to do with it, all it needs is Schrodinger's
equation.  *

*I don't see how you can explain counterfactual quantum reasoning and such
things as the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb_tester>** without
making use of many worlds. Hugh Everett would say that by having a bomb in
a universe we are NOT in explode, we can tell if a bomb that is in the
branch of the multiverse that we ARE in is a dud or is a live fully
functional bomb.  *

*Yes Many Worlds needs to explain probability and why some things have a
higher probability of happening than others, and it can. **According to
Many Worlds there is one and only one universe for every quantum state that
is not forbidden by the laws of physics. So when you flip a coin the
universe splits many more times than twice because there are a vast number,
perhaps an infinite number, of places where a coin could land, but you are
not interested in exactly where the coin lands, you're only interested if
it lands heads or tails. And we've known for centuries how to obtain a
useful probability between any two points on the continuous bell curve even
though the continuous curve is made up of an unaccountably infinite number
of points, all we need to do is perform a simple integration to figure out
which part of the bell curve we're most likely on.*

*If an observer is a gambler that wants to make money but is irrational
then he is absolutely guaranteed to lose all his money if he plays long
enough, but a rational observer who knows how to make use of continuous
probabilities is guaranteed to make money, or at least break even. There is
a version of you that flips a coin 1 million times and see heads every
single time even though the coin is 100% fair, but it is extremely
unlikely you will find yourself that far out on the bell curve, so I would
be willing to bet a large sum of money I will not see 1 million heads in a
row.  *

*Yes, that's a lot of worlds, but you shouldn't object that the multiverse
really couldn't be that big unless you are a stout defender of the idea
that the universe must be finite, because even if Many Worlds turns out to
be untrue the universe could still be infinite, and an infinity plus an
infinity is still the infinity with the same Aleph number. Even if there
is only one universe if it's infinite then a finite distance away there
must be a doppelgänger of you because, although there are a huge number of
quantum states your body could be in, that number is not infinite, but the
universe is. *

*I would maintain that Many Worlds has none of the silly bells and whistles
that other theories stick onto quantum mechanics that do nothing but get
rid of those pesky other worlds that keep cropping up that some people
personally dislike for some reason. And since Everett's time other worlds
do seem to keep popping up and in completely unrelated fields, such as
string theory and inflationary cosmology.*

*Maybe tomorrow somebody will come up with a better idea but right now Many
Worlds is the least bad quantum interpretation around. *

*John K Clark*
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