If we’re cosmopolitan, we might expect that the wavefunction of the universe at the current time contains more than just us. In fact, the most plausible state is that it has some amount (albeit usually tiny) of every possible state already.
And so there is no good sense in which time evolution of the universe produces “more” of me. It doesn’t produce new states with me in them, because those states already exist, there’s just probably not much quantum measure in them. And it doesn’t produce new quantum measure out of thin air—it only distributes what I already have.
Not sure if this is the correct place to put this comment, but I think it seems to relate. Layman here with big ideas, and little ability to back it up. Which is why I’m here hoping for some clarity. So anyway, this comment struck a chord with me:
“Probably this view can be drawn from an analogy to the fact that MWI does not violate energy (or mass) conservation. Preumably stuff that matters is made out of stuff, and if the amount of stuff is conserved across time, then (all other things being equal) the sum total of what matters must be conserved across time.”
Taking into account that superposition might create discrepancies of relative location locally when instances of, say myself doing slightly different actions, are superimposed over one another if all possible worlds occupy the same space only in different dimensions, but not at different times, is it possible that it is the elusive ‘dark matter’ that accounts for the mass of the other worlds?
If we can only measure the arrangement of matter in the universe one instance at a time, yet the entirety of the mass of the Universe exists all at the same time just distributed equally among the various ‘branches’ of all possible worlds superimposed on top of each other, then it seems as though all the other worlds mass would seem to be ‘unmeasurable’ in this instance even as we can measure the mass in this world.
If we’re cosmopolitan, we might expect that the wavefunction of the universe at the current time contains more than just us. In fact, the most plausible state is that it has some amount (albeit usually tiny) of every possible state already.
And so there is no good sense in which time evolution of the universe produces “more” of me. It doesn’t produce new states with me in them, because those states already exist, there’s just probably not much quantum measure in them. And it doesn’t produce new quantum measure out of thin air—it only distributes what I already have.
Thanks, that’s a nice framing.
Not sure if this is the correct place to put this comment, but I think it seems to relate. Layman here with big ideas, and little ability to back it up. Which is why I’m here hoping for some clarity. So anyway, this comment struck a chord with me:
“Probably this view can be drawn from an analogy to the fact that MWI does not violate energy (or mass) conservation. Preumably stuff that matters is made out of stuff, and if the amount of stuff is conserved across time, then (all other things being equal) the sum total of what matters must be conserved across time.”
Taking into account that superposition might create discrepancies of relative location locally when instances of, say myself doing slightly different actions, are superimposed over one another if all possible worlds occupy the same space only in different dimensions, but not at different times, is it possible that it is the elusive ‘dark matter’ that accounts for the mass of the other worlds?
If we can only measure the arrangement of matter in the universe one instance at a time, yet the entirety of the mass of the Universe exists all at the same time just distributed equally among the various ‘branches’ of all possible worlds superimposed on top of each other, then it seems as though all the other worlds mass would seem to be ‘unmeasurable’ in this instance even as we can measure the mass in this world.
We’re pretty sure dark matter is just stuff that doesn’t interact much except through gravity (see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rNFzvii8LtCL5joJo/dark-matters ). And we think we know how gravity behaves with quantum mechanics when gravity is weak (though we have experiments set to test what we think we know, see https://www.newscientist.com/article/free-fall-experiment-test-gravity-quantum-force/ ).