If The Road to Reality (from which the term omniverse, or “omnium”, originally sprung) is not “mainstream”, then pray tell what is.
First, words and phrases become recognized in mainstream physics when they become widely used in publications, not when one well-known physicist uses them. There are 15 results on Google Scholar for a search of ‘omniverse’ within physics, and of those results, none has been cited more than three times.
Second, even within The Road to Reality—for which I have the first edition as an ebook—the word ‘omnium’ appears only six times in 1094 pages, where they appear within six consecutive pages (p. 784-9) in a single chapter (ch. 29). The index gives only one page reference (p. 783) for this word.
ETA: You disregarded my claim that “you implicitly imply in your root comment that MWI implies the existence of an omniverse [...] but provide no justification for this.” This was a main point.
This is a technical aspect of the discussion, and is not contradictory. The point should be clear if one considers the possibility of flipping 100 heads in a row on a fair two-sided coin. For all intents and purposes, the probability is 0, but that it may happen is not in the least prevented or negated were we to consider an infinite (“long run”) flipping of coins. Pretty straightforward and not contradictory.
I was taking what you wrote literally, because you remarked at least twice ([1], [2]) that you dislike the lack of technical sophistication in discussions here, from which I concluded that you must mean what you write when you use technical terms. Under this assumption of literal meaning, I contend that there is a contradiction in the two statements that you wrote.
I have nothing further to add to this line of discussion.
Had I devoted the energy to a full-length discussion of the topic, this probably wouldn’t be an issue, but (in general) it should be clear that the number of such worlds (or universes) should be uncountably infinite, not countably infinite. That is, the cardinality would be on the order of Aleph-1, at the very least. And I seriously doubt that had any bearing on prase’s original point.
But this is the main point in contention! Recall that your answer to Smk’s question (“How many worlds?”) is
Uncountably many.
Prase and I pointed out that some of your subsequent reasoning and justification for this answer are unclear or incorrect. An argument for your answer is what I would like to see. You state that this is “clear”, but again, one of the main purposes of this comment thread is to establish whether your answer is correct or not!
I guess you could read on the topic, if you’re interested. I’ve already suggested at least two (namely, Hawking and Penrose). Do I really have to do all the work? I need to eat and making a living.
I am reasonably well-read in Hawking’s and Penrose’s texts in popular science. (I assume you are not referring to their original contributions to physics because other physicists are better known for their contributions to MWI.) I still cannot parse your first phrase (“taking the universe as a QM event”). I think I understand what you mean by your second phrase (“QM applied to the universe”). Is the first phrase supposed to have to same meaning as the second phrase?
There is no “tone” here. That is a mind-projection fallacy. If anyone liberated of mammalian instinct can read what I say without imputing emotional overtones thereto, then it should be obvious that my points consist in reasoned discourse without torrents of bluster at all. It’s almost as if you people wish to say, “yeah, we can see you holding that 9mm, just waiting to bust a cap, and the foam dripping from your mouth”. It’s really rather cute.
Then I must remind you that all commenters on Less Wrong are human, with the exception of Clippy. One of the purposes of this comment thread is to establish which claims are correct. If your arguments are correct, then you have nothing to lose by being more persuasive, and I claim that your tone was overly aggressive and not persuasive for most purposes.
You disregarded my claim that “you implicitly imply in your root comment that MWI implies the existence of an omniverse [...] but provide no justification for this.” This was a main point.
I don’t need to justify what is common knowledge. Take note of Tegmark, if you and the other down-voters care to.
Under this assumption of literal meaning, I contend that there is a contradiction in the two statements that you wrote.
Wow, so you really think your strawman is sufficient as grounds for objection to what I’ve claimed as correct? I didn’t require sophistication of others here. That’s pure nonsense. But by all means, try to impute meaning into my posts where it wasn’t.
An argument for your answer is what I would like to see. You state that this is “clear”, but again, one of the main purposes of this comment thread is to establish whether your answer is correct or not!
I have. It is quite clear. And the only objections I’ve seen consist in mere definitional confusions on the part of the “objectors” or who don’t seem to demonstrate an understanding of the claims I made, but instead contend that I’m merely being “hostile” and not persuasive enough.
Is the first phrase supposed to have to same meaning as the second phrase?
Not necessarily the same “meaning” but more or less the same pragmatic thrust.
If your arguments are correct, then you have nothing to lose by being more persuasive, and I claim that your tone was overly aggressive and not persuasive for most purposes.
You make an interesting, and fallacious, claim, and continue to hide behind smoke and mirrors by suggesting that I haven’t answered your so-called objections.
Going back to your last post:
It is the opposite, where the probabilities are equal, which requires specific preparations...
What exactly is “it”? I’m referring to the universe, not the cat’s being dead or alive. What exactly is the relevance of the probabilities being equal, in any case? Does that even impinge on anything I’ve said, or even anything anyone else has said? Not obviously so.
I am responding to Argumzio’s comment in several separate replies. This is my first reply.
I don’t need to justify what is common knowledge. Take note of Tegmark, if you and the other down-voters care to.
I assume that you are referring to Tegmark’s ideas on his multiverse hierarchy and his ultimate ensemble. If I am incorrect, correct me, and point out which of Tegmark’s ideas you are trying to use. Tegmark’s speculative ideas are certainly common knowledge within the physics community. They also fail to justify your claim that MWI implies an omniverse.
Your definition of the omniverse and your subsequent uses of this concept does not clearly indicate whether you mean a Level III multiverse or a Level IV multiverse in Tegmark’s terminology, so I will provide rebuttals to both cases. I shall be referring to Tegmark’s most recent elaborations of his multiverse hierarchy in arXiv:0905.1283v1 (2009).
Suppose that you wish to claim that your omniverse is equivalent to a Level III multiverse. Then you have trouble because Tegmark counts at most a countably infinite number of worlds. In particular, Tegmark states that
At the quantum level, there are 10 to the 10{118} universes with temperatures below 108 kelvins. That is a vast number, but a finite one.
Tegmark’s calculations for this are in Footnote 5 on p. 4. The obvious extension of this calculation (by scaling the temperature) shows that there is a finite number of universes below any temperature. This implies a countable number of universes even if we grant an unbounded temperature, because we can easily get a bijection with a subset of mathbb{N} by enumerating the universes below any arbitrary temperature.
So this does not work.
Suppose that you wish to claim that your omniverse is equivalent to a Level IV multiverse. Then I fail to see where Tegmark claims that MWI implies an omniverse. On the contrary, Tegmark is careful to distinguish between a Level III multiverse (MWI) and a Level IV multiverse.
Furthermore, it is not clear to me how Tegmark’s Level IV multiverse can be equivalent to your omniverse. Tegmark defines the Level IV multiverse as one in which
mathematical existence and physical existence are equivalent, so that all mathematical structures exist physically as well.
This is not equivalent to your definition of the omniverse, where
the omniverse is that state of affairs in which all possibilities are realized. Hence, that any event should obtain therein is an absolute certainty.
Tegmark makes no mention of events occurring within the Level IV multiverse, while the context within which you defined the omniverse mentions only “events”, not mathematical structures. Nota bene that Tegmark does mention quantum events occurring, but only in the Level III multiverse, which I have already concluded is different from your omniverse.
I no longer believe that you are throwing names of well-known physicists in good faith. Thrice you have done this:
Then you obviously aren’t familiar with MWI. Even Penrose and Hawking agree that QM applied to the universe implies MWI.
I guess you could read on the topic, if you’re interested. I’ve already suggested at least two (namely, Hawking and Penrose). Do I really have to do all the work? I need to eat and making a living.
I don’t need to justify what is common knowledge. Take note of Tegmark, if you and the other down-voters care to.
Not once have you provided any reference to go with the names. Of the single reference that you gave in this thread, to The Road to Reality, it was erroneous justification for the word ‘omniverse’ being recognized in mainstream physics.
I welcome any refusal to give arguments that have already been given elsewhere. But if you are going to name names, then provide references. I should not have to say “I assume that you are referring to Tegmark’s ideas on [...]”; I should instead be able to say “I agree with section A in Tegmark (2009), but...”
[...], if you and the other down-voters care to.
For what it’s worth, I never downvote replies to my comments; I recognize that this disincentivizes replies. However, I have indeed downvoted your root comment and your replies to Prase.
Well, I certainly consider this my last reply, because 1) I grow weary of this straightforward enough topic, 2) respondents have hitherto been enthralled in a childish, eristically motivated game of serving a slapdash of trivial, illogical, and baseless complaints one after another, 3) my posts have been consistently down-voted, which I find highly annoying, and 4) my grasp of the subject – and general familiarity with (and understanding of) the connections between the concepts omniverse (from omnium=multiverse), MW, QM, probability states, and the infinitary conclusion that is obtained by noting the (well-established) opinion that we live in an inflationary universe (that may well be eternally inflationary) – has no need of a “well-reasoned” or even “pursuasive” (an interesting way to move the goal posts, I might add) justification, insofar as there is a body of literature out there that suggests the pertinence and correctness of the answer I provided (which I never said was the true, in-your-face-clear-as-day answer).
(FYI: another source, of which I was previously unaware, that raises some of the key points I have is Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, p. 181 onward. It does so in a largely jargon-free, not-so-overly-technical manner, so I suppose that should be a relief to LWers.)
Very well. Thank you for letting me write the last word. I shall in time respond briefly to your previous comment—as promised—and also provide a summary of the outstanding issues that you never addressed. Although they will be directed to you, I do not expect any response from you, and I will not consider it a breach of LW etiquette for you to ignore them.
1) I grow weary of this straightforward enough topic,
A reasonable sentiment.
2) respondents have hitherto been enthralled in a childish, eristically [sic] motivated game of serving a slapdash of trivial, illogical, and baseless complaints one after another,
Then show these childish and eristic respondents what a mature and sensible argument looks like.
Destroy those trivial, illogical, and baseless complaints with useful, logical, and grounded responses.
3) my posts have been consistently down-voted, which I find highly annoying,
If you wish, I am willing to create new accounts and mass upvote your comments if that lessens your annoyance and allows you to continue in this thread.
4) my grasp of the subject – and general familiarity with (and understanding of) the connections between the concepts omniverse (from omnium=multiverse), MW, QM, probability states, and the infinitary conclusion that is obtained by noting the (well-established) opinion that we live in an inflationary universe (that may well be eternally inflationary) – [...]
I am delighted to know that you are an expert.
[my grasp of the subject] has no need of a “well-reasoned” or even “pursuasive” [sic] [justification],
Oh, certainly. Your grasp of the subject is indeed disconnected from well-reasoned justification.
… I apologize; I was being sarcastic and that was an unfavorable literal reading of what you wrote. You probably meant something like “I don’t need to present ‘well-reasoned’ or even ‘persuasive’ justification here.” In which case I am flabbergasted. Why are you writing here if you are not trying to give well-reasoned arguments? I can understand this if you provide lots of references to well-reasoned arguments that others gave, but you did not; you gave lots of names. Furthermore, you claim technical dominance ([1], [2], [3], [4]), and yet you have not named a single technical paper or survey of the subject; the two references that you gave were both popular science books for a general audience.
(an interesting way to move the goal posts, I might add)
I never moved the goalposts. Out of the 729 words in my first reply to you, only 10 words were about your lack of tact (“your tone unnecessarily escalates the hostility in this comment thread”). You then devoted a paragraph to justify your aggressiveness by appealing to non-mammalian readers. In my subsequent reply, I spent only one paragraph out of nine to respond to that, and thenceforth never mentioned it again. Moreover, I never insinuated that your aggression is relevant to the topic at hand—I commented on it because it was relevant to the atmosphere of the discussion, which you were making unnecessarily antagonistic.
You keep running into the goalposts and claim that I moved them.
insofar as there is a body of literature out there that suggests the pertinence and correctness of the answer I provided (which I never said was the true, in-your-face-clear-as-day answer).
See my comments (both in this reply and in previous replies) about your reticence to provide references.
To conclude, I apologize for the intellectual gulf between you and me, and I wish you the best of luck in other academic disciplines.
First, words and phrases become recognized in mainstream physics when they become widely used in publications, not when one well-known physicist uses them. There are 15 results on Google Scholar for a search of ‘omniverse’ within physics, and of those results, none has been cited more than three times.
Second, even within The Road to Reality—for which I have the first edition as an ebook—the word ‘omnium’ appears only six times in 1094 pages, where they appear within six consecutive pages (p. 784-9) in a single chapter (ch. 29). The index gives only one page reference (p. 783) for this word.
ETA: You disregarded my claim that “you implicitly imply in your root comment that MWI implies the existence of an omniverse [...] but provide no justification for this.” This was a main point.
I was taking what you wrote literally, because you remarked at least twice ([1], [2]) that you dislike the lack of technical sophistication in discussions here, from which I concluded that you must mean what you write when you use technical terms. Under this assumption of literal meaning, I contend that there is a contradiction in the two statements that you wrote.
I have nothing further to add to this line of discussion.
But this is the main point in contention! Recall that your answer to Smk’s question (“How many worlds?”) is
Prase and I pointed out that some of your subsequent reasoning and justification for this answer are unclear or incorrect. An argument for your answer is what I would like to see. You state that this is “clear”, but again, one of the main purposes of this comment thread is to establish whether your answer is correct or not!
I am reasonably well-read in Hawking’s and Penrose’s texts in popular science. (I assume you are not referring to their original contributions to physics because other physicists are better known for their contributions to MWI.) I still cannot parse your first phrase (“taking the universe as a QM event”). I think I understand what you mean by your second phrase (“QM applied to the universe”). Is the first phrase supposed to have to same meaning as the second phrase?
Then I must remind you that all commenters on Less Wrong are human, with the exception of Clippy. One of the purposes of this comment thread is to establish which claims are correct. If your arguments are correct, then you have nothing to lose by being more persuasive, and I claim that your tone was overly aggressive and not persuasive for most purposes.
I don’t need to justify what is common knowledge. Take note of Tegmark, if you and the other down-voters care to.
Wow, so you really think your strawman is sufficient as grounds for objection to what I’ve claimed as correct? I didn’t require sophistication of others here. That’s pure nonsense. But by all means, try to impute meaning into my posts where it wasn’t.
I have. It is quite clear. And the only objections I’ve seen consist in mere definitional confusions on the part of the “objectors” or who don’t seem to demonstrate an understanding of the claims I made, but instead contend that I’m merely being “hostile” and not persuasive enough.
Not necessarily the same “meaning” but more or less the same pragmatic thrust.
You make an interesting, and fallacious, claim, and continue to hide behind smoke and mirrors by suggesting that I haven’t answered your so-called objections.
Going back to your last post:
What exactly is “it”? I’m referring to the universe, not the cat’s being dead or alive. What exactly is the relevance of the probabilities being equal, in any case? Does that even impinge on anything I’ve said, or even anything anyone else has said? Not obviously so.
I am responding to Argumzio’s comment in several separate replies. This is my first reply.
I assume that you are referring to Tegmark’s ideas on his multiverse hierarchy and his ultimate ensemble. If I am incorrect, correct me, and point out which of Tegmark’s ideas you are trying to use. Tegmark’s speculative ideas are certainly common knowledge within the physics community. They also fail to justify your claim that MWI implies an omniverse.
Your definition of the omniverse and your subsequent uses of this concept does not clearly indicate whether you mean a Level III multiverse or a Level IV multiverse in Tegmark’s terminology, so I will provide rebuttals to both cases. I shall be referring to Tegmark’s most recent elaborations of his multiverse hierarchy in arXiv:0905.1283v1 (2009).
Suppose that you wish to claim that your omniverse is equivalent to a Level III multiverse. Then you have trouble because Tegmark counts at most a countably infinite number of worlds. In particular, Tegmark states that
Tegmark’s calculations for this are in Footnote 5 on p. 4. The obvious extension of this calculation (by scaling the temperature) shows that there is a finite number of universes below any temperature. This implies a countable number of universes even if we grant an unbounded temperature, because we can easily get a bijection with a subset of mathbb{N} by enumerating the universes below any arbitrary temperature.
So this does not work.
Suppose that you wish to claim that your omniverse is equivalent to a Level IV multiverse. Then I fail to see where Tegmark claims that MWI implies an omniverse. On the contrary, Tegmark is careful to distinguish between a Level III multiverse (MWI) and a Level IV multiverse.
Furthermore, it is not clear to me how Tegmark’s Level IV multiverse can be equivalent to your omniverse. Tegmark defines the Level IV multiverse as one in which
This is not equivalent to your definition of the omniverse, where
Tegmark makes no mention of events occurring within the Level IV multiverse, while the context within which you defined the omniverse mentions only “events”, not mathematical structures. Nota bene that Tegmark does mention quantum events occurring, but only in the Level III multiverse, which I have already concluded is different from your omniverse.
I no longer believe that you are throwing names of well-known physicists in good faith. Thrice you have done this:
Not once have you provided any reference to go with the names. Of the single reference that you gave in this thread, to The Road to Reality, it was erroneous justification for the word ‘omniverse’ being recognized in mainstream physics.
I welcome any refusal to give arguments that have already been given elsewhere. But if you are going to name names, then provide references. I should not have to say “I assume that you are referring to Tegmark’s ideas on [...]”; I should instead be able to say “I agree with section A in Tegmark (2009), but...”
For what it’s worth, I never downvote replies to my comments; I recognize that this disincentivizes replies. However, I have indeed downvoted your root comment and your replies to Prase.
Well, I certainly consider this my last reply, because 1) I grow weary of this straightforward enough topic, 2) respondents have hitherto been enthralled in a childish, eristically motivated game of serving a slapdash of trivial, illogical, and baseless complaints one after another, 3) my posts have been consistently down-voted, which I find highly annoying, and 4) my grasp of the subject – and general familiarity with (and understanding of) the connections between the concepts omniverse (from omnium=multiverse), MW, QM, probability states, and the infinitary conclusion that is obtained by noting the (well-established) opinion that we live in an inflationary universe (that may well be eternally inflationary) – has no need of a “well-reasoned” or even “pursuasive” (an interesting way to move the goal posts, I might add) justification, insofar as there is a body of literature out there that suggests the pertinence and correctness of the answer I provided (which I never said was the true, in-your-face-clear-as-day answer).
(FYI: another source, of which I was previously unaware, that raises some of the key points I have is Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, p. 181 onward. It does so in a largely jargon-free, not-so-overly-technical manner, so I suppose that should be a relief to LWers.)
Very well. Thank you for letting me write the last word. I shall in time respond briefly to your previous comment—as promised—and also provide a summary of the outstanding issues that you never addressed. Although they will be directed to you, I do not expect any response from you, and I will not consider it a breach of LW etiquette for you to ignore them.
A reasonable sentiment.
Then show these childish and eristic respondents what a mature and sensible argument looks like.
Destroy those trivial, illogical, and baseless complaints with useful, logical, and grounded responses.
If you wish, I am willing to create new accounts and mass upvote your comments if that lessens your annoyance and allows you to continue in this thread.
I am delighted to know that you are an expert.
Oh, certainly. Your grasp of the subject is indeed disconnected from well-reasoned justification.
… I apologize; I was being sarcastic and that was an unfavorable literal reading of what you wrote. You probably meant something like “I don’t need to present ‘well-reasoned’ or even ‘persuasive’ justification here.” In which case I am flabbergasted. Why are you writing here if you are not trying to give well-reasoned arguments? I can understand this if you provide lots of references to well-reasoned arguments that others gave, but you did not; you gave lots of names. Furthermore, you claim technical dominance ([1], [2], [3], [4]), and yet you have not named a single technical paper or survey of the subject; the two references that you gave were both popular science books for a general audience.
I never moved the goalposts. Out of the 729 words in my first reply to you, only 10 words were about your lack of tact (“your tone unnecessarily escalates the hostility in this comment thread”). You then devoted a paragraph to justify your aggressiveness by appealing to non-mammalian readers. In my subsequent reply, I spent only one paragraph out of nine to respond to that, and thenceforth never mentioned it again. Moreover, I never insinuated that your aggression is relevant to the topic at hand—I commented on it because it was relevant to the atmosphere of the discussion, which you were making unnecessarily antagonistic.
You keep running into the goalposts and claim that I moved them.
See my comments (both in this reply and in previous replies) about your reticence to provide references.
To conclude, I apologize for the intellectual gulf between you and me, and I wish you the best of luck in other academic disciplines.
I apply the same policy.