Quantum Physics for/by Dummies

[Since I knew my long-time friend Daniel Dern would have a few things to say about this subject, I asked him in advance. His remarks appear in brackets].

Ask anyone I went to MIT with: I’m not a scientist, even though I did once play one on television. My knowledge of quantum physics and its relationship to the multiverse comes from comic books, science fiction and the popular media. [While many sf writers do study/learn/research physics, lots (notably IMHO in comics and movies) simply use a few convincing words and phrases, plus liberal quantities of "handwavium." I'm also, without any basis, not convinced that today's scientists (physicists and who else?) have any beyond-theoretical knowledge of quantum realms, multiverses, etc. I could be wrong.]

As I understand it, every possible timeline of your life exists simultaneously, as does everyone else’s, producing an infinite number of futures that exist beyond our ability to observe. [Yeah, I concur that that's that's one theory.]

I am reading Rodham, a rollicking re-imagination of the life of Hillary Rodham, had she decided not to marry Bill Clinton. That, combined with a life-long habit of “what if” thinking, and a dim understanding of quantum physics, led me to an interesting tour Sunday night.

I dreamt I did a “fly-over” of a handful of my infinite alternative timelines. [There's bunches of sf stories with this or variants of this as a basis for their plot.] In each case, I could quickly tell which major decision had gone the other way. Man, oh man, there was a great deal of pain bestowed and received on most of those timelines. I’ll spare you the details of my more apocalyptic visions and simply note that it turns out this is the best of all possible timelines. Which is probably what all the other Pauls think of theirs.

The book Rob Nelson: Hacking Reality: Upgrade Your Life From the Inside Out, suggests that you can intentionally hack your timeline; I feel I might have done so with mine. There is certainly a fair amount of science fiction about being flipped from one timeline to another at random. Does anyone out there know if that is actually an event predicted by quantum physics?

Of course, in my crude understanding, anything that can happen will happen, so maybe someday I’ll wake up with my consciousness on a different time line. Kind of like Danny Boyles’ Yesterday. [As with far too many multiverse/timeline stories, Be Careful What You Wish For. I don't know whether there's a zero-sum game aspect to this stuff.]

Comments

[Clark Smith]

I'm fascinated by the notion of the quantum suicide experiment laid out by Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe. The basic idea is that the experimenter is Schroedinger's cat in a many worlds multiverse. He always ends up in the surviving universe, though increasingly bizarre events are necessary to keep him alive, such as a meteorite taking out the machine gun just at the right moment. It wouldn't be pleasant for the infinite number of assistants left behind in the failed worlds, and he'd never be able to report back.