Connections to other people meaning a sort of person to person deja vu. You meet someone and feel like you've known them forever.

Insofar as the article, it may not have been the best example. However, infinite space is an inescapable part of parallel universes. If all possibilities and all times exist, they can only do so on an infinite plane. A finite plane would, by definition imply a limited number of universes (since to assume infinity, there could be no constraints on time and space.)

That said, if you assume infinite universes, you must also assume that every outcome, every presupposition, must exist at every time. In some universe, I am married to you, Alex...and everyone else on this board.

Many people have theorized that deja vu and/or past life experiences are an aspect of "crossing over" into other universes. If a single particle of matter can exist in more than one universe at one time (which is a basis of Parallel Universes) then perhaps these things are brief glimpses, a brief existence if you will, in another universe.

Parallel universes also solve the paradox of time travel: if you go back in time, and kill your grandfather, how will you exist to go back in time? If all possibilities exist, you are not born...and you are born.

This also solves the population problem of PLR. If deja vu/PLR are based in the "experience" of parallel universes, population becomes a meaningless point since existence is outside of (or bigger than?) our 3 dimentional world.

I hope I have explained this adequately. This is one of those things that I understand, but have a very difficult time actually verbalizing. That, and if I think about this long enough it makes me a little loopy.

There are several competing theories for a multiverse (and just as many well qualified people who don't think it exists or is an unscientific idea of pure metaphysics) and you seem to be combining characteristics of different ones. Also, the existence of any of the possible multiverse structures is not confirmed to any degree other than as implications of pure theory.

That said, if an infinite multiverse based on collapsing probability clouds does exist, you'll all have to admit I am right that free will does not exist (and you already have in some of them).

All that said, the multiverse explanation you offer for PLR still does not explain why the reported results of PLR seem to almost entirely fit into a very narrow band of the possible results, though it would nicely place PLR outside the realm of rational investigation (since any negative result could just be blamed on having contacted a past life in an alternate universe where things did happen as desribed or where "ook ook, grunt, sniffle" is valid medieval French.

It's not?

If a probability cloud collapses, that world never comes to fruition and never branches into more outcomes.

All outcomes exist, but some outcomes exist more often than others, i.e. some choices are made more often than others. Free will therefore, as we experience it, is associated with the probabilty of each individual outcome being chosen.

Most of my knowledge of many-worlds (or parallel universes) comes from DeWitt's interpretation of Everett. I am by no means an expert, more an "armchair" science geek..

I once read a very good paper explaining the different elements of Everett, I will try to find it tomorrow; no doubt he explains it much better than I do. One of these days I'm going to try to read David Deutsch's book- but I'm not sure that my attention span is that long.

Ah, we're using Everett's MWI in particular. Other proposed multiverses do use collapsing waveforms as the source of branching.

I'm familiar with Everett, DeWitt and Deutsch. There is good thoery in there and over the decades more pseudoscience new-age misinterpretation has attached to Everett than just about any other part of quantum mechanics (which draws pseudoscience like flies to whatever draws flies). Also it not hardly accepted reality among the physics community (the people who actually understand the math).

As laid out by Everett, the superpositioned infinite universes are non-communicating and information can not move between the universes. This would seem to argue against it as an explanation for past life regression.

But if in learning past life regression, this is the explanation offered by instructors I'd be very interested to learn this. thecorndogwalker?

I absolutely do not understand the math; no way, no how.

It is entirely possible (even probable) that I am bringing in aspects of other theories. I agree, Everett et. al. is linear but I thought that it still allowed for a ''leakage" of matter (as opposed to non-communicating). It is also possible that I've confused the mechanisms used to detect other worlds with what I'm calling "leakage". It's been a while since I've actually read up on it so I'm sure other things I've read have influenced my memory of this particular theory.

As an aside, I should have mentioned that even though many-worlds allows for what we call free will, free will is obviously a subjective experience and doesn't require infinite choices.

I too would be interested to know if any of this is used in PLR.

In doing some refresher reading on Everett today I am reminded of a very important point. Everett has many supporters among quantum mechanics physicists. But that support is split into two camps. Most recognize that many worlds is a useful language for simplifying quantum mechanics but don't view these other universes as "real" in the same sense ours is. They are paper universes (kind of like square root of negative two is mathematically useful but you won't run into it as a physical object in the real world). Stephen Hawkings is an example of this camp.

The minority of many worlds supporters hold forth the idea that these other universes are just as real as ours. DeWitt and Deutsch are in this camp.

And of course there are many equally prominent quantum mechanics physicists who consider many worlds to be complete hogwash (polls tend to find about 50% accept some form of many worlds theory). As this Martin Gardner column points out, Roger Penrose is in this camp.

Everett's many world theory, where infinity allows all possible outcomes to be realized in proportion to their probability means free will can not exist (since if all outcomes occur then no "will" was exerted). I know some proponents of Everett's many worlds disagree (such as DeWitt; but there is almost universal agreement otherwise that a deterministic multiverse destroys free will), but I'm of the opinion that they do so by changing the definition of free will away from what most people mean by it.

I believe, though would not swear, that Deutsch and Dewitt have reinterpreted Everett so that although there are infinite choices/outcomes not all of them are chosen an equal number of times. Some outcomes are chosen more often than others.

If there are some outcomes that are chosen with greater frequency, obviously the chance of any given outcome occuring is not equal across worlds. If you buy that, than our experience of free will (subjective as it may be) lies in the idea that the more heavily weighted outcomes are more "likely" to be chosen.

Whether or not free will itself exists, I have no idea. But I do believe that the experience of free will most certainly does.


(It made more sense when I was just thinking about it :rolleyes: )

In regards to the Gardner article:

Personally, I don't take a firm position on either side; I find the concept of many-worlds facinating-- I like the idea that somewhere, sometime I am lying on the beach at my house in Hawaii and a really hot (heterosexual) butler is bringing me Champagne (granted, I would like it even better if it were in this particular world). I also believe that the universe is infinitely more complicated than anyone can ever know.

That said, the Gardner article strikes me as similar to many of the critics of Darwin (I use Darwin because I wrote my senior thesis on evolution and its critics). Most scientific theories inspire scorn, even mockery, both in their infancy and in their maturity (again, Darwin being an excellent example). IMO, it is this skepticism which inspires many of the most important advances in science.



BTW, what search engine do you use? You have better articles than me. (I use altavista)

Yes, DeWitt and Deutsch have done that. And very few of their colleagues agree with it. Also, the the probabilities that would go into free will are so complex (not to mention that there is no way to measure it since the universes are non-communicative) that it would be impossible to determine if a certain outcome was overrepresented in the multiverse. Since even DeWitt and Deutsch still believe that the multiverse is deterministic they have to do some interesting gymnastics to maintain free will as a theoretical artifact.

I won't with you that we have the experience of free will. That is what I've always said. We are hardwired to perceive free will, there is just no reason to believe our perception of it is correct.

Out of curiosity, do you know who Martin Gardner is? If not, he is one of the greatest proponents of the scientific method that we currently have. Anyway, it is true that many theories initially meet with disregard. That said, 99% of them deserve it. And of course there is the fact that Everett's theory is not widely disregarded, even among those who don't buy into it it is a respectable theory. There are just some fringe elements that aren't generally accepted.

Everett's arguments are very much worthy of consideration and are an important part of the conversation for quantum mechanics. It is just important to keep in mind that it is just one theory, that there are other equally compelling answers being offered, and that there is a lot of pseudoscience crapbabble that gets attached to these theories by people who don't really understand them but like the credibility offered by using the terms.

And to answer your question I'm just using Google (and, at the risk of lacking humility (me? never), an expensively earned education in information retrieval).

Do your spouses know you two are carrying on like this?