The multiverse (if it exists) is the set of all numbers from -infinity to infinity.
Discuss. 
- Fnord.
I experienced something like that once at the grocery store, standing in line behind an over-perfumed old woman with a kazillion cans of cat food and a fistfull of coupons.
For some reason, hearing you say that makes me very nervous.
It can’t simply be just the set of numbers stretching off into either end of infinity. That would be only the lineal universe, part of the fabric of time and space that makes up what we’d perceive as a multiverse, were we ever to rise up above it all and be able to see the central focus, ever-turning.
My first thought was “bollocks*” because the (presumably real) numbers -oo to oo is obviously way simpler than the universe. But if you assume the universe is a collection of particles moving continuously (or probability waves, or whatever), you probably could describe it as a single number. But not very interestingly.
*I can’t describe the connotations, but “Nonsense.”
*notes that the Illuminati programming is still working in Prisoner #3052B
<sticks pencil in each nostril and underpants on head>
Bibble.
You may be able to create a one-to-one relationship between the set of universes known as the multiverse and the set of all numbers, in a similar way to proving that all continuums have the same cardinal number, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean that they are isomorphic. Besides, the multiverse could consist of only two universes: this one and one where everybody wears cowboy hats.
There’s no polite way to put it: the thesis in the OP is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Twaddle! Poppycock ‘n’ tommyrot!
Multiverse is merely a subset of poems (and poem-like creatures) with more than one stanza.
Hence being in MPSIMS :rolleyes:
Mr Mercury and I think tt’s much more fun to think of it this way:
If you can imagine it, it’s happening somewhere in the multiverse. I’m not quite sure where we learned it that way, it’s been such a long time, but it lead to The Multiverse Game.
“Do the dishes.”
“I am - somewhere in the multiverse.”
While I think that The Multiverse game is a useful and fun way to approach life, I really don’t get the whole if-you-can-imagine-it bit.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of other yous out there that get it. It’s a big multiverse!
I thought the Crisis destroyed the Multiverse, and nobody remembers it except the Psycho-Pirate!
Anyone?
Bueller?
I can imagine a mulitiverse where I’m the only one.
Are they giving out drugs here and no one has told me?
Maybe, but in KINGDOM, it was brought back under the guise of “Hypertime”, and the son of Superman and Wonder Woman is the the first being capable of understanding and traveling through it.
Heh, maybe - maybe not. But as SuperNova pointed out, this is MSIMS. Not everything here is intended to be taken as hard science. My point, if I have one, is just to generate some interesting philosophical discussion.
Shade comes closest to what I was thinking. It would be more than just a one-to-one mapping (i.e. assigning a number to each universe). Rather, each universe (or each moment of each universe) could be described with complete accuracy by the outcome of a very large number of probabiliities, which in turn can be described by a really big number. It wouldn’t just be an identifier, it would be like a barcode that actually described the whole universe, right down to the state of every particle if you chose to interpret the number that way.
Think about it like this - let’s say you had a computer of infinite capability and you wanted to simulate the multiverse in completely perfect detail. What kind of data set would you need to represent the multiverse? You wouldn’t have to design all of the universes before you created your database. You would just need any arbitrary method of interpretation that accounts for the state of everything, and a set of infinite numbers.
Perhaps Ice Wolf is correct:
But then, to someone stuck in the multiverse, how would you know the difference? Any way that you chose to represnet the multiverse would be indistinguishable from an infinite set of numbers when taken as a whole. Only the magical infinite computer (or God, if you wish to make this theological) would know the difference, but from within the multiverse, you can’t see the puppet strings anyway.
The whole idea got started when I thought - “hmmm, what if you could somehow view the entire multiverse? Imagine what kinds of technological wonders you could “borrow” from universes that had thought up things you never imagined?” But then I realized that viewing the entire multiverse would be no more informative to you than the set of whole numbers. Sure, you might see all kinds of things you never thought of, but you would never when you were being “lied to” by your own frame of reference. It’s like the infinite monkeys analogy - most people don’t realize that infinite monkeys at infinite typwriters would produce a whole lot more than just Shakespeare. They’d eventually produce everything, including a complete description of our universe.