RE: Does MWI mean a silly putty multiverse?

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 11:06:15 -0000

You can choose to string together the points so you see whatever you like.
Lambs routinely feed on lions in some 'universes'. But there is nobody to
string the points together, except people whose view is occluded by the fact
that they are in the string. These people can't see anything but their own
universe, which indeed must have electromagnetic fields etc. as you say.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gilles HENRI [SMTP:Gilles.Henri.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Monday, March 22, 1999 11:01 AM
> To: Higgo James
> Cc: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: RE: Does MWI mean a silly putty multiverse?
>
> In MWI you could perhaps view one grid as one
> >universe, and imagine that each locus is mapped to another in a grid
> above
> >it, which is what we would (from our subjective viewpoint) call one
> >Planck-time later. In fact, in MWI, each locus is mapped to an arbitrary
> >number of locuses one Planck-time away from it, so one grid maps on to
> >infinitely many grids just one step (Planck time) away.
> >
> >If you choose to see a certain set of relationships as representing a
> time
> >axis, and others as being space, you can view the whole from the outside
> in
> >such a way that you can see ass sorts of weird and wonderful things, like
> >you or I. This is similar, as Tegmark has pointed out, to zooming in on
> a
> >fractal picture and saying 'wow! look what's in there!'
>
> James, that's exactly the point I try to make precise.
>
> You say "you choose...", "you can...". It implies some gauge freedom in
> your representations, just like you can choose different electromagnetic
> potentials for the same physical fields. But they must correspond to the
> the same reality, i.e. producing the same observable consequences
> (electromagnetic fields), independantly of the chosen gauge. All what is
> physically measurable and observer independant must correspond to
> invariant
> quantities. This requirement is so strong that in fact the physical
> content
> of a theory lies in these invariance groups.
>
> However a numerical representation of a complex reality (like describing
> the universe with a string (or grid...) of 0 and 1) possess no invariant
> upon the choice of the representation (or at least I cannot figure one!),
> except may be the property of computability. It doesn't content any
> information about topology, space-time splitting, curvature, and so on....
> all things you could hope to reproduce in a theory of the Universe!! Nor
> is
> there any invariant relationship properties between two "maps".
> So I can't see how one can hope to describe the world with such a
> representation.
>
> Gilles
>
>
>
Received on Mon Mar 22 1999 - 03:08:42 PST