User:Maziotis/sandbox

A theory about alternate timelines

Is there a theory which states that every time a decision is made, one or more parallel timelines split? I'm aware that there is a theory where changing the past results in an alternate universe, but what about alternate timelines? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:03, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Many-worlds interpretation Wnt (talk) 14:36, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Many-worlds interpretation isn't about humans making decisions, its about quantum effects that can have multiple, unpredictable outcomes. thx1138 (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

These are not unrelated. There are only two possibilities that fit within existing physical theory:

1. Human decision-making is a deterministic process; there is no free will
2. Human decision-making is affected by quantum indeterminacy

If option 2 is true, then the many-worlds interpretation says that every decision you could have made actually occurs, in an alternate "world". This is less fantastic than it may seem, and should not be any more surprising than any other quantum paradox. (Schrödinger's cat, for example)--Srleffler (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, only in the sense that any possiblity of anything at all exists in an "alternate world". At an given instant, an atom may decay or it may not, a virtual pair may form spontaneously or it may not, etc. etc. Every possible, but not yet occured, physical change from the way the universe is this will happen in one of a near infinite number of universes which will be created in the next instant, and so on and so on. Since humans exist and are made of matter, they're part of that too. --Jayron32 17:58, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

That's a rather common but fallacious dichotomy. Volition is the faculty that allows higher animals to act when outside factors do not determine their choice. For example, you can either stay in bed or get out, exit on the left or the right--whereas plants merely grow toward the sun given the proper external stimulus. That is volition, or will, and it is why Buridan's Ass doesn't starve. The freedom of the will is not the freedom of the body from physical reality or the freedom of the self from the body, but the moral freedom of the volition from the coercion of others. If a criminal ties you to the bed you are not staying in the room of your own free will. You are your body, so it is absurd to argue that it wasn't you who chose to do something, but your body. (That's setting aside organic disorders that interfere with the proper functioning of your volition.) μηδείς (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

The sticking point is the "you are your body" part of it. In my opinion there is no possible satisfactory materialist account of free will. I am a hardcore incompatibilist on this point. --Trovatore (talk) 00:40, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Well sure, that's like saying there's no satisfactory quantum physical explanation of sexual selection, or no chemical explanation of the electoral college. Of course there isn't. They are on different levels of explanation. The problem is the bizarre insistence on materialism as explaining anything but chemistry. What is the molecular weight of a shadow? What is the electrical valence of truth? These questions reveal the essential fallacy of category errors.

No, that's not my point at all. There is no acceptable account of free will that does not reject materialism, that does not say materialism is false. --Trovatore (talk) 01:00, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your statement. I hold that there are such things as true statements and good actions, and I don't hold that the truth of a statement or the morality of an action can meaningfully be reduced to chemical equations. I will assume you both understand and agree with that? μηδείς (talk) 01:12, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I am saying that if there is nothing beyond the physical universe, then there is no morality or meaning, and nothing matters at all. Fortunately, there is something beyond the physical universe. --Trovatore (talk) 01:27, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The laws of physics allow unversal computing devices to exist which can thus run any type of algorithm that can implement whatever (inexact) moral laws you can imagine. Count Iblis (talk) 02:28, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

But if there is no one inside to be aware of them, who cares? --Trovatore (talk) 02:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

That depends on whether your choices really were the result of free will, or whether or not you merely have the delusion of free will; that is every action you take was predetermined, but your mind makes you think you had some control over it. The trick is deciding how to tell the difference. Which is not to say that I agree or disagree with you, but the difference between believing that you could have made a different choice in any action you take, and actually haing had the choice, is an interesting philosophical problem. --Jayron32 17:58, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Mηδείς, the dichotomy is not at all fallacious in the context of the question we are discussing. Ignore all the philosophical questions about freedom of will, volition, etc. Assume decision-making is a purely physical process (i.e. no immaterial soul). There are only two possibilities, which I enumerated. One is that the process is purely deterministic, in the sense used in physics. In that case, there is no splitting of timelines. It's not clear that this is the case, however: we know that our universe is not deterministic in this sense: quantum mechanics demonstrates that there is true, irreducible randomness in the universe, and that things can exist in more than one state at a time. Usually these effects are observable only on microscopic scales, but they are not always limited to such small scales. It is possible that human thought is affected by quantum randomness, that when we make at least some decisions, quantum uncertainty could affect which choice is made. If so, then the many worlds interpretation applies—each choice that was affected by quantum uncertainty corresponds to a splitting of timelines.--Srleffler (talk) 03:42, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting that John Wyndham wrote ""every instant an atom of time splits" in The Seeds of Time before 1956 (I remember reading it before I'd ever heard of quantum mechanics), and the "Many Worlds" interpretation was published in 1957, but I assume Wyndham had read some earlier papers. The concept is a fairly obvious one, I suppose, and goes back thousands of years as a philosophical concept. Dbfirs 18:23, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you understand my point exactly, Jayron. There is no such thing as a you that is separate from your body or the physical things which comprise it. (That's a notion left over from religion. What your body does is what your body does.) One of the faculties you and other higher animals have is volition--the ability to choose between different perceived paths of action. We're not talking about its freedom yet, just that volition exists. Plants don't have that faculty, nor do rocks, nor do atoms. It's a higher level emergent property of certain living beings. Now, of course it depends on your physical make up. Whether you get out of or stay in bed and on what side depends on processes that percolate in your brain. They are physical and at certain levels they are guided by certain natural laws. Eventually you-which means your body-which means your cells--which means the atoms that make it up--will come to a decision. Whether the rules that govern the motions of those atoms are in principle newtonianly determined or random doesn't matter to the higher level fact that your body can come to decisions. What makes those decisions free is not a physical, but a moral distinction. Was it your body that chose to stay in bed, in which case you are acting of your will freely, our did you burn to death because you were tied to the bed, in which case it was not of your--your body's--free will. To say that you are not free because you are your body--which is what determinists do--is a category mistake. It's almost like saying you can't pilot an airplane because aluminum is heavier than air, just on a more subtle level. Free will is a perfectly valid and necessary concept in a moral, not a mechanical context. μηδείς (talk) 18:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, the Reference desk is not meant for philosophical discussions. It is not a forum. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

In some recent experiments involving functional MRI it was demonstrated that given some arbitrary choice you can make, one can already tell by looking at the MRI what you are going to choose about ten seconds before you say that you've made up your mind. Then, if you assume some many words scenario (the MWI of QM or the infinite number of regions similar to our observable universe as predicted by inflation theory), and you assume free will, then it becomes even weirder. Because then the moment you make up your mind, you locate yourself in that sector of the multiverse where the people observing your brain have already seen what you have decided. Count Iblis (talk) 21:13, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I have read of such studies and I don't think the timelag is quite ten seconds. I could ask you to spout a string of random numbers and there would not be a 10 second delay before you started doing so. The fact that we are not aware of what we have chosen or said until after we have chosen or said it is not particularly problematic. If we had to deliberate in conscious words about what we were going to say before we said something we would never get started because we would have to deliberate which words to use in our deliberations, and so on, leading to infinite regress. How any of this fits in with so-called multiple universe theory, which cannot even be coherently formulated, let alone tested is beyond me. μηδείς (talk) 21:32, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting question. Could you tell what random numbers a person is going to spout before you let him know you want him to do so?

I am not sure, however, whether "you" can't be separated from the physical actions of the atoms in some way. Is there a way to say, that many different rearrangements of the atoms have absolutely zero subjective effect, and others matter? Is there some way to present consciousness as some kind of digital data in an algorithm? Just as a 1 or a 0 in computing can be independent of the minor thermal fluctuations of the chip they're coded in, and when those fluctuations foul up the value, that's not a normal computing operation, but a deviation from the 'intended' operation of the software. Do people perceive the world as the actual atoms, or as that discrete digital data? Wnt (talk) 22:24, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly, you might want to look at supervenience. That is the concept that an emergent state might not specifically depend on a uniques set of lower circumstances, but that unless the underlying circumstances differ there can be no difference in the emergent states. For example, something's being evil might not necessarily depend on any one specific chemical physical states of afiars, but that if two circumstances are fully and exactly the same physically one cannot be evil while the other is good. μηδείς (talk) 23:00, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

That article seems like it must be talking about something else. I'm not suggesting a situation where a "lone ammonia molecule" would make a difference. What I mean is that if our subjective mental experience is some kind of "software", then small variations in the "hardware" may not matter. A simple program written in assembly language doesn't "see" the difference of whether the clock chip is running at a different speed, or whether it's being emulated as a program on some more complex system. The program only sees the parameters that matter to it, and produces its conclusions the same way in every circumstance. Wnt (talk) 03:46, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I understand your point. Things whose natures are primarily functional can, as long as they are arranged in the proper form, differ in substance. Hylomorphism]] A drinking cup can be made of glass or plastic. It's still a Beethoven symphony whether the cellist is a man or a woman, she wears slacks or a dress, she sits to the right or the left of the wind section. That points out the problem with reductive materialism. Complex forms have to be executed in some substance, but it is the form that is essential.

Let's say I want to remind my self to schedule a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I might write myself a note. I might tie a string around my finger. I might write "Dr." on the back of my left hand in magic marker or sepia or nail polish. I might turn the bottle for my morningtime medicine upside down. There are an infinite number of arbitrary signs I can set for myself. What physically would be determining me to call the doctor in the morning? Sure, my brain and all these other things are made of atoms. But what about the velocity, mass, temperature, molecular structure or so on of these items would explain or "determine" me to call the doctor?

If I don't leave any sign for myself (including maybe internally as a short term memory) I won't call the doctor. But you can't reduce my calling the doctor to whether the string was cotton or wool. Nevertheless you have to admit that had there been no change in my environment I would not have been reminded to call the doctor. This is supervenience, when there cannot be a difference in a set of affairs of one type if there is not a difference in a set of affairs of another type. It is a way of preserving causation without falling into reductive determinism. In morality there cannot be a difference in guilt if there is no difference in intention, action ad result. There cannot be a difference in flavor unless there is a difference in ingredients, preparation and presentation. Note that the relation is not necessarily reversible. A change in preparation (shaken, not stirred) may have no effect on flavor. A change in action (I stabbed him with my right hand, not my left) may have no effect on guilt.

For a much better presentation of the matter by Rutger's Brian McLaughlin, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/ μηδείς (talk) 16:59, 16 June 2012 (UTC)