Why Parallel Universes?

You are confused. Probability, or statistics, tells us the likelihood or the unlikelihood of an event. It is not the absolute truth.There is nothing to prevent all pennies from landing heads.The multi-verse is confusing to us mortals, just like almost everything in quantum physics. However, just because we mortals can't understand it yet doesn't mean it is not the case.

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The Laminator
We are the bog. Resistance is voltage over current. For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

The difference is that QM has observable data, with a comprehensive theory which describes the phenomenea very accuratley (though the why is still not there). Parrellel universes theories currently have not testable means of verification or disverification. Consequently, any notion of multiple universes is conjecture. There are several hypothesis that predict them, but currently, there is no evidence to support the existance of such universes.This message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 08-23-2004 09:49 PM

I don't think Mike's confused here at all - he's just saying that statistical methods would not have been developed if there were not different outcomes (what would be the point?). It reminds me of a riddle I once heard:Q. If you toss a coin 1000 times and it lands heads every time what are the chances of it coming up heads on the 1001th toss? A. Pretty close to one. The coin is obviously loaded.I fully agree with you here - for me its the one satisfying answer to the question of 'why is there something rather than nothing?' Actually, there's everything.PE

O)K. I admit my gut feels have a dissonance with my logic. As correctly stated, somewhere in an infinite universe all penny-tosses have resulted in heads. And the next toss? Of course it will also land heads (in one of the resulting universes).Also, in an infinite universe, there are an infinity of 'me's sitting at PCs typing this response.I think I will stick with my gut feel. I don't believe it.But thanks for the responses.Mike.

I agree with you on the point of lack of data at this time. Haven't you seen Stargate SG-1? The episode where Daniel Jackson crossed into another "quantum reality" confirms our suspicion of the multiple universes conjecture.

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The Laminator
We are the bog. Resistance is voltage over current. For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

Well, there are a lot of people that don't believe it. Only some of them don't believe it for the right reason, that there's simply no data to support it.You might want to be be careful about that gut feeling of yours. People had the gut feelings about the causes of the bubonic plague for centuries before they found out the real causes. Gut feelings are good in the halls of L.A. high schools, but they're certainly not sufficient in other matters, like getting your next date.

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The Laminator
We are the bog. Resistance is voltage over current. For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

Thanks for the tip, Darth, but I am an old codger of 66, happily married for 40 years, so I won't be looking for any dates in the near future.
Hope you enjoy your next date in the majority of universes.
Mike.

Well i'll agree that there isn't any data (that I know of anyway) supporting parallel universes. It's simply a stab in the dark at explaining strange quantum mechanical phenomena. Is it definately untestable though? I don't know...

Thread moved here from the Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution forum.

Put a gun to your temple and fire it. There's an extremely small probability of the bullet quantum-tunnelling through your brain and out on the other side leaving you completely unharmed.So, if you pull the trigger and discover you're still alive, its a pretty good case for multiple universes. Of course, in the majority of Universes, they'd be scraping you off the wall.You'd have to be a nutter to try this though.PEhttp://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/everett_guardian.html

There are over 6 billion people on this planet. I propose that we give each person on the planet a gun and have them shoot themselves. Out of 6 billion, there's bound to be someone that will survive such an experiment and prove the multiple universe hypothesis.

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The Laminator
We are the bog. Resistance is voltage over current. For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

Only works if you're doing it yourself, unfortunately.Most of the time you'll be dead but it only takes one universe (identical in all respects to this one up to the point the bullet leaves the gun) in which you miraculously survive - for your consciousness to be continuous afterwards.The downside of this is that everyone else will just be living their lives so you'll have a hard time convincing anyone else of what just happened (I know I do )What you could do as well is rig the set-up in such a way that you definitely kill yourself if and only if your lottery numbers don't come up. They'll come up in one Universe, which has been identical to this Universe. You would be the same person, done the very same things and thought the exact same thoughts throughout your life. You'd be guaranteed to be alive and rich at the same time!Disclaimer: I in no way condone the taking's of one's life in order to become fantastically wealthy beyone your wildest dreams and solve what is perhaps one of the hardest problems of them all.PE

Ah, but would your same self-awareness and conciousness jump to that univers. If not that you would not experience it. You alternate body would live but not with your conciousness.

1st) The quantum probability for such a scenario is so low you could endlessly repeat the experiment till the heat death of the universe and still not have it occur. Just because there is a probablity, doesnt mean it is likely to happen.2nd) Even if a quantum event such as that occurs, it doesn;t verify or unverify any hypothesis about alternate universes, since quantum mechanics doesnt say why it works, it just describes the how. We have quantum tunnelling events all the time on the microscopic (actually submicrosopic level). It is a accepted facet of QM. I don't understand how you could draw this out to be evidence for multiple universes.

Not sure what you mean by consciousness "jumping universe" - the universes in which you die your consciousness ends - the universe in which you live, your consciousness continues. Since the Universes diverge only at the point of firing your experience is that of the guy who's survived (how could it be otherwise?)PE