No Soup for You! Only one reality.

[Elixir]

​

From Sci-Am. Kind of a 'well duh' thing but cute and timely.

This is Our One and Only Reality​

In troubling times, some people may wonder about the idea of multiverses–where other versions of us and our reality are playing out, but perhaps differently–and whether we’re in a particularly bad iteration. The real question, writes George Musser, author and contributing editor of Scientific American, is not whether there are other so-called timelines: according to quantum physics, there almost certainly are. The real question is why we experience only one reality (for better or worse).

On the nature of our reality: Human comprehension–and perhaps life itself–could not accommodate the knowledge of every possible outcome of existence, Musser speculates, especially considering their infinitudes.

What the experts say: One of the key insights of physicist Hugh Everett, originator of the multiverse-spawning "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, concerned the consequences of humans being part of the reality we hope to observe. Because we are embedded in the system, Everett argued, we can never observe other branches of reality firsthand. "Rather than holding open all possibilities, a mind must settle—at least tentatively—on one," writes Musser. "The effort required to make that choice—and, from there, to act upon it—may be key to giving us at least the subjective feeling of free will."

 

[DBT]

The 'subjective feeling of free will?" Uh, oh, I hope that doesn't set off another round of free will debate.

 

[pood]

I’d have to read the whole article to see exactly what they are driving at, but if Many Worlds is true, it creates a strange state off affairs both for determinism and free will. On this account, if confronted with a choice between Pepsi and Coke, according to the Born Rule the chance of one or the other emerging is 50/50. But of course the Born rule only really applies to the subjective experience of a single branch induced by wave-function collapse. But the MWI only comes into play if there is no wave-function collapse. So at the moment of choice between Pepsi and Coke, there is now one branch where I choose Pepsi and another where I choose Coke. Both versions of me will have the feeling of having freely chosen what they did. But notice that hard determinism claims that there is only one possible outcome of a fixed set of antecedent states. (I think I’ve shown this to be false, but put that aside.) If MWI is true, then it must be the case that a fixed set of antecedent states produces not just one possible outcome, but all possible outcomes.

 

[pood]

Goddamnit, I was halfway through that article when I pressed a link, and it took me to popup that said I had to subscribe to SciAm to read the link. When I hit the back button, I got the same popup for the article I was only half done reading.

Some people who have subscriptions are able to gift articles to non subscribers. Can you do that, Elixir?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I’d have to read the whole article to see exactly what they are driving at, but if Many Worlds is true, it creates a strange state off affairs both for determinism and free will. On this account, if confronted with a choice between Pepsi and Coke, according to the Born Rule the chance of one or the other emerging is 50/50. But of course the Born rule only really applies to the subjective experience of a single branch induced by wave-function collapse. But the MWI only comes into play if there is no wave-function collapse. So at the moment of choice between Pepsi and Coke, there is now one branch where I choose Pepsi and another where I choose Coke. Both versions of me will have the feeling of having freely chosen what they did. But notice that hard determinism claims that there is only one possible outcome of a fixed set of antecedent states. (I think I’ve shown this to be false, but put that aside.) If MWI is true, then it must be the case that a fixed set of antecedent states produces not just one possible outcome, but all possible outcomes.

That's not how I see Many Worlds. As you say, it makes the odds of every choice even and that's clearly not what happens. Thus if Many Worlds is true the choices are at a far deeper level. Coke vs Pepsi isn't a choice, it's the result of a multitude of choices at the atomic level that came before.