Do you think about the possibilities of the world in terms of "timelines"? [aka: Many-Worlds Theory, Yes or No?]

I mean, like, every time something happens, like election results, coups in other countries, dictator gets overthrown by rebels, some corporate ceo getting shot, etc..., I say "hmm, what an interesting timeline I'm on" like half joking as a reference to time travel Movies/TV, but its also kinda half serious.

I mean like, I think about the Cold War and the two famous nuclear close-calls (Cuban Missile Crisis with Vasily Arkhipov, and the Radar False Alarm incident with Stannislav Petrov) amongst many other less-known nuclear close-calls, and I just think, there's no way we should've survived those, like if each incident was a 50%/50% of ending in a nuclear war, then amonst that many close-calls, like 9 out of 10 timelines would've been the end of the world. Like it doesn't really make sense for the world be a non-many worlds type with many different possibilities, cuz we'd be dead from nuking ourselves.

So we just got lucky with ending up on the 1 in every 10 timelines where the world didn't end. And it seems like out luck has ran out since... I mean look at how the world is dealing with climate change, no country seem to care much, USA just elected a climate change denial party.

So I mean, don't y'all think this "different timelines" thing make sense?

(Basically what I'm asking is, Many-Worlds Theory? Do you believe that, Yes or No?)

(Sorry if this makes no sense, IDK how to express thoughts properly 😅)

23 comments

I wonder how the "Alive Harambe" timeline is doing right now?

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- I hear they have flying cars (greenhouse gas negative) and they've just cured cancer.
  
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  I wanna go there
  
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Sometimes. It's an intriguing idea, but do I believe it?

No. To me it seems more reasonable that the universe is infinite and our planet is one of the rare successes where all of the variables came together precisely to create life. I'm certain there are others out there, but also so rare and remote that we'll almost certainly never become aware of one another.

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- I think you might be confusing the many worlds hypothesis with something else. Many worlds doesn't explain why the fundamental variables of the universe are the way they are, it describes the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics. It's one of the most logical conclusions of the double slit experiment (Many worlds is the hypothesis that says that the particle passes through both slits)
  
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  Could be. I'm not a scientist, just a layman who likes wacky ideas.
  
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No. I think the idea that every event that could have multiple outcomes, no matter how minor generates a dedicated full universe from each choice is silly. I do not think there are timelines in that sense, only time. I do think there probably is something in the idea that the observed linear nature of time from past to future is just an idiosyncrasy of our type of life. So it is possible to be informed by other times because they are only separate from a particular point of view.

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- Imagine if we discovered a creature that evolved fourth-dimensional sensory organs (aka time eyes) that it used to predict its prey. From the outside, it would just appear to have absurd reaction speed. Such a creature might have a strange relationship with time, perhaps appearing to sleep most of the day because they already know what's going to happen. I'm here today to tell you that cats are this creature.
  
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  So are Dragonflies! They are absolutely mind-blowing predictive hunters.
  
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If you’re referring to the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, I think DeWitt just made a mess of Everett’s original, much stronger “relative-state” formulation. But in either case, the apparent branching is caused by quantum events, while the alternate timelines we imagine as possible outcomes of prior decisions are more often due to our inability to perceive all the (non-quantum) conditions that led to those outcomes not happening.

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- If you’re referring to the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, I think DeWitt . . .
  
  It just hit me like a truck, why the main character in Bioshock Infinite was Booker DeWitt. Beautiful writing, that game...
  
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No, because even the human centric idea of 'important events' having separate timelines is too many. Humans aren't that important, so there would also need to be different realities every time a shark ate or didn't catch a fish, each time any lifeform reproduces, etc.

It is still an interesting thought experiment in the context of how things could have turned out differently, but it is just unworkable as something that could ever be proven or understood by science.

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I like to think of the multiverse as an infinite field of colored static, and our universe is just a tiny segment that managed to represent a comprehensible world.

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Does it make sense? Yes Do I believe it? Yesn't

It's not testable so it just doesn't matter to me and I don't really care to make a choice about it being physical or not, I still experience the universe the same way regardless of how you interpret QM.

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No. It's just not necessary to imagine these things to make sense of reality, and the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Unlikely events happen all the time.

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It does make sense but that's because we made it to make sense. We experience the universe through cause and effect, so we've created the concept of time to follow that chain. Now we look at time as some constant through the universe but is it really? We can observe matter popping in and out of existence at the subatomic scale that ignore the rules that we observe galaxies obey so how can we be sure time follows the same cause and effect everywhere?

In other words i see the Many Worlds Theory as a useful tool in describing the results of different permutations of the universe but as countless independent universes in which only one thing was ultimately changed existing all at once? Seems a bit of a long shot to my underinformed opinion

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Albert Einstein once said "insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results".

The "many universes" idea in this context depends on the idea that one cause can branch out into multiple effects. This is impossible.

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Only when someone else (usually online) talks about that concept, not otherwise.

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Yes, I do, but only because the other theories make even less sense. The 3 main interpretations of the observations made by quantum mechanics are the Copenhagen interpretation, the pilot wave theory, and the many worlds hypothesis. They're made to explain the weirdness of wave-particle duality

The Copenhagen interpretation is the most accepted interpretation, and it (essentially) states that particles are just waves until they are observed, which collapses the wave back into a particle. In other words, the wave is a physical, real thing.

The pilot wave theory says that the particle stays a particle, and the wave that we observe is just a wave of probability that "pushes" the particle along, like a surfer being pushed by a tidal wave.

The many worlds hypothesis agrees with the pilot wave theory in saying that the wave isn't a physical thing, but says that the wave of probability exists because the particle is being split across multiple timelines, and we can only observe 1 timeline, thus making the particle inherently probabilistic.

Out of the 3, the many worlds hypothesis makes the most sense to me. But I don't believe in it in the way that people think about it colloquially. The particle splitting is an extremely small event, so there's probably like a billion timelines that are just exactly like the current one

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No, I think about it terms of "who is running the simulation". My current theory is that our reality is running in some college theology department.

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- I prefer thinking about the player and how they're handling their playthrough and it feels like they've gone evil/disastrous lately.
  
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I think of it in terms of what if something different had happened.

What if Gore had won (or at least disputed Florida)? What if the US had provided policy support to the ex-USSR in the 1990s?

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In a way, it makes sense to me.

If the big bang was not unique - and why would it be - it makes sense that it would rather be infinite. It exists outside of time and reason, if it is not singular it doesn't make sense to think that it only happened a finite number of times.

If it happened an infinite number of times, everything that could happen will happen in one of the instances. That's just math.

So I guess I think it's a reasonable idea.

However, I don't know if it makes sense to me to think in terms of these worlds actually existing. After all, they are by definition not a part of our world, which I think would be a reasonable definition of existing.

I heard Stephen Hawkins was playing around with the possibility of connecting to other words. If that is possible, it would make them real by my definition of reality. I don't personally believe such a thing would be possible. But I know far less about the topic than Stephen Hawkins.

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