#38 – Reject the Multiverse: taking wave function collapse seriously

In episode 38 of the quantum consciousness series, Justin Riddle takes on the concept of the multiverse and provides arguments for why he thinks we live in a single universe. The concept of the multiverse arose from the recognition that at the fundamental level quantum systems are splitting into different possible futures. This split in space-time reality if taken at face value implies that the universe is splitting into multiple parallel universes in which slightly different events take place. However, quantum mechanics is also faced with a measurement process by which these parallel universes are destroyed and “collapsed” down to a single reality of what actually happens. This duality between a superposition of multiple possible realities and a measurement that reduces the probability space down to a single universe is the fundamental mystery at the heart of quantum mechanics. The tricky bit is that we live in a culture that more readily accepts the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics and is hesitant to dive into the murky depths of wave function collapse theories. For example, Roger Penrose describes a mechanism why which wave function collapse occurs at a specific threshold because these parallel universes in possibility space are unstable and collapse. This “objective reduction” theory of wave function collapse is still mostly considered as a fringe and unsubstantiated theory (although the times are slowly changing). To assert the universe and reject the multiverse is to take wave function collapse seriously!

As we enter the quantum information age, society will start to get used to thinking about a digital information state that is chosen as input into a quantum computer, then from this state a wave function evolves and these possible realities interfere with each other. Finally, the system is measured again and digital information is extracted from the system. Computation in the future will be a hybrid of digital and quantum computation in a dualistic interplay. From this perspective, the idea that each of those possibilities is dissociated from each other into a multiverse just does not fit with the idea of interference patterns and quantum computation. If all the suboptimal solutions of a quantum computation are different parallel universe that never interact, then this undermines the concept of quantum computation.

Finally, at the core of the multiverse is the idea that everything is random and nothing happens for a reason. We just happen to be in the universe that worked out despite countless failed universes all around us. This mechanism of action at the core of the idea is a bit too overly simple and reverts into more nihilistic physicalism. From a human outlook, the multiverse is another tenant of nihilism that challenges the idea that your choices matter, you are real, and there is something meaningful occurring in the universe.

~~~ Timestamps ~~~
0:00 Introduction
3:55 Treating superpositions as objectively real
12:20 Multiverse is mainstream
17:40 Quantum computation utilizes collapse
22:15 Relying on random
28:53 Conformal cyclic cosmology
37:20 Being a human in the universe

Music licensed from and created by Baylor Odabashian. BandCamp: @UnscrewablePooch

[realdarkoarts]

Been going through these in order over the last couple months, this one was definitely top three so far

[carl]

Let me try to debunk the multiverse. In the famous double slit experiment, if we fire 1 photon at a time through one of the 2 slits, then there still forms an interference pattern after many photons. Why? Science says the photon is actually at all possible paths at once. The photon is temporarily seen as a probabilistic wave function. As such it also passes both slits at once, and afterwards interacts with itself forming an interference pattern. But this is also the foundation of the multiverse theory. Each of all those paths of the photon in its probabilistic wavefunction are actual separate realities that split off of the initial photon. BUT... then how are they supposed to interact with eachother, and form that significant interference pattern, when this is the exact moment they split off into seperate universes, separate!!! Quantum theory's multiverse seems to contradict itself right out of the box guys....

[ehtvah]

Great fun to listen to, I'm not well-versed on these topics so take these comments with a large grain of 'this guy has no idea what he's talking about' salt:

The argument at 27:31 assumes that you *aren't* those ones in the universes being destroyed - as far as i can tell, your reasoning is because you don't *feel* like you're in a branch where the universe is being destroyed? If your argument, through negation or affirmation relies on assigning probability to the likelihood of you being right here and now, you'll need to give me a vague jist as to what you consider *not* you.

The quantum computation point I didn't follow - it also seems to invoke the above of 'so you're telling me i just so happen to find myself where i find myself? what about where i don't find myself' and that it would not be a 'computationally effective solution', again I'm not sure what is meant by this

_'From a human outlook, the multiverse is another tenant of nihilism that challenges the idea that your choices matter, you are real, and there is something meaningful occurring in the universe.'_

Please hear the following out even if it seems like woo at first: notice that you can experience multiple senses at once. Like sight and sound, the multiple somatic sensations in parallel. Now think a happy thought and notice there are corresponding sensations. It might be hard to notice at first. Now a sad one, and that also has corresponding sensations. Now, this is really quite tricky, but try thinking a thought and seeing if that thought is being processed in sensations. To get right to the punchline, every single thing you experience is in the language of these sensations, including conceptual notions such as what is real and what is not, what is you and what is not (yes, they're all just 'feelings'!). It is, in some sense, an information synaesthesia - in which you become markedly good at causal inference because you clump together things that are causal as singular things in and of themselves, and then clump those into singular things, this is relevant because you can notice that you can detach the informational content from some expression of sensations and see the de-clumping in action - as a computational analogue you can think of a token of c++ as being a clump of asm, and a token of asm as a clump of binary, then hardware and so on, and you can run asm without c if desired.

But an epistemic problem occurs when thinking about the functionality of an agent whose existence is entirely predicated on updating causal connections. If the agent has foundational erroneous beliefs that were assumed axiomatically for all other connections, will that agent be inclined to even consider the possibility of said beliefs being wrong? No, it (seemingly) holds no utility - it seems that if true, they break down on a fundamental level and thus they can reason that whatever they're experiencing right now, even if by some accounts is a delusion, can be compatiblistically taken as what it must require to be the epistemic agent they think they are but are too scared to inspect - some necessary naivety. Notice how the belief destroys itself, it contends some privileged freedom of movement so long as it does not move where its not allowed.

The apex of meditation (Śūnyatā in buddhism) kindof reifies the resolution to this problem by holding the assembly process in awareness long enough to see the inherent silliness in thinking of models as a well-defined things that can simply prove themselves booleanically one way or the other, and hold some sort of privileged nature if the agent just refrains from decomposing their constituent parts. These guys are the happiest and most moral guys you'll ever meet and they'll seemingly mention that they don't feel like they're some singular epistemic agent but emote the feeling that would translate to your 'maximum agency'. Maximum agency and no agency are the same thing in the limit, you don't even need to predict and update on will happen next - you are what happens next.

This is to say, if you are a causally-inferential agent that 'feels' information - you'll feel neg-value at prospected computationally expensive updates. Hence your prospected feeling towards the seemingly choiceless, epistemic agentless, multiverse being coupled with that of your feeling of meaning and operational conduct.

[thoughts? is this jargon? would love other opinions on this]

[DistantTower]

Keep working, voices like yours are needed in this space, and are very helpful for dilletantes like myself who have impressions that something is wrong with ideas like random chance being the core driving force of reality but lack the training to coherently or mathematically make the case.

[sterlingcooley]

Yay ! New Justin Riddle video - and an awesome topic. Thanks homie !!

[MetaChemist]

Really hoping to continue seeing more consistent content as I’ve discovered your podcasts right around episode 37 publication dived in and absolutely love your perspectives. Would love a chance to pick your brain and how this can intersectionality relate to your research and new-age technological complex molecules being physical manifestations of decorated permutations.

[carlsagan]

I find the argument that the multiverse says that reality is governed by random chance to be rather strange. Belief in the Everettian view of quantum mechanics follows specifically from the assumption that there is no random wavefunction collapse, and we exist in the universe we do as living beings because of determinism, because our existence is an inevitable consequence of this universe's physical properties and is forbidden in other universes with different properties. And while I'm very familiar with the sentiment that the vastness of the cosmos makes us small and meaningless, I've always seen it the opposite way. I find the many worlds perspective empowering as it means the universe is larger than we ever imagined, that anything is possible, and for every choice I happen to make I could have and in fact did make the alternative choice, giving me true freedom and making reality maximally interesting. Some philosophers even argue that QM is precisely the reason why we can have free will in a deterministic universe. I guess that just shows how much this stuff depends on perspective.

I also don't understand why the view that advocates the objectivity of wavefunction collapse is being characterized as meaningful and nonrandom, when it is precisely this view that argues that the core processes of physics are random and undetermined. It's not like you can use the process of wavefunction collapse to write Shakespeare any better than flipping a coin. Also, I'm not aware of any scientific evidence that intentionality can affect random events like wavefunction collapse, all I know of is a plethora of negative results from research into parapsychology, so what role does consciousness have here? How is wavefunction collapse in this model anything but pure randomness? Perhaps I'm just not familiar with Orch OR, and there are good answers to these points. Also, I would push back against the belief that the many worlds interpretation or some other philosophical view will hamper scientific progress in quantum computing, as examples like David Deutsch and Scott Aaronson are abundant.

Finally, I wanted to speak a little bit more about this anthropic principle that we just happen to find ourselves in a universe suitable for us because that's just the way it has to be. While some may see the anthropic principle as a kind of cop out, I fail to see how it's anything more than a simple generalization of the observable fact that there are a near infinity of planets, star systems, and galaxies, the vast majority of which cannot support life or ultimately end up not supporting life. Is it really so strange to think that cosmology isn't all figured out, and the universe is bigger than we currently believe it to be? Isn't this the same situation that scientists have found themselves in for all of history, always being surprised to learn that the evidence supports a reality larger than we previously realized? Also, if you accept the empirical findings that space is flat (and hence the simplest model is that space is infinite), this isn't much of a leap at all: to get a multiverse, just consider other local pockets of spacetime outside of our cosmological horizon that can't communicate with us locally due to the finite time since the big bang.

[mateovncnt]

Dropping sick vids ! Word. Lets localize.

[Dragonface]

I feel like I understand at most 25% of what these videos are saying, but I'm nonetheless very glad I stumbled across this channel :)

[KyeColymore]

I’m on episode 8 of this series after watching your video with andres - was sad to see that you were possibly done until THIS? the quantum computer himself is back

[carl]

When a photon flies from A to B it doesn't 'experience' time. Emittance and absorption happen instantaneously. At least from its relativistic pov. And when 2 identical photon's paths cross, their direction results in an interference pattern. But the trick is the 2 photons don't need to 'meet' in exactly the same time. If their paths cross while they are not yet at their and/or already passed their rendez-vous point, then this still results in interference. Why? Because from the photons' pov the are everywhere along their respective paths at once. So from their perspective they do meet. So this explains the double slit experiment without the need for a multiverse or even a wavefunction. Photons are fired one at a time. But when the first photon is not yet absorbed before the next photons is emitted, although they don't meet, if their paths cross this results in interference. From our human classical perspective this seems to be a retrocausal effect. Maybe other atmospheric "carrier" waves can even intermediate and still cause interference in case the first photon is already absorbed when the next gets emitted, just by crossing both photons' paths, carrying the first photon's influence back in time onto the latter photon.

Similarly quantum computers don't need to execute all possible calculation at once, each in its own separate universe. Instead retrocausal effects can influence from the end of the calculation, which calculation was initially started. So getting the desired outcome instantaneously. That's why the quantum computation system must be 100% isolated "unobserved" so retrocausal influences won't be washed out by normal causal entropic dynamics. But this doesn't imply its internal state is in all possible states at once, the multiverse. No. It's in 1 extremely isolated state, as such the initial state can be influenced by a later state, like with the retrocausal photons in the double slit..

[periurban]

Thanks for this. You speak like I do about these things, almost as if you had read my thoughts!
I was initially a big fan of Penrose's CCC until I realised the timescales he was suggesting. In his scheme each universe would last for trillions (or more) years, the vast majority of which would be empty, awaiting the evaporation of the last black holes - the ones that swallowed everything. Intuitively that seems unlikely, especially since he advocates the idea that there may be messages from the last aeon written into the microwave background.
I'm rather more on-side with Fred Hoyle (who coined the term "big bang"), except that Hoyle had a very naïve view of his steady state universe, where he imagined nucleogenesis being the basis of galaxy and star formation. We have observed so much more than Hoyle imagined, and the universe is so much stranger than anyone from his era could have foreseen.
The significance of recent papers on the nature of cosmic voids, and the idea that we might be inside one, should not be overlooked. Both the red shift and the microwave background are the primary evidence in support of the BB, yet they are in essence the same phenomenon (stretched light) and cannot be used to support each other.
I think it's likely that Einstein's lambda is real (just as its later variant dark energy) but that it does not operate in the way he thought. I think the large scale structures of the universe (voids and cosmic filaments) are the result of the lambda force acting WITHIN the voids. I think lambda is an outwardly expressed very weak force that acts in opposition to gravity, making the voids kind of like bubbles surrounded by gravitational structures.
I think the lambda force is stretching space, just as we see in the red shift and microwave background, but it is countered by the denser areas of the universe where matter congregates, such as in the cosmic filaments. This force will never act within a galactic gravity well, nor between galaxies that are interacting gravitationally, but if we look for it we should find it acting upon gravitational influence at the very edges of the 1.5b light year threshold determined by the inverse square law.
I would love to know whether the structures bordering the voids are moving away from one another as predicted by the expansion theory.
Evidence in support of the role of voids comes from the tiny variance in the background radiation, which is more stretched when coming through nearby voids than it is when passing through denser regions.
I think there is but a single universe, and it is infinite. The background radiation is stretched by its passage through many voids (most of which we cannot see). Were it not so stretched in an infinite universe then the universe would be filled with an infinity of light, and we wouldn't be here to think about it. [We might want to look for a broad scale VLF (radio) presence beyond the CMB.]

[AbhiN_]

Are there any new experiments done to support Orch OR theory. Haven't heard anything new about that in a while.

[InterfaceGuhy]

Hi Justin, Are you following the Transcendent Naturalism series by Henriques and Vervaeke? Would love to chat about syncretizing their ideas with yours

[koalanights]

The many worlds interpretation feels so fun and interesting, but it honestly seems like a desperate attempt to preserve determinism

[chrisconey]

Create all the aspects of the multiverse that you want. Once you are done with that I will draw one giant circle around it all and call that "the universe" i.e. the one container for everything.

[AbhiN_]

I am not sure abou this as I can barely understand the video. (I am 18), but isn't there a phenomenon called Survivorship Bias.

Basically, think about an engineer looking at war planes with bullet holes on the wings and tail. The engineer must figure out where to put armour on the planes. Because the surviving planes have bullet holes on the wings and tail, this means that planes that were shot down had bullet holes elsewhere. Thus you can;t conclude that all planes with bullet holes have them on the wings and tail, because those taht had them elsewhere are lost. Hence, you put armour elsewhere on the plane.

[zetristan]

The multiverse has always been absurd, conceptually. The wavefunction is a complex-number-valued probability distribution. So it's not a superposition of (real-number-valued) real universes - presumably infinitely many, unless one has an artificial non-Lorentz-invariant method of discretizing it: something no-one has ever offered a self-consistent description of.

It's so sad to see the theoretical physics established talkers sell out to the woo.

In this low-integrity culture, maybe we should just invent evocative stories endlessly?...thus also creating the opportunity to keep shattering the lives of people in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, even China eventually...in this universe and a zillion sister universes. How many (sincere) adults do we have anymore?