Perhaps attach this to a posts about the rise of Hitler. If you put it here people may think you are a misinformed paranoiac. — Tom Storm

Not at all. "I don't feel like things are different" is a terrible way to evaluate your society's loss of freedom. I'm old enough to remember when the left fought for free speech. Now the left is against free speech. The left used to be for equal opportunity, now they're for racial preferences. The left used to be for integration, now they're for neo-segregation, as in racially separate graduation ceremonies and racially segregated corporate trainings. Yet it doesn't "feel" any different to people. The point that I made is valid, even if seemingly extreme.

And remember: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you.

ps -- A striking illustration of my point is Silicon Valley. When the Internet came into public awareness in the mid-1990's, tech workers and cyberlibertarians thought it would usher in a world of great individuality and human freedom. Fast forward 25 years and it's a tool of massive conformity and leftists censorship. But you only notice it if you've lived through it; and a new generation of Instagram and Facebook users don't even know what cyberlibertarian means, let alone that it was once the great hope of many technologists.

The example I used was extreme, yes. But the point I made is perfectly valid and you should think about it. Maybe things are different in Australia. In the US there is dramatically less freedom than there was 20 or 30 years ago. In fact 9/11 was a turning point in freedom in the US, and not in a good way.

I'm not experiencing any coercion or repression here in Australi — Tom Storm

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022652583X

Most of us have read George Orwell. However, to what extent would it all be so different if it were to become an actual reality? — Jack Cummins

Huxley's Brave New World is the more appropriate model. A population enslaved but distracted by mindless pleasures.

So, it will be interesting to see what people in America think. — Jack Cummins

I'm in America. San Diego to be precise. I don't follow your point.

The Chinese social credit system is most definitely coming to a bankrupt empire near you.

Just this very morning, Janet Yellen called for a global minimum tax rate. The globalists are ascendent and feeling their oats.

https://www.axios.com/janet-yellen-global-minimum-tax-rate-51c7395b-e46a-4a5c-b18b-bdcf5d8bd352.html

Miller never saw the Internet.

They haven’t yet? — Wayfarer

Correct.

Currently, the COVID-19 vaccines are not U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved, but authorized only for emergency use. As an investigational product, the statute governing emergency use authorizations provides that the recipient be advised of his or her option to accept or refuse administration of the vaccine, something a DC District court considered in a 2003 case that ruled against forcing soldiers to take the then-experimental anthrax vaccine ...

This is from an article arguing against vaccine passports on civil liberties grounds. Worth your time to read, slightly (but not completely) off-topic from the specific focus of this thread. Interesting in light of the fact that numerous colleges and universities are requiring vaccines to return to school. There will be litigation no doubt.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/02/vaccine-passports-are-a-serious-threat-to-american-civil-liberties/

Cornell announced today that they're requiring vaccination of all students returning in the fall.

https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2021/04/cornell-university-will-require-students-returning-in-fall-to-have-covid-19-vaccinations.html

It's free. — James Riley

So's syphilis. Without taking a position on the covid vaccine, what kind of reason is that to do anything?

(ps -- Yes I know you were responding to someone who complained that they didn't have insurance to pay for the shot. Just drive-by posting tonight.)

people being more ignorant than say 10 or 20 years ago? — Tim3003

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed."

-- Mark Twain, allegedly

It seems to me that life is much more enjoyable and less burdensome when one is not afraid of when it may end. — darthbarracuda

The vampire novels of Anne Rice explore the implications and downsides of eternal youth. In the beginning, the novels portray the condition as romantic and erotic. By the end, the novels feature an unending procession of mindless savagery and nihilism.

I don’t have the physics background of fishfry — Possibility

I know virtually nothing of physics. Watch a lot of Youtube videos, that's all. Would not want to give any other impression.

I want to know if data has been imprinted on a photon that we can glean after the fact. — James Riley

It seems unlikely, as I and others have already noted. The only attributes a photon has are its wavelength and frequency (which are inversely related, so there's only actually one attribute). It has no other attributes that can be altered to store any other information.

I do not know, other than the large, overwhelming majority of rooms in the world don't have photodetectors in them, unless sofas are not different, in which case can we do with a sofa that which we can do with a photo detector? And, how far back could we go? Could we see what happened in that room 100 years ago? — James Riley

I suppose light jiggles the electrons in a sofa in such a way that a sufficiently sensitive detector could tell. But I'm sure it's not possible in practice. Why are you asking? This is far from your original question. You asked if we could imprint data on a photon. Now you're asking if we can use a sofa to detect the past presence of a photon.

In theory I don't think there's anything fundamentally different between a photodetector and a sofa, except that photodetectors are especially sensitive to impinging photons and sofas aren't.

But it's not actually the momentary impingement of a photon on a photodetector that allows us to record the arrival of the photon. Rather, a photodetector turns the photon's energy into electrical energy that can be stored in a memory chip. Sofas presumably don't turn light energy into electricity. On the other hand plants do turn light energy into chlorophyll, so perhaps in principle we could make cameras out of plants. These are interesting questions, perhaps asking on physics.stackexchange would generate some good answers. We really need a physicist at this point.

ps -- Ok suppose we could focus light onto a plant leaf. After a period of time, would the leaf have a different color or appearance where the light was focused? Or does the light energy get diffused and the chlorophyll spread around evenly? Now we need a biologist.

Where light is streaming into a room and no one is there to photograph it today. The next day, a scientist shows up and starts collecting the heat energy from the sofa — James Riley

In what fundamental way is the sofa different from a photodetector in this scenario?

I honestly don't know. But if it is, can it be captured after the fact (i.e. not in the instant as part of a picture)? — James Riley

After which fact? Its wavelength can be measured by a light-sensitive detector like the one you carry around in your smartphone.

might leave a "brown" finger print on the photon — James Riley

Isn't that just the wavelength or frequency of the photon?

Could a photon, now or sometime in the future be found to have any data imprinted upon it recording all that which it has "hit" or ricocheted off of? — James Riley

We already do that. Each photon has a particular wavelength. We record the wavelength of a photon arriving at a digital sensor. That's how photography works.

In practice, sensors aren't sensitive enough to capture the arrival of a single photon. A consumer-grade digital sensor, like the one in your camera or phone camera, registers a hit when a bunch of photons show up. The sensor records their wavelength and plays it back to you in the form of a photograph.

If you're asking if we could store additional info besides wavelength, it seems unlikely. We'd have to hit the photon with energy, changing its wavelength. One photon is identical to any other except for its wavelength, there's no way to add information to it as far as I know, but I could be wrong.

But of course we can also just put a shutter in front of a lightsource and send a message in Morse code based on the light being on or off. They did that in the old days between ships at sea, before radio.

And of course there's optical fiber, which transmits digital signals in essentially the same way.

cYou're such a child at times. Red herring and all that.[/quote]

I asked you to name a country in which socialism has done better for its people in terms of human rights and economic well being, and you call me a child. Is that because you have no answer? Stalin and Mao are the datapoints of anti-capitalism in the 20th century. Your argument is stuck with them because they are what actually happened when communism took over countries. Look at the incredible ethnic diversity of the US. Look past the nonsense about this being a racist country. It's the least racist, most diverse country in the history of the world. Why? Because capitalists sell to anyone. The profit motive causes them to look past ideology to see markets. You honestly don't see this?

Alleviating world poverty would cost about 1% of GDP of Western countries. — Benkei

How so? Run me the numbers. I don't believe you. Are you saying we should just mail a percentage of our GDP to the poor people? Lay out your scenario, not just a slogan.

If it was profitable, it would've been done by now. It isn't profitable because the system of capitalism requires the exploitation of natural resources (hello climate crisis) and people. All capitalism provide a mechanism to move wealth from one place to another or from future times to present times, without any consideration for ethics. — Benkei

And how exactly are you planning to feed, clothe, and shelter the seven billion? Be specific. Or are you one of these globalists who dreams of massive population reduction? Kill a few billion poor and the world's problems go away. That's the actual dream of many radical environmentalists. Is that where you're coming from?

Whatever positive developments arose while capitalism spread was a consequence of social policy (eg. wealth redistribution, healthcare, worker protections, minimum wages ,etc.) and industrial and technical developments specifically leading to increased personal wealth. The washing machine created time for women to be productive in other areas, the combustion and steam engine allowed you to travel larger distances to get better jobs etc. etc. Capitalism has zero to do with poverty reduction. — Benkei

You liked it better when women stayed home and used scrub boards? You are not making rational sense.

The problem with people like you is that they don't stand in the way of "more capitalism" at the expense of people and the environment because you actually believe capitalism solves social problems without realising it causes most of them. — Benkei

I ask again: How are you going to feed, clothe, and shelter the seven billion? What system would you like to rule the world with. The trouble with "people like you" is that in the name of compassion you produce misery but feel good about yourselves.

And "people like you" are unable to hold an intellectual conversation without personalizing it You can have the last word. I'm out. Get some fucking manners and learn to argue with your mind and not your tantrums. I don't like personalized insult-fests and apparently that's all you've got.

Yes imaginary, fictive, nonexistent things do have properties: imaginary, fictive, nonexistent properties. They also have real properties; the properties of being imaginery, fictive, and nonexistent. — Janus

Well by gosh it's nice to have some agreement around here. :-)

You know that's a great point. Even imaginary entities have real properties. What does @Banno think about that?

Why should I remind you of the context when it's readily available above? If you would've read what I wrote instead of imagining what you think I said, we could have an actual conversation. So the argument you constructed in your head is clearly making several leaps of logic that cannot be derived from what I said. — Benkei

I believe that I lumped your response in with someone else's, and my remarks were probably aimed more at the other poster than you.

I do take issue with the fairy tale that capitalism lifted people out of poverty. It's just propaganda, which tot apparently believe. — Benkei

So whose system do you prefer? Stalin's, or Mao's? Or is Castro's impoverishment of Cuba more to your liking? I'll give Castro one thing, he murdered orders of magnitude fewer people than Stalin or Mao.

I'll take the American system of the 20th century, warts and all.

I would argue that despite capitalism several social and industrial developments, and indeed policy decisions, caused a reduction in poverty. Simply put, it's not profitable to reduce poverty so capitalism doesn't cause it. — Benkei

It's extremely profitable to increase the economic well being of your potential customers. So you're factually wrong on this point. Postwar capitalism, Levittown, See the USA in your Chevrolet, all of that. Customers with money to buy stuff from corporations. Name a single country whose economic system works better. The problem with socialism is the truly awful economic and human rights record of every country that ever tried it.

I'm not defending whatever happened in the past 30 years. What did happen was that the globalists decided to sell out the US manufacturing base to China and hollow out the heartland of this country. Hence Trump and his deplorables. And hence the next Trump who will have a smoother personality and won't rage-tweet so much.

And may I note, in case this point isn't clear: Hence Bernie. The right wing populist Trump and the left wing populist Sanders together have far FAR more support in this country than the neocon/neoliberal center. In fact my idea, which was too brilliant to actually happen, was for Trump to dump Pence and offer Bernie the vice presidency. A Trump/Bernie ticket would have taken fifty states.

Of course you will argue (correctly) that it's capitalism that decided to ship the heartland jobs abroad. That's late-state capitalism, or global capitalism. Marx was right about that. But for a while, capitalism worked great. And socialism never worked and never will.

So, existence would be not just the marbles (or the things that exist), but it should also include their pattern of change. In other words, existence is a pattern of change of things that exist (if there are not things that exist, there is not existence; and if there is not a pattern of change, there is not existence either). — Daniel

What happens if you lose your marbles?

There wasn’t one, rather, because it didn’t succeed. There can be no doubt about the intention of the insurrectionist: they were ready to hang Pence and Pelosi and any other politician who smelled of anti-Trumpism, including McConnell. — Todd Martin

Literally? You're insane. And what's happened to liberals, one of which I used to be, is a tragedy.

That wasn't a drive-by shot? — Banno

It was a drive-by counterexample to a statement that seemed to stand on its own without the need for the surrounding context. There was nothing pejorative about it. Whereas, by way of explaining to you why I lost interest in the thread, I was obliged to cast shade on the OP's thesis when in fact I haven't been engaging him on the subject.

OK. I was using "exists" as it was used in the OP, following on that conversation., — Banno

Ok, so you are saying that my remark was inapt because there was a particular context, which I had not taken the trouble to find out about. You may be right. But (flogging a long deceased equine) you did say that time and space have properties hence exist, and I did supply a counterexample, albeit a vacuous one. So I don't actually agree that I was wrong. Unless jumping ignorantly into the middle of conversations I haven't been following is wrong, which it probably is, and which I often do. Is that what you're saying? (Flagellates departed nag harder)

You bought something in from another domain. — Banno

Guilty as charged I suppose. Should I throw myself on the mercy of the court?

Sure, I might better have said space and time are actual because their properties are actual, — Banno

In which case you would have defeated my counterexample, negating my need to post it. So it's a good thing I mentioned it.

but I don't think that would have been understood by Lavender, int he context. — Banno

LOL. Ok. I'm all out of steam here. They can bury that horse now.

ps -- You know it occurs to me that when I do make a drive-by comment, I generally say, "I haven't followed the thread, but ..." This time I didn't. I shall put in the necessary correction. I can see that I generated confusion without meaning to.

SO there is a need to keep track of the domain - universe of discourse - in which our conversation occurs. — Banno

Of course. The truth value of a proposition always depends on the model. "5 has a multiplicative inverse" is true in the rationals, false in the integers, true in the integers mod 7, false in the integers mod 10.

(Edit: Just to be clear... your intention is not to defend the OP, is it? This is a side issue, yes? Or do you think this approach might save "Existence Is Infinite"?) — Banno

I don't even know which thread this is, I didn't check. I happened to wander by and saw you claim that space and time exist because they have properties. I gave a counterexample. That's as far as it went.

Is this the "existence is infinite" thread? The OP's thesis is "not even false" in my opinion, too full of woo-itude. I gave up after he admitted that he wasn't talking about mathematical infinity but failed to provide an alternative definition. But truly it's not fair for me to take a drive-by potshot at the OP, who seems amiable and sincere and certainly has not provoked me in any way. I only mention the OP to say that I have no interest in the thread at all; but would indeed invite @daniel j lavender to supply his definition of infinity so that I can understand what he means by the word.

This is a side issue, yes? — Banno

As General Murray says to Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia: "It's a side show OF a side show."

Well, there is an x such that x is purple and flies and is an elephant. — Banno

Existential quantifiers are completely different. The statement "A purple flying elephant is purple, is an elephant, and flies," is true. It's vacuously true. But "There is a purple flying elephant" is false if the universe of discourse is the world. Huge difference.

In the universe of the positive integers, the statement, "There is an even prime greater than 2" is meaningful, and false. The statement, "All even primes greater than 2 are purple flying elephants," is meaningless and true.

Guth, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resorts to freaks of nature to pose this “measure problem.” “In a single universe, cows born with two heads are rarer than cows born with one head,” he said. But in an infinitely branching multiverse, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?” — RogueAI

I take this as a datapoint in favor of my thesis. Guth is a heavy hitter, a physics superstar in both the physics and the popular communities. He's a Big Cheese. And he hasn't spend five minutes -- five seconds -- considering the implications of what he says. Nor is he aware that there's no uniform probability measure on a countable set. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. You know there are infinitely many multiples of 1000000000 and infinitely many positive integers that aren't multiples of 1000000000, but we can still calculate their respective asymptotic densities (which isn't the same thing as a probability measure). This is not a deep point, it's very trivial. In aa countably infinite multiverse, two-headed cows are like multiples of 1000000000 and one-headed cows are like all the other numbers. What of it? It's shallow masquerading as deep. (I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at the world. "Old man yells at cloud.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_density

By the way the asymptotic density of the primes (of which there are infinitely many) in the positive integers is zero. Mathematicians have thought about these things. Only the physicists pretend that their ignorance is deep thought.

Superstar physicists who don't know sh*t about the mathematics of infinity and haven't thought about what they're saying. I was shocked when I saw Susskind do it, now I'm no longer surprised. It is in fact a common pattern. And pop-sci reporters write this stuff down and then the general public absorbs these confusions.

Thanks for that link, I will definitely read the article and probably get my blood pressure raised.

Fish, if you want to have a proper discussion about non-actuals, then why not start a thread? Or we could have a debate - that would be fun, and I have a bit of time over the next couple of weeks. — Banno

I glanced at the SEP article on properties. Way above my pay grade, philosophy-wise. I haven't been following this thread, I only glanced at it, noticed your comment, and thought about purple flying elephants. I haven't any thoughts about the matter any deeper than that. But if there's a good argument that I'm wrong, that purple flying elephants don't in fact have properties, I'd be interested to know about it. Does Ahab have a leg made of whalebone? Or not, by virtue of the fact that he doesn't actually exist? That's my only other deep thought about the matter.

Walk me through the argument you constructed in your head — Benkei

You say that like it's a bad thing. In which body part do you construct your arguments? Sorry couldn't resist that one.

where I point to other possible causes, without ever mentioning communism or socialism, as an argument for communism or socialism? — Benkei

Can you remind me of the context? I was just struck by the anti-capitalist sentiment expressed here, such as the idea that even though capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, that's no point in its favor because that's not its primary intent. I can't fathom the motive of such an argument, especially in contrast to the murderous and impoverishing reigns of Stalin and Mao. I don't remember if this particularly pertains to anything you said. If not, no offense given; and if it does, no offense intended.

Space and time have properties. Hence they exist. — Banno

Purple flying elephants have properties. They're purple, they're elephants, and they fly. But they don't exist. Even nonexistent things have properties.

My background isn't math, so I can't contribute too much along these lines. The other day, I was reading about proposals to take the infinitely large set of worlds and partition it in some non-arbitrary way so that probabilities can be assigned, but I can't find it now. — RogueAI

Let me know if you find it, I'd be interested. There is no uniform probability distribution on a countable set. That is, there is no way to assign probabilities to, say, the positive integers, in such a way that each one has an equal chance of being picked. There is no conceivable way to do this, and the proof is straightforward.

I concede the point. There might be some fundamental aspect of things that makes a universe of nothing but Boltzmann Brains physically impossible. But that doesn't seem to be the case currently. There doesn't seem to be anything preventing, say, "casino worlds" in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (if you haven't read the book, it's a world where random erosion patterns just happened to have created glittering casinos everywhere). — RogueAI

I'm afraid I'm the only one who read that book and thought it was silly. So your point is lost on me, although it would resonate deeply with pretty much everyone else.

This is an assumption, but I think it a fair one. If there are infinite universes, why wouldn't they be countable? But maybe they're not. — RogueAI

Well, there's only one countably infinite cardinality; but there are so many uncountable cardinalities that they're too big to be corralled into a set. So if the probabilities are uniformly distributed -- like your nonsense worlds -- then the odds are unimaginably small that the number of worlds is countable.

But this isn't good reasoning. Mine, meant to be facetious to prove a point; or yours, meant to be serious.

Maybe. I don't know much about the Continuum hypothesis. — RogueAI

Here's all you need to know in order for me to explain my point. Cantor defined infinite cardinalities in such a way that they proceed one after another: $\aleph_0, \aleph_1, \aleph_2, \aleph_3, \dots$.

Now Cantor's famous diagonal argument and also his more general and beautifully simple Cantor's theorem shows that there are $2^{\aleph_0}$ real numbers. And the question is, which Aleph is that??. Perhaps $2^{\aleph_0} = \aleph_5$, or $2^{\aleph_0} = \aleph_{\text{googolplex}}$.

The Continuum hypothesis is the claim that

$2^{\aleph_0} = \aleph_1$

That is, that the cardinality of the real numbers is the very next cardinality after that of the natural numbers; or equivalently, that there is no infinite cardinality strictly between that of the naturals and the reals.

The question of whether this is true vexed Cantor and vexed everyone till Cohen proved as recently as 1963 that the question is independent of the standard axioms of set theory. In other words there are models of set theory in which it's true, as Gödel showed in 1940; and models in which it's false, as discovered by Cohen. In fact Cohen earned the only Fields medal every granted for mathematical logic for his pioneering work in showing how we can cook up arbitrarily weird models of set theory in order to investigate such independence questions.

Now. My point is this. Every time a physicist casually says, "The number of universes might be infinite," or. "The size of the universe might be infinite"; or some breathless pop science writer who knows less than you or I do about the topic makes the same type of claim; they should immediately exclaim: "This is very exciting! It means that mathematical problems like the Continuum hypothesis, which were formerly relevant ONLY to the realm of pure, abstract, non-physical mathematics, are now potentially amenable to study by physicists!"

But they never say that. Nobody has EVER said that. And in my own opinion, the reason that they don't, is that they do not take their own suggestion seriously enough to have spent five minutes considering the profound mathematical and physical implications of what they're saying.

That is my point. And I admit that I've probably stated it so many times on this forum, going all the way back many years to the predecessor of this forum, that by now I often state it quickly without providing sufficient context for people seeing it for the first time. For which I take responsibility.

That's fine. Your speculations are interesting. I'm going to have to read more about Continuum hypothesis. — RogueAI

Thank you. I should say that I am often snarky, but was not being snarky (at least intentionally) with you. I'm actually trying to be less snarky these days, and your remark reminded me that I was unsuccessful in this instance.

Infinity is interesting. — RogueAI

Yes it is! And its profound implications are never considered, even momentarily, by all the people, from ignorant pop-sci writers to famous world-class physicists, who casually claim that some aspect of the world might be infinite. Because if infinity is instantiated in the world, then all the set-theoretic questions of infinity immediately become matters of physics; just as the bizarre mathematics of non-Euclidean geometry suddenly became relevant to physics when Einstein developed general relativity.

No, I'm not assuming they're equally likely or distributed uniformly. That's not required to generate the dilemma of have to choose between two infinite sets to figure out which one you're in, but like you said, the true odds may be different. For example, if you're jumping off a tall building, there are two sets to consider: the set of universes where you survive and the set where you don't, and obviously your odds of surviving aren't 50/50, so there's something going on there, and yet, at a fundamental level, reality either is as it appears to be (actual laws of nature, not just fantastic coincidences over and over, we're not Boltzmann brains, etc.) or reality isn't as it appears to be. If there are an infinity of universes of each type, and you don't know what kind of universe you're in, how is it anything other than 50/50? — RogueAI

The jumping off building analogy applies exactly here. Even if you don't know the true odds, it seems (to me) perfectly obvious that it's RARELY the case that the odds of two mutually exclusive events are 50-50. In fact Boltzmann brains are extremely statistically unlikely.

You would have to assert some limiting principle where the multiverse just doesn't produce universes where fantastic coincidence isn't the norm, but what on Earth would that mechanism be? — RogueAI

Well, one point I made was that we DO happen to live in a world of fantastic coincidence leading directly to our existence at this moment. And on the other hand is the building analogy and the Boltzman brain analogy. Boltzman brains are statistically highly unlikely. But then again, which is less likely? A Boltzman brain? Or a fully formed human being? Both are statistically unlikely. In fact it's one of the arguments against Darwinian evolution (among scientifically-minded neo-anti-Darwinists) that there literally hasn't been enough time for pure chance to have produced humans on earth.

After the first exchange, I thought you were making some errors, and I don't have much of a math background, so I asked a probability question about Pi. — RogueAI

What was the question? I honestly don't get it. First you said 123456789 and contrasted that to a random-looking string in order to get me to admit that one string looks random and one doesn't. [Good point actually]. But then the pi example confused me, because then you have two non-random looking strings of digits. So I didn't understand the point being made.

Do you know Bayes Theorem well? — RogueAI

I know Bayes' theorem but not well. I get the idea of priors but I've never been able to get very worked up over the apparent dispute between Baysians and frequentists. I know that people can use Bayes' theorem to show that if you test positive for some awful disease, it may still be much more likely that you have a false positive than that you actually have the disease. That's pretty much all I know.

How do cookies analyse a specific human mind? — questions

Web cookies? They can be used to analyze your clickstream, which gives clues to your mind.

So at every branching, the total energy of the universe is divided by 2? And likewise with its mass, I suppose. Since there is a gigamongous number of branching per nanosecond, it follows that if the MWI was true, our universe would become empty of all matter and energy quite rapidly, like in a few seconds. — Olivier5

You have a cake with a weight of 1 pound. You divide the cake in two pieces. Now you have two half cakes, each with a weight of 1/2 pound. Global weight is conserved. The universe has some amount of energy, and it's divided among the worlds. The sum of the energy of all the worlds is always the same.

I do share your concern that if the total energy of the universe (universe being all the worlds taken together) is finite, then this places a limit on how many worlds there can be; because as the number of worlds increases, the amount of energy in each world gets smaller. I don't know how Sean Carroll handles this problem.

Fishfry, my point isn't about whether the multiverse is infinite or not. I'm OK assuming we don't know one way or the other and will likely never know. — RogueAI

Ok that's fair. But if we are speculating, isn't it fair for me to point out some things that need to be considered? If the universe instantiates actual infinity in any way: infinitely many sub-universes, infinitely many distinct times within a finite interval of time like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, ... infinitely many planets, infinitely many anything ... then we must ask ourselves the question: Does the mathematical theory of infinity apply? If yes, then we must ask if things like the Continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice have now become amenable to physical experiment; and if not, we must then develop a new physical theory of infinity.

I know you weren't thinking of these things, but (in my opinion) the moment one says that there MIGHT be a physical infinity, these questions immediately come to mind. My mind, in any event.

My point was about the ramifications if there are infinitely many universes with different physical constants. IF that is the case, the set of universes "everyone is a Boltzmann Brain" is infinite and the set "everyone is a real person" is infinite, — RogueAI

This I disagree with. Am I allowed? As Jules played by Samuel L. Jackson says in Pulp Fiction: "Allow me to retort!" The set of positive integers exists. Are there as many numbers equal to 47 as not? No. Are there as many numbers that can be exponents in Fermat's equation? No, 2 is the only one, proven as recently as 1994. Are there infinitely many numbers that are part of a prime pair? Unknown. It is most definitely not the case that every possibility occurs infinitely many times. In the multiverse you have no idea what the actual rules are. Truth is you have no way of knowing that there are infinitely many universes that contain Boltzmann brains. Perhaps there's some as-yet-unknown physical constraint that only allows finitely many such. So your speculation is not fully thought out in my opinion.

Excessive pickiness on my part, maybe. Not snark. I'm making a point. I'm disagreeing with your reasoning.

and they're both countably infinite sets, — RogueAI

Ah! And you know this, how? This is one of my questions. Let us suppose, arguendo, that the number of sub-universes in the universe (or universes in the multiverse) is actually infinite. Is it countably infinite or uncountably infinite? Well, you just made an assumption. So if I got you to state one of your unstated assumptions, my objections have not been in vain. And why should the number be countably infinite? And if it's uncountable, what might its cardinality be? Set theorists have some mighty large cardinals these days. So IMO these are the kinds of questions that come immediately to mind whenever someone speculates on physical instantiations of infinity.

After all, if there are even countably many of anything in the physical world, then we can in principle count its number of subsets; and depending on which cardinal number that happens to be, the Continuum hypothesis is therefore amenable to physical experiment. I take it as proof, or at least meta-proof, that physicists don't take infinite universes seriously; else postdocs would be applying for grants to determine the truth of the Continuum hypothesis. No such grant applications have been applied for; ergo, physicists don't take physical infinity seriously at all.

Why are you allowed to speculate about the consequences of physical infinity, but not me? Can you see that I am actually trying to join in your game, by making my own speculations about the implications of physical infinity.

so how would you decide which set you're in if you don't know? It's a coin toss, in that situation. — RogueAI

Without knowledge of the actual probability distribution, that's like guessing it's 50-50 to land alive after jumping off a tall building. Perhaps some configurations of the multiverse are far more likely than others. You're assuming all configurations are distributed uniformly. Isn't that an assumption?

If the multiverse isn't infinite, none of that applies, of course, but philosophy is about speculation, so I'm speculating here. — RogueAI

Why can't I play too?

So what was the point of the lottery that comes up with the digits of pi? That example went right over my head. 123456789 and a bunch of digits of pi both seem equally contrived.

Such sequences are good for pattern recognition. — jgill

Right. They test the ability to get the answer that the examiner expects. Which of course measures a type of IQ but not creativity. It tests for conformity to what "clever people" think is cleverness. It tests for the kind of thinking that caused Einstein to be unable to obtain an academic post after getting his doctorate. He was a genius, but terrible at agreeing with the answers other clever people got.

Classic example. What's the next number: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ____?

Well it's 31 of course. It's the number of distinct regions you get by drawing chords between n points on a circle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividing_a_circle_into_areas

I don't know about any of that. But many cosmologists advocate for a multiverse with infinitely many universes where the values of the physical constants are different. — RogueAI

Yes, and I'm saying they haven't thought through the consequences of that claim. I've heard the number $10^{500}$ "types" of universes, which is still a finite number and avoids the question of how many universes there are.

I
What's with the snark? My reply to you in this thread didn't even have a question in it. I was making a bunch of points about infinite universes. — RogueAI

No snark. I'm asking you to ask yourself the same questions I ask everyone who claims the universe instantiates infinity in any way. It's the same question I'd love to put directly to Leonard Susskind, who also doesn't understand the point. I am inviting you to challenge yourself to think about what it means to claim there are infinitely many of anything physical. That's not snark, it's a question designed to get people to contemplate the weakness of their own thinking along these lines.

I
The values of the physical constants are different. I'm not talking about a set of identical infinite universes. For example, there would be universes (an infinitely many of them) consisting of nothing but Boltzmann Brains constantly popping into and out of existence. — RogueAI

Yes, so I've heard. But that's no argument for infinity of anything.

I
Purple flying elephants are physically impossible. Picture worlds where people win the lottery 20 times in a row, and people always go into spontaneous cancer remission after they drink from a certain fountain. Erosion patterns constantly spelling out the truths of the natural world, E=MC2. Stuff like that. — RogueAI

Not an argument for infinity.

Yes. Countable infinite sets are equal and there are infinitely many worlds where the laws of nature are real, and where the laws of nature are nothing but descriptions of fantastical coincidences happening over and over again. If you don't know what set you're in, and both sets are equal, it's a 50/50 chance if you're guessing. — RogueAI

Not an argument for infinitely many of anything. Even the physicists only allow for $10^{500}$ variations in the parameters. That's a finite number.

Aren't you just the pleasure to talk to. — RogueAI

The point in which this was a response (stretching the definition of response) was that we already live in a fantastically unlikely universe. And if "just the pleasure to talk to" means that I'm asking you to make a coherent argument for infinitely many universes, an argument thateven professional physicists don't make, and that you are unable to do so, well then I guess that's what you mean.

Don't take it personally. I have made this argument many times and have never gotten a good response. And when you dig into the literature, you find that the professional physicists don't seriously make the claim. They use "infinity' as a synonym for a really big finite number.

Fish, if a lottery was being run for the first time, and you were the manager, and the winning ticket's numbers were 314159265359, what would you conclude? — RogueAI

That it's a hell of a coincidence that the digits of pi came up. Or that someone's playing a joke. I don't follow your question at all.

But you are really taking me wrong about this infinity business. I'm not being snarky with you. You claimed that there are or might be an actual infinity of universes in the multiverse. Even the physicists don't make this literal claim, they only use the word metaphorically to mean a big number. I'm challenging you to make actual sense of your own claim. If you can't, have some self-awareness and admit that you only meant a really big finite number; and that if you truly mean an actually infinite number of universes, you have to grapple with the set-theoretic implications.

For example 3478907834617856 is explainable by chance. And what I mean by that is there's no competing theory that does better than "chance" for that string of numbers. — RogueAI

There's a polynomial that inputs 1 and outputs 3; inputs 2 and outputs 4; inputs 3 and outputs 7; and so forth. Polynomials are particularly simple examples of functions. As a "competing theory" as you put it, scientists will take a polynomial every day of the week. In fact when computer scientists can reduce the growth rate of a problem to a polynomial, they are ecstatic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_polynomial

But for that matter there is a constant function f(x) = 3478907834617856 that gives this output for every real number input. If polynomials make computer scientists ecstatic, constant functions drive them absolutely delirious with delight.

Also, if an infinite number of universes exist, there are an infinite number of universes where incredible fantastical coincidences are the norm, not the exception. And there would be infinitely many such worlds, so the set of "worlds with extreme amounts of fantastical coincidences" would equal the set of "worlds without extreme amounts of fantastical coincidence". — RogueAI

When physicists use the word infinity they must mean something quite different than what mathematicians mean, else they'd immediately have to ask themselves what is the transfinite cardinality of the set of universes, and whether the universes can be well-ordered, and so forth, or at the very least they'd have to simultaneously note that standard set theory does not apply to their use of the word infinity.

Since you are speculating that there might be infinitely many universes, why don't you suggest answers to those questions, if only to challenge your own thinking.

And what is your chain of logic that, " if an infinite number of universes exist, there are an infinite number of universes where incredible fantastical coincidences are the norm ..." What's the argument that this is so? After all there are infinitely many positive integers 1, 2, 3, ... yet none of them is a purple flying elephant, at least as far as we know. Every positive integer is subject to the Peano axioms. So we already have evidence that your claim is (pending some kind of argument) false.

If you didn't know which kind of world you're in (and how would you?), there's a 50/50 chance you're in the world of crazy coincidences. — RogueAI

Really? Have you got an argument for this? But I have already pointed out earlier that we ARE in a world of crazy coincidences. From the big bang to your being here reading this requires a chain of the most unlikely coincidences and accidents. So your statement here is unsupported and vacuous.

You know I've seen famous physicist Leonard Susskind talk and write about infinity (two separate instances that I have in mind) where he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. Physicists, even some very eminent and famous ones are very imprecise in their notions of infinity.

It's impossible with any sequence of numbers what comes next. The psychological / IQ tests that rely on this are all flawed.
— god must be atheist

Maybe you could provide a citation for this assessment. :chin: — jgill

Given any finite sequence whatever, it can be continued with absolutely any next number and fitted to a polynomial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_polynomial

I zoomed out as to perceive the entire cosmos. I thought to myself: now I'm in God's mind. And I realized that most things are illusory. The vastness of space, the utter darkness makes up most of existence. Earth fits a million times into the Sun. — TaySan

It's legal in my jurisdiction too.