Ruminations on multiverses; Another view (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 23:10 (2793 days ago) @ David Turell

Basically not worth anything as a theory, but it helps avoid theologic questions:-http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/the-multiverse-as-imagination-killer/497417/-"It might be true. I'm not really interested in the science of multiverse theory so much as its impact on the way we think about ourselves, but it helps to state the problem. That problem is wave function collapse. At a quantum level, particles don't exist as solid objects in space but as probability waves describing the various positions that could potentially be occupied. This is demonstrated by the famous double-slit experiment: set up a laser to fire electrons one by one at a screen through a metal plate with two slits, and then see where they land. If each electron were to pass through one slit or another, you'd get two straight bands of light; instead, you get a pattern of rippling bands. Interference—as if rather than one particle, there had been two waves. The electrons have passed through both slits, simultaneously. However, if you set up a recording device to monitor the slits themselves, the wave function collapses back into solidity: all that's observed is one electron passing through one slit.-"The hidden question: who decides which slit?-"In his 1951 book Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, the German academic Karl Heim gave us a perfectly workable answer: God did it. The Almighty, in His infinite benevolence, carefully tends to the waveform collapse of every particle, working on the tiniest levels to create a world kinder to human life.-"Heim's work has been enormously influential in the field of theology, but for some reason it's generally rejected by the scientific community. Instead, thousands of physicists—big names like Stephen Hawking (who called it ‘trivially true'), Brian Greene, and Neil deGrasse Tyson included—pay lip service to the many-worlds interpretation: the particle still passed through both slits; one here, and one in another universe, created especially for the occasion. It certainly sounds more scientific than Heim's theory, which tries to shoehorn a Bronze Age concept into an increasingly inhospitable reality. The only snag is that there's actually very little difference. There's no way we could ever carry out any experiment to test for the multiverse's existence in the world, because it's not in our world. It's an article of faith, and not a very secure one. What's more likely: a potentially infinite number of useless parallel universes, or one perfectly ordinary God?-***-"The multiverse is a prop, a way to explain away things that can't otherwise be explained."-Comment: Faith in multiverses or faith in God. I don't see another choice.