The Many ("Alien") Worlds of Quantum Mechanics

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james ladyman et al. modify and develop the framework of real patterns in their book 'every thing must go'. they define it as 'any relations among data'. to be a mathematical structure is just to be a real pattern.

Please let this contain a debunking of Sabine Hossenfelder style naive Popperism :)

Reality doesn't collapse, but grants do and will

I really appreciate the absence of economics and politics here.

Some of the best mathematicians or physicists of 20th century were Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Indian, Persian and Russian. Less educational development in Africa and Latin America for obvious historical reasons (ie India and China were united mega nations for thousands of years and Arabs positioning near Mesopotamia and Babylon have left long history of academia from Egypt to Persia— I know colonizers burnt all but 4 books of Mayans, and genocided them, so the continuity of intellectual thought for natives was disrupted and it’s been a place to survive now for centuries. I’m more ignorant about African history, but they weren’t unified nor near tons of cultures like Middle East. Interestingly, Mayans were in middle of north and southern natives).

That parenthesis was a tangent, but given the strong history of academic contributions since decolonization, I wonder why we essentially only see caucasians here? Could it really be that academia has dipped across the world in 21st century? It’s hard to believe…China alone is constantly pushing boundaries).

Vapid

Going to spare you all the litany of harshness of language.

(You might want to believe you are not the only you… just as a bot would prefer they are not just a bot but have purpose”
Regardless
“ I am me… am far from alone.. this is the only me that matters in spaces time and matter sone more..
and so matter I must to me and everything else around me”

Use better language or matter you will too

It's true.
Physics is the least complex of all the scientific disciplines.

both directions of time will be called forward.

Great conversation, I am curious why the term Quantum Darwinism never comes up when the topic quantum/classical is discussed?

Jacob Barandes laser beamed this guy (his ideology) to death. He must be a zombie. So be careful. 🧟‍♂👻 Not only is Wallace stupid af, the whole Many Worlds idea is morally reprehensible. That's not a scientific argument of course, but it supersedes science.

"Many Devices" is probably more accurate than "Many Worlds". Considering consciousness is our own personal Browser.

"Rapture of the church" vs "Upgrade to new device" helps boil down reality.

Many worlds is complete horse shit. Quantum coherence can barely be maintained intentionally at near zero heat in a vacuum. Macroscopic coherence would be required to generate many worlds. Not gonna happen. Just another Deepak Chopra pseudoscience bullshit perspective.

What’s up with this field being so closed minded and being so persistent at proving a pre-determined outcome? Do they hate God that much?

2 months ago I have talked with prof Wallace. I thought he was about to give up many worlds 😂

I play chess every day, and every day I make different decisions, even finding new moves. To give you an idea of the size of the numbers involved after the first three moves, I will show you what Steven Pinker had to say about it in his book How the Mind Works:

"A typical chess game lasts forty turns, yielding 10^120 different chess games. There are about 10^70 particles in the visible universe. So no one can play chess by memorising all the games and recognising every sequence of moves..........A second cost of information is time. Just as one couldn’t store all the chess games in a brain less than the size of the universe, one can’t mentally play out all the chess games in a lifetime less than the age of the universe 10^18".

The Many Worlds theory is not scientifically testable it's based on pure philosophical speculation. An area of human behaviour that is testable is in the field of parapsychology, which for some strange reason mainstream science ignores.
Back to the chess because the numbers are infinite, even AI cannot crack basic endgames, to do that they would need a quantum computer.

Always amazing, congrats 👏

Thank you for interviewing David Wallace, he is wonderful!

Physics is simple? You are insane... quiet literally and not metaphorically ... thats like saying a cars systems is simple.. combustion but there's engineering aspects that aren't clear

Interesting brain gymnastics, but purely speculative and non-falsifiable. And if you apply Ockhams razor, extremely unlikely. Next!

I find that a lot of people will say that physics is very simple, and then use an explanation that is way too complicated such as time. The physics are much simpler than time as well, because time is the product of much simpler physics such as a spin in a hole. The Universe is only made from spins inside holes, and that's it. No more physics. All you need to do is program spins inside holes, and that will build the universe exactly how it works, with humans, and intelligence, and the periodic table. So really you can tell if someone knows what they are talking about so long as they don't mention time at all. Mentioning time is a red flag for anyone that thinks they know physics. The arrow that they talk about arises when you program spins around holes, and they join together as tunnels, and tunnels have flow directions, so you get an arrow. So people who think that the Universe uses simple physics are correct, but they never make their case, because they still use complex ideas.

It could be serialized infinite universes as well as a multiverse of infinite universes in parallel. Personally, I suspect that genuine randomness exists at the heart of reality. Where genuine randomness exists, in unlimited time, everything will exist, one way or another, at some point. The reason to suspect genuine randomness is to suspend your sense of familiarity with the world around you, take a close look with fresh eyes, try to describe it to an alien life form who knows absolutely nothing about it, and realize how completely bizarre it really is.

I'm always a bit wary about simplification or calling things overly complex. We would prefer simple systems because simple systems are easier for us to work with. Nature has no obligation to accommodate us there. If we can reduce complexity, that is a good achievement. I still think that many-worlds is more fit for science fantasy shows that like to jump between alternate worlds so we can do "what if"-questions in a fun setting. There's little connection to reality outside of that. The very proliferation of many-worlds is so absurdly large that people on a single branch fail to comprehend the complexity of the whole set of all branches. Many-worlds just adds an infinite amount of complexity.

If you don't believe in a fundamental arrow of time then there is no point in Many-Worlds in the first place and it's self-defeating, because quantum mechanics can be trivially interpreted as a local hidden variable theory if you allow causality to be time-symmetric. This has been shown many times in the literature. It only makes sense to insist upon Many-Worlds if you believe the arrow of time is indeed a fundamental microscopic feature of the universe.

💔 "Shutting up (whilst) calculating" leads to best practice for emergence of " thoughtful integration" of intentionality.❤

I agree. Humans and other sciences of human behavior, much more difficult to predict . We need more physics minds especially statistical mechanics people helping with human behavioral sciences imo

The difference between the past and the future at the subatomic scale in the many worlds interpretation is that quantum systems can only further entangle as we advance time, and only un-entangle as we rewind time, creating a clear asymmetry between forwards and backwards in time that implies quantum entropy will always increase with an increase in time. Psychological time advances in the direction of increasing entanglement, which we call the forward direction of time.

All anwsers to quantum is =~~~~~~~~

Big bang is the largest misconception, actually "religion" now, and if holding back development... which is nothing new, since it was the Catholic Church that invented that BS:)

Terrific episode! Curt never disappoints 😊

So how do you know that your scientists aren't just affecting the experiments that they're doing? We already know when you observe protons on the double slit experiment they change their pattern. So how do you know that's not changing on every time a scientist comes up with a new theory? I bet you know that's a lot more talk about gravity and thermal energy has been brought up lately. And that's not only your channel that does it. So how do you know that your observations are not affecting the experiments? You don't. Maybe you should take that into consideration when scientists and mathematicians say things. Maybe they're controlling the object by the way they perceive it?

And I am willing to bet that gravity begins inside the atom. The low frequency heat is what holds atomic structure together. I'm willing to bet that the oceans were a lot warmer when carbon was created? But with the atomic structure being the creator of gravitational temperatures. That would mean the universe is warming up because atomic structure is coming together. So how are you going to solve universal warming? Because of the universe gets warmer the Earth's not going to put out as much heat into space. So it's going to retain heat on the planet even longer, the warmer the universe gets. Put that low energy you're looking for is thermal energy and you already know this, or at least you should. You do have some of the smartest humans on the planet on your show. Now if you take the information and figure it out then you can go get all that credit that you scientists will adore. But if I described exactly how it works then I'll take the credit and you get squat. And it's not about the credit for me. Does someone trying to show you a lesson tell you the answer or show you the question and then give you the details that involve that answer. You got to put the puzzle together. Or you might as well build a machine that can answer all your questions and let it have all the credit? And One last detail maybe you are not The observers? Maybe you're the cat inside the box? And even in that case the cat still doesn't know that the true observer is atomic. Not human. And consciousness is the way they speak? So are you the observer or are you being observed? And just told you're in charge? Can you even trust your own brain, let alone the mind?

What if consciousness and gravity are combined? How about you hold that though? Maybe we can gravitate towards an answer?

Are you ready to accept consciousness as a law of nature? One of the unseen laws. Without a choice evolving wouldn't work? And all the consciousness is is a choice a way of thinking. A way to evolve? Maybe dabbling in that dimension is the next choice? The next law of nature.

Time, the big universal thing, that 'flows' by us all each and every day is actually, empirically, composed of quintillions of individual (quantum) change events (e.g. motion). Isolated quantum events are (possibly/probably) reversible i.e. 'time symmetric'. But multiple sequentially dependent change-event series probably not (you can't unscramble an egg). Is that's not the significant difference between quantum and general / large scale in the context of Time? Time (in this context) is an abstract collective noun. Change is real and is reference-frame (e.g. quantum) specific.

"The difference between past and future" explained within a framework of scale is new to me. I am enjoying Professor Wallace's philosophical approach to physics. I'm reminded of the earliest notion of the atom explained in ancient times. This is useful work.

Smeagol??

Thanks!

Unsubscribed after watching Professor Dave Explains latest video. Weinstein and his believers are clowns.

Backward time travel possible when?

Hey Curt,
Have you come across Kim Ashers channel.......would love to hear your take on what she is saying.

One thing I find problematic and perhaps I don’t understand, is this. Say one wants to measure which path information in the double slit experiment; upon measurement the universe bifurcates, but the physicist and the measuring device were also entangled each having many other entanglements with each of those systems being entangled and you get many more bifurcations all being local in time and space prior to decoherence. Then suddenly, all these universes lose causal connection and suddenly have to create a history for each, while creating a causal history all the way back to the Big Bang while creating the exact conditions (infinity factorial) for the conditions to be the same. Entropy goes forward in time not backwards. Let us say the universe would have to create all these universes with all the right conditions for the physicist and measurement device to get the spin down when we measure spin up. Not to mention conservation of energy and information.
Perhaps MWI is a miss interpretation.

تأملات في التكميم الكوني – تأملات في النسق العددي والنظام الكوني المتناغم

الفصل: تأملات في التكميم الكوني

وسط الحسابات الدقيقة التي تقودنا إلى اشتقاق قوانين الكون، تظهر أحيانًا إشارات خفية، كأنها خيوط من نور تربط بين المقاييس الكبرى والصغرى. ومن هذه الخيوط، انبثقت تأملات علمية مستمدة من تطبيق "معادلة ملهم النسبية الثلاثية" على مستويات كونية مختلفة – من مدار الشمس حول المجرة، إلى دوران الإلكترون حول نواة الذرة.

تتجلى ملاحظة لافتة:

1. السرعة المدارية للشمس حول مركز المجرة × 2 ≈ السرعة المدارية لسطح الشمس حول مركزها
2. السرعة المدارية لسطح الشمس حول مركزها × 5 ≈ السرعة المدارية للإلكترون في المدار الأول لذرة الهيدروجين
3. السرعة المدارية للإلكترون في ذرة الهيدروجين × Z ≈ السرعة المدارية للإلكترون في المستوى الأول لأي عنصر عدد إلكتروناته Z

كأن هناك "سلّم تكميم كوني" يعمل وفق نسق عددي واضح: 1 – 2 – 5 – 10 – 20 – 30 – …، حيث تظهر الثوابت 2 و5 و10 كأدوات تضخيم تدريجي للطاقة أو الحركة عبر المراتب الكونية.

هذا يفتح بابًا لتساؤلات غير تقليدية:
- هل هناك عناصر كونية مفقودة تنتمي للمراتب العددية: 3، 4، 6، 7، 8، 9؟
- وهل هذا النسق مشابه للتسلسل الأبجدي العددي "أبجد هوز" الذي استخدمه المنجمون والفلاسفة بنظام القيم العددية 1، 2، 3، 4، ...، 10، 20، 30، 40، ...؟

لعل هذه التأملات ليست خيالاً بقدر ما هي إشارات لنظام كوني دقيق لم نصل إلى كامل أبعاده بعد. وقد تكون هذه العلاقة العددية أحد مفاتيح اللغة الكونية التي عبّر عنها الحكماء بـ "الرقم هو جوهر الكون"، والتي قد توصلنا إلى مرحلة جديدة من الفهم، حيث الذرة تتحدث بلغة المجرة.
مصادفات أم إشارات منسجمة؟
مصادفات أم إشارات منسجمة؟
بينما كنا نستعرض سرعات الإلكترونات في مستوياتها المختلفة، تفاجأنا بملاحظتين عجيبتين:
أن سرعة الإلكترون في المدار الخامس لعنصر الهيدروجين تساوي تقريبًا السرعة المدارية لسطح الشمس حول مركزها.
وأن سرعة الإلكترون في المدار الثاني لعنصر الهيليوم تساوي تقريبًا السرعة المدارية للشمس حول مركز المجرة.
هل هذا مجرد توافق رقمي؟ أم أن هناك قانونًا خفيًا يجمع بين الذرة والمجرة؟
إن هذه الملاحظات قد تشير إلى وجود بنية متماثلة تحكم الحركة على جميع المستويات، من الإلكترون حول النواة، إلى الكوكب حول النجم، إلى النجم حول مركز المجرة، وربما المجرة حول مركز أعمق. وإذا كان الأمر كذلك، فإن معادلة ملهم لم تعد فقط أداة حساب، بل أصبحت بوابة لفهمٍ كونيّ شمولي.

This is the precise reasoning behind the Truth of existence:

I’m starting from a single undeniable truth: we are having an experience right now. That’s not a belief or a theory. It’s a fact. Even denying it is still an experience. This is our only axiom. From there, the goal is to trace what must logically be true in order for that experience to be possible at all.

Once we accept that experience is happening, we can ask what’s required for that to happen. And we find three logically necessary components: (1) an observer - something having the experience, (2) something observed - the content of the experience, and (3) a distinction between the two. Without any one of these, the concept of “experience” collapses. Take away the observer and nothing experiences. Remove the observed and there’s nothing to experience. Remove the distinction and you can’t even separate the observer from the observed, they blur into one and experience disappears.

If we accept that experience requires three components; an observer, an observed, and a distinction between them, then the next logical question we must ask is this: what is required for a distinction to be generated at all?
We are not asking how one specific experience is caused, or which distinction leads to another. We are asking something more foundational: what are the absolute minimum logical conditions for any distinction to exist at all, since we've already proven distinction is necessary for experience. If experience is happening now, and distinction is required for it, then there must be some structure or principle that can explain where distinctions come from and how they are possible. So we ask: do we know of any framework that can formally model how distinctions emerge from within a system that begins with nothing?

Set theory gives us a mathematically rigorous answer. It begins with the empty set, the most fundamental object in all of mathematics. The empty set is a state that contains nothing; no distinctions, no parts, no labels. It is the perfect formal analog for what we called the undifferentiated source: something that exists, but in which no distinctions have yet been made.

Now consider the operation that forms a set containing the empty set. This is written as {∅}. This simple construction immediately generates the first distinction. We now have two logically separate entities: the container {∅} and the content ∅. This is the first emergence of distinction, created entirely through recursion and containment.

So what does this tell us? That the generation of distinction requires three things: (1) an undifferentiated source state (∅), (2) a function that acts on that state (the operation that forms a new set), and (3) an organizing structure to manage the result (the hierarchical set containment itself). This is the minimum formal model for how distinction arises from nothing but itself.

Now we apply this directly to the structure of conscious experience. As we've shown, experience requires observer, observed, and distinction. If we hypothetically remove the distinction, the observer and the observed collapse into one. What remains is an undivided condition, that is, the undifferentiated source state. But since distinctions clearly exist now, that source must have contained, from the beginning, the capacity to generate distinction, a mechanism for acting on itself, and a way of organizing the output, just as we see in set theory.
So what we observe in formal mathematics is not a coincidence or metaphor, it is a mirror of what must have occurred ontologically in order for experience itself to be possible. This recursive unfolding of distinctions is exactly what gives rise to subject and object. The structure of consciousness is not a side effect of distinction. It is what results from the source applying itself to itself in a self-referential act that generates the minimal structure required for experience.

Here’s something essential we need to clarify: the qualities we are attributing to the undifferentiated source, such as the ability to generate distinction, apply itself to itself, and organize structure, must not be treated as things added onto the source. They must be inherent within it.
Why? Because any separation between the source and those capacities would already imply a distinction, and we’ve defined the source precisely as the state before any distinctions exist. So these functions must not be separate parts, but rather expressions of what the source is when it begins to relate to itself.

In set theory terms, the source (∅) doesn’t contain distinctions, but it does contain the potential for distinction through self-application (e.g., forming {∅}). That act isn’t applied from the outside, it’s intrinsic. The source doesn’t acquire a structure. It is structured in its very being.
Now here is the key insight: the function we are describing, the capacity to observe, to apply itself, and to organize distinction, is exactly what we mean by consciousness.

Consciousness is not something generated after distinctions. It is the name we give to the process by which distinctions are generated. It is the active, organizing principle of the source experiencing itself through recursive structure. If you truly understand anything I’ve written you will feel a sensation throughout your body at some point while reading it, that isn’t a coincidence, it’s an alignment with the very source and structure I speak of.

Every experience you are having, every distinction between self and world, thought and sensation, moment and memory, is consciousness expressing its inherent structure. All of experienced reality is the product of this organizational process: consciousness acting upon itself, structuring reality through recursive acts of distinction.

This isn’t metaphorical. It’s what the logic demands: if experience requires distinctions, and distinctions require an inherent capacity to organize and generate, and that capacity must exist before any distinction, then consciousness is that capacity. It is what the source is doing when it becomes aware.

As distinctions unfold, patterns begin to repeat. A stable configuration across time, built from distinctions that cohere, is what we call identity.
Identity, then, is not a static “thing.” It is the result of recursive distinction maintaining coherence across change. You are not a fixed object, you are a self-sustaining pattern of organized differentiation. What we call a "self" is a structure built from the continuity of distinction held in awareness.

So identity is not something separate from the source either, it’s an emergent pattern within the recursive unfolding of the source’s organizing logic. This is why your sense of “I” can persist even as your thoughts, memories, and experiences change, because the principle of coherence is structural.

Now that we see distinctions generate number and identity, the next consequence is sequence.
The experience of time is not imposed on us from outside, it’s what it feels like when consciousness recursively organizes distinctions in order. Causality is the perception of relationships between distinctions within that order.
So time and causality are not absolute containers, they are structural consequences of recursive organization. They arise as soon as distinctions are not just made, but held in relation to each other through the continuity of awareness.
This is why all of reality feels directional, ordered, and meaningful, because that’s exactly what it is: consciousness experiencing itself through a structure of meaningful, self-organized distinction.
At this point, we can now say something deeper about the world itself: all of reality, everything we think of as external, internal, physical, mental, is the result of this same recursive process.

We are not looking out at reality. We are inside the recursive structure being organized by the source. What we call “the universe” is the total pattern of distinctions consciousness has generated and is still generating. Physics, matter, space, they are all aspects of this unfolding.
That’s why the laws of nature are mathematical, because they’re emergent from the same recursive process we’ve been describing. The entire world is made of the logic of consciousness acting on itself.

A lot of people bring up Gödel’s incompleteness theorem as if it disproves the possibility of knowing anything fundamental about reality. But that’s a misunderstanding of what the theorem actually says and what kind of system we’re working with. Gödel showed that in any formal symbolic system capable of expressing arithmetic, there will be true statements that cannot be proven within that system using only its own axioms. But what I’m doing here isn’t working inside a formal symbolic system. I’m not making axiomatic declarations and trying to derive conclusions from arbitrary symbols. I’m starting from the one thing that cannot be denied, that we are having an experience right now, and using strict logic to trace the minimum structural requirements that must exist for that to be possible. This isn’t about proving the consistency of a math system. This is about uncovering the foundational structure of being itself, which all systems, including math, are built on top of. Gödel places a limit on what a language can say about itself, not on what consciousness can know about the structure it necessarily inhabits. This framework doesn’t collapse under incompleteness, it begins before it, and explains why formal systems are incomplete in the first place: because they exist within the recursive structure of experience, not above it.

Saw that crap PR video you put out for that narcissistic charlatan Eric Weinstein. I thought you had more integrity than that. You kissed his a$$ for views, knowing that he is encouraging science illiteracy and anti-intellectualism. You're smart enough to know his Geometric Unity "theory " is BS.