Many thanks for your fine answers, and patience with an ignorant.
When I said probability I meant from the frequentist side, or from
what Tegmark has called "bird's point of view" (which I guess
corospond to what Tom calls "God's point of view", - whether or not
one believes) But the subjective probability concept is interesting
also, and George's "alternative suicide experiment" is surely thouht
provoking.
About infinity which Anna mentions. I thouht that infinity was a
mathematical concept (and tool) and not something that existed in the
real universe? I mean, our universe is limited in space (though
expanding), and there's a limited number of particles in it. So even
though the number of combinations of ways and places the particles can
intermix with each other must be extremely big, I thought that it was
still limited / finite. And even space and time is descrete, like
energy, as far as I know (but this may be pure speculation I've read)
On the other hand, the line between maths and physics is sometimes
said to disappear at a point.
Anna said:
"We should always expect things that are beyond reason not to happen,
even though an infinite number of
such worlds must exist. A cow could appear directly in front of me
right now due to quantum effects, but the odds are virtually zero so I
do not expect the occurrence."
Neihter do I, otherwise I would go insane :-) But even if the cow only
appear in an extremely small number of all worlds, still "an infinite
number of such worlds must exist" according to you. I guess the
existing of such totally weird worlds is the main reason why most
people (and even most physicians?) can't or won't take the MWI
seriously. Of course an invalid reason. But since a macro-event like a
cow appearing is the result of an encredible number of micro-events, I
think my wondering how on earth the concept of probability can make
sense if "everything" happens anyway, arises from the fact that I
didn't distinguish between the two kind of events. I guess a macro-
event is not really a meaningful event when talking atom physics,
since it's a sequence of trillions and trillions of
"real" (micro-)events.
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Received on Fri Nov 07 2008 - 19:59:45 PST