Re: Multiverse Morality

--- In [email protected], Gary Oberbrunner <garyo@...> wrote:
>
> [My gmail seems to sometimes produce bad indentation --I'll write this one
> in Emacs.]
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 6:22 PM, hibbsa <hibbsa@...> wrote:
> ...
> 
> > On that matter - the tense that you are raising here with your chaos
> > example of macroscopic amplification - my basic position has been
> > that I am saying exactly the same thing that MWI itself
> > says. Namely, that the multiverse represents all the possible
> > outcomes, in the same way that, within a one-universe model - a
> > statistical model of the possibilities would say the same thing. As
> > such, the multiverse could be conceptualized as a statistical
> > model. Albeit one that cannot be derived for real.
> 
> You have it just right; [quantum] probability in the single universe
> we see is the same as measure in the multiverse.  I'd only say that
> the multiverse *can* in fact be derived for real; that derivation is a
> straightforward application of the SWE.
> 
> > In that context, what I am challenging, is whether the multiverse -
> > in context of the divergence from some ancestor world, can ever
> > produce novelty that, were that novelty to have occurred in the
> > ancestor world, it would have amounted to a statistically
> > significant change in that ancestor world.
> 
> OK, let's unpack that.  We have an ancestor world A.  (By "world" I
> presume we're talking about a bounded region of spacetime.)  It
> produces several successors: B, C, D, and so on.  (Note that the time
> bounds of these are later than A's time bounds, otherwise A wouldn't
> be their ancestor.)  Let's take B, which we know to be quite different
> from A.  I think what you're saying is C, D and the others are very
> much like each other, but B is different (it has "diverged"
> macroscopically from its siblings).  Of course none of them are much
> like A, since they're all later and things have presumably changed over
> time.
> So the multiverse produced novelty
> in the form of B.  So far, so good.  Can you walk through the
> counterfactual part ("were that novelty to have occurred...") in this
> example?  Are you asking how that novelty could get from B (a small
> fraction of worlds) to become a large fraction of worlds later on, so,
> say, the grandchildren of B would come to dominate over the
> grandchildren of C, D, etc.?  Or something different?  Feel free to rework
> my example to show your point.
> 
> > But the problem I have with applying that sort of theory within the
> > context of emergence, is that....what if there are 100 or 100 fully
> > distinct emergent levels in our universe.
> 
> I disagree with this.  I think each concept (entropy, intelligence,
> macroscopic objects, etc.) has its own emergent properties and layers
> of emergence, and they're quite fuzzy; there's no way to slice that
> across all concepts so there are 100 "fully distinct emergent levels".
> 
> > So far as I know, there are no properly worked through variants on
> > chaos theory, that describe the effect in terms of that emergence.
> 
> This could be a good area for research perhaps?  Chaos theory itself
> is quite well researched and worked through mathematically.
> Modern communication theory for instance would be impossible without
> detailed models of chaotic behavior.  And of course chaotic behavior
> is strongly emergent; fractals are the obvious example, but so is
> period-doubling and various kinds of attractors.  But I'm sure there's
> more to be figured out.
> 
> > I don't even think there are yet any hard scientific models of
> > emergence that have made it all the way to mathematics.
> 
> Isn't that exactly what thermodynamics is?  A model of how quantum
> random behavior leads to stable (emergent) chemistry and physics?
> 
> And on the intelligent-behavior-emergence front, there's a lot of a-life
> work
> that could be seen as relevant (producing "intelligent" behavior
> by evolving random genotypes for instance -- there's a lot of work
> done around that kind of thing.)
> 
> > In which case, it's hard to see how it can currently be regarded as
> > reliable, robust, reasoning, to speak of such effects within a
> > context of emergence at all.
> 
> You may have something different in mind from standard emergent
> properties here.
> 
> > Beyond that, as I mentioned to you in a private mail a few weeks or
> > months back, the issue I am raising here is not primarily about MWI
> > itself, but about Deutsch's specific variant of MWI, which heavily
> > involves the concept of fungibility. Emergence isn't directly
> > linked, but he does describe a personal theory about emergence in
> > BoI. So the issue I'm raising is really about whether these three
> > concepts all work together properly, or whether there is a problem.
> 
> > For example, can you or anyone, explain how worlds can be fungible -
> > which Deutsch describles as being literally in the same dimensional
> > 'place'
> 
> Well, I don't know about Deutsch (I can't make it through BoI, it's
> too loosely argued) but fungibility is quite a standard term in
> physics.  It just means completely indistinguishable.  Two photons are
> fungible if they can be swapped without any effect.  In the MWI, an
> Electron which can be spin-up or spin-down has an infinite (or at
> least huge) number of spin-up little-e electrons and the same number
> (really equal measure) of spin-down little-e electrons.  All the
> spin-up ones are fungible with each other, all the spin-down ones are
> fungible with each other, but the spin-up ones have a different
> property from the spin-down ones so they are not fungible with each
> other.
> 
> The canonical example is a Bose-Einstein condensate.  Google that for
> more.
> 
> Macroscopically I think the concept of fungibility gets fuzzier, but
> it's certainly possible to say "...in all the worlds in which I do the
> Schroedinger's Cat experiment..." and mean that all those worlds,
> which may be microscopically variant, are FAPP fungible up to the
> point of the photon being emitted (in some of them).  There's no real
> difference between them, you can't tell which one you're in, they all
> have the cat, the vial, the experimenter, etc.
> 
> But of course that macroscopic "FAPP" fungibility doesn't mean
> literally fungible in the QM sense.  Of course there are many
> macroscopic fully-fungible regions of spacetime, but at the macro
> level physicists usually don't care about where particular air
> molecules are.  It's another form of emergence I guess: what counts as
> fungible depends on the question.  (Just like two dollar bills are
> fungible when considering their value, but not when considering their
> history, pattern of folds, or serial numbers.)
> 
> > ....and not just at the quantum level but at all levels. How
> > does that work, using Deutsch's description of emergence which
> > explicitly rejects a purely bottom-up determinism in terms of
> > emergences.
> 
> > The implication being, that macroscopic levels - supposedly fungible
> > - can potentially be influenced by top-down effects, which
> > presumably in some possible instances result in changes at the
> > macroscopic level. Which presumably would violate fungibility. Which
> > so far as I can see, would have to be see as a refutation of the
> > concept of fungibility itself, unless Deutsch has an explanation how
> > this can nevcer happen.....which in turn maintains consistency with
> > his explanation of emergence itself.
> 
> I'm afraid I get lost in these last two paragraphs -- I'd need to
> understand Deutsch's concepts better I guess.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Gary
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Gary - you are too intelligent for me today...I was getting confused. So I'll try again tomorrow or day coming soon. 

You're a smart guy with a dumb theory :o) 

Leaving you with this: It's pretty common in science that a theory with a lot of reach has humble beginnings in something parochial. Stealing word style from Deutsch here. 
In the best cases that local thing implies the wider implication, which leads to a process culminating in a mathematical theory that starts in that wider place and eventually finds its way back to the parochial place. 

And so, a few months back I asked this list, whether anyone was trying to produce that mathematical theory of the MWI? Sure MWI is inferred from QM, but that doesn't matter at all. QM is parochial, it implies MWI, MWI is subjected  to scientific rigour and genius, and a mathematical theory pops out the other end. Maybe profound non-trivial predictions are made not only about the multiverse but also about things we'd never even imagined right here. The predictions hold up, which drive a scientific revolution, which eventually sees the greatest ever technological revolution out of which humans come riding firmly in the saddle of the force of gravity itself. Gravity drives, warp drives, gravity weapons, maybe even a special dark door portaling this world to the next with more thereafter to the end of the multiverse. 

Alan batted this away saying QM implied MWI not the other way around. I did mention at the time I didn't think that a legitimate. 

How do you feel about it? And how is the progress coming along? 

Not intentionally sarcastic, but yes I do know that absolutely no one has put any time into this at all. Why not? If everyone believes so much in MWI why is it still a disparate series of explanations? Why can it only explain retrospectively? Why has it never told us something we didn't expect to hear? The biggest expansion of reality of all time by about a million plus infinity, and it doesn't tell us a single non-trivial new thing about our world that we didn't already know. 

Why isn't that a concern? My alarm bells went off about 2 minutes after the first time I heard it. Where is everyone else? :O)