I don’t have any alternatives. But Tegmark’s four levels of multiverse have clarified a suspicion I’ve held for a while. I think it’s a mistake to lean toward this explanation.
This technique of positing multiverses to explain phenomena is just way too easy and too general of a strategy. Take any event for which we have not identified a causal regularity which produces it. Take the appearance of comets in the ancient world. The ancients interpreted these as signals from the gods. But it would be just as easy to say “Oh, there must be alternate earths with each which a different possible sky and we see this sky because we happen to be on this earth”. “Perhaps there are alternate Egypts where the Nile flows over at different times of the year.” Etc.
It’s just too powerful of a tool. You can explain anything this way. Now Tegmark says the first level multiverse has confirming evidence, I suppose I can take his word for it (though after reading some of his stuff I’m still a little confused about how the evidence could falsify all non-multiverse theories). And certainly nothing I’ve said can dismiss the possibility of a multiverse at some level. But the fact that any phenomenon for which we have no other explanation can be explained by claiming that all possibilities come to be means that such explanations shouldn’t be singled out from that whole set of possible explanations that haven’t even been formulated. So you shouldn’t lean toward it. The fact that it is the only explanation you’ve ever heard just means that we are astonishingly far from being able to answer the question.
And yes. I think this is a concern for QM too (that isn’t an endorsement of Copenhagen, though).
Anyway, I’m pretty sure “why is there something rather than nothing” is category error/wrong question territory.
I don’t have any alternatives. But Tegmark’s four levels of multiverse have clarified a suspicion I’ve held for a while. I think it’s a mistake to lean toward this explanation.
This technique of positing multiverses to explain phenomena is just way too easy and too general of a strategy. Take any event for which we have not identified a causal regularity which produces it. Take the appearance of comets in the ancient world. The ancients interpreted these as signals from the gods. But it would be just as easy to say “Oh, there must be alternate earths with each which a different possible sky and we see this sky because we happen to be on this earth”. “Perhaps there are alternate Egypts where the Nile flows over at different times of the year.” Etc.
It’s just too powerful of a tool. You can explain anything this way. Now Tegmark says the first level multiverse has confirming evidence, I suppose I can take his word for it (though after reading some of his stuff I’m still a little confused about how the evidence could falsify all non-multiverse theories). And certainly nothing I’ve said can dismiss the possibility of a multiverse at some level. But the fact that any phenomenon for which we have no other explanation can be explained by claiming that all possibilities come to be means that such explanations shouldn’t be singled out from that whole set of possible explanations that haven’t even been formulated. So you shouldn’t lean toward it. The fact that it is the only explanation you’ve ever heard just means that we are astonishingly far from being able to answer the question.
And yes. I think this is a concern for QM too (that isn’t an endorsement of Copenhagen, though).
Anyway, I’m pretty sure “why is there something rather than nothing” is category error/wrong question territory.