If Everett’s many worlds theory is true, there is an infinite (or at least very large) number of parallel versions of ourselves that branch off from us each time we make a choice.
If decisions in the brain are affected by quantum mechanics, our choices also affect the choices of our parallel selves. This means that if we drive recklessly rather than cautiously, for example, we are causing unnecessary suffering in other worlds.
Another disturbing implication is that even our thoughts can have negative moral consequences in other worlds. For example, if we hate somebody or even just think negative things about them, it increases the likelihood that a parallel version of ourselves will harm or even murder a parallel version of that person.
On the other hand, if we have positive thoughts about people we are giving our parallel future selves an incentive to help others.
And no, I am not high lol. It’s just interesting to consider.
You’re only responsible for your own spacetime slice.
Anyway, whatever power you have to do extra harm in an expanded scenario, you neccesarily have equally extra power to repair or do good. So it tends to cancel out.
Also, some models interpret many worlds not as choices creating new branches, but instead as simply navigating preexisting territory of everything possible.
But regardless, if you haven’t already explored at least an overview of the various ethical philosophies already available for the conventional worldview, adding complexity is a questionable strategy.
Your driving is not a two-valued issue. The universe doesn’t pay attention to you. Everett’s work applies at the quantum level, where objects in superposition take a value upon observation (loosely speaking). That your decision to drive fast or slow or go through a red light creates a new world isn’t a scientific notion in any way. It may not even be philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:
In short, don’t worry about the ethical implications. There aren’t any.
I think you’re misunderstanding how parallel universes work.
They don’t arise in response to your actions. You don’t make a good universe appear by making a bad choice or vice versa. The theory is that there are some universes where you made a good choice and some universes where you made a bad choice - but they all have their own independent existences.
If you want to interpret superposition as there being many parallel “worlds” (I think this is misleading terminology), then, the way they are defined, there is no interaction based on your choices or anything else among distinct “worlds”, therefore your question is moot.
The different “worlds” merely correspond, for instance, to different possible results of a measurement. There isn’t any sci-fi alternate world in the sense you are thinking of.
Take basic conservation laws like mass, energy, charge, etc. A universe splits and now there’s double of everything. One “explanation” is that the new universes get a proportional share (based on the probabilities) of the original amount. Um, given the incalculably immense number of splits that take place every micro second, all those resulting universes don’t get much. To wave it away as “so new stuff is created” is basically a religious explanation, not a scientific one.
Then there’s distance and effects. A universe has two splitting events (A and B) at about the same time some distance apart. 4 universes ensue. But “about” the same time" is one of those classic it-doesn’t-work-that-way aspects of Relativity. The resulting universes differ based on whether A occurred before B or not. Multiply that by the jillions of such events happening all the time and it makes keeping a database consistent look mega-trivial by comparison.
For me, it’s not even a good enough idea to qualify for bad Science Fiction.
This seems to be a very reasonable complaint. But the complaint is against the very core idea of Many Worlds. Thus it is irrelevant to this thread, because this thread accepts Many Worlds as a given, and then asks about its ethical implications.
In short, if there are an infinite number of existences, then there is always at least one in which you are still alive. With infinite possibilities, even when you’re very old, there will always be a universe in which you survive the next moment (or hour, or year, or decade, etc.), in addition to all the universes in which you cease to exist. It’s been hypothesized that it’s impossible for someone to observe their own death, and thus they will always experience one of the universes in which they are still alive.
If so, that means that all of us will experience a universe in which we live forever. The ramifications of such existence are almost too huge to contemplate. It means that there’s a universe out there in which Hitler is still alive, but it also means there are universes out there in which all of his victims survived to dance on his grave.
Although I share your incredulity, I’m not really seeing any more substantial objection here than an argument from incredulity. Pretty much everything about QM is so obviously ridiculous that it can’t possibly be right, but for all the evidence. So I’m not sure that’s it’s safe to reject MWI on that basis.
Several surveys indicate that a majority of experts in the field favor MWI as the most natural interpretation of QM. There is no technical violation of conservation laws, obviously it’s consistent with all experimental evidence, just like all interpretations. But there’s much greater controversy about the metaphysical interpretation (if any) of the alternate “worlds”.
David Deutsch is a strong advocate of the metaphysical reality of all the multiple universes. He’s well worth reading on this and many other subjects. With regard to your intuitive problem with apparent violation of conservation laws - one formulation of his intuitive reasoning is that we can in principle (and perhaps before too long in practice) construct a quantum computer with greater computational power than a classical computer that used the entire energy resources of one universe. The output of this computation would surely be considered metaphysically real. Given that, where did this computation happen if only one universe is “real”?
Leading on from that is perhaps the best thought experiment ever devised, since it’s a thought experiment about a thought experiment. Suppose we develop a conscious machine AI, and run it on such a quantum computer. Would there be some sense in which it might be aware of all the alternate “worlds” fundamentally involved in carrying out its cognition?
The sentence I bolded is not true. It’s not even meaningful. There are no proportions involved. One “world” has everything with the one quantum result in a “yes.” The other “world” has everything with the one quantum result in a “no.” This satisfies the quantum equations perfectly.
I agree this makes no intuitive sense, and is impossible to visualize. Unfortunately for humans, the universe doesn’t care about your incredulity any more than it cares whether you make a right turn or a left turn at 11th st.
I don’t think that’s at all what “many worlds” means, though. If it is, I would like to hear how one gets that stuff by looking at Schrödinger’s equation. The many classical “worlds” superimpose in a (possibly weird, it is true, thus all the interesting experiments) way to produce one (1) real world. Hitler is dead and not in a cat state…
It seems to me that OP condition of assuming the many world theory is actually a red herring. The real issue at stake is determinism. In the many worlds frame work, I don’t decide whether to go fast or slow, I decide both In some universes I decide to go fast and in some I decide to go slow (in the vast majority I decide to do neither since I don’ exist). What I perceive as deciding to drive slow is actually just my observing that in the universe I inhabit was one of that I went slow. But the same dilemma can be arranged without resorting to the many universes, but just saying that the only universe that exists is the one I observe, but that my decision was governed by a combination of quantum chance and deterministic physical laws.
Without meaning to threadshit, what does all that even…try to mean?
Say that John Doe commits a murder. He then gets sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole and spends the rest of his life behind bars.
What does it mean for John Doe to have “created multiple universes” through his actions? The victim is irrecoverably dead. Doe is also irrecoverably behind bars. He can say “I made multiple universes!” as many times as he wants, but he’s still in prison, and his victim is still dead. He can’t jump to another universe in which he’s *not *in prison and his victim is *not *dead, any more than he can teleport from here to Neptune.
What’s the **practical **implication of this notion of multiple universes? None. Nothing.
It’s just one hypothesis based on the “many worlds” interpretation. Nothing more than a hypothesis, but I think it’s a particularly interesting one (in fact, I wrote a short story about it).
It’s not necessarily true (just a hypothesis), but consider it like this.
If there are infinite universes out there, then 100 years after you’re born, there are some in which you’re still alive. A year later, there are still some in which you’re still alive. Same goes for another year later. And another. Etc. Even when you get to 130 years after you’re born, there’s still some non-zero number of universes out there in which you’re alive. Maybe it’s because of some technological/pharmaceutical breakthrough that’s keeping you alive that only occurred in these particular universes, or maybe it’s just blind luck and you’re pushing the extremes of human longevity, but there’s a non-zero chance that your organs just kept pumping along and keeping you alive. Keep adding seconds, or minutes, or hours, or even years, and there’s still some non-zero chance that 131-year-old-you hasn’t died yet. Maybe at the 200 year point, it’s just a brain-in-a-robot, or something like that. But there still could be a universe with some sort of living version of you. And so on.
I think that’s different than a letter turning up in pi.
But it must be added that this only excludes impossible universes. There’s a well known principle usually attributed to Gell-Mann that everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.
