Monday 25 January 2021

How many is infinite anyway?

Leaving aside Davids Bohm and Peat for now, a few words about Hugh Everett the third are required, since it was he who inspired this question of Infinite Worlds, by sitting up all night with a friend drinking alcoholic beverages, determined to write the elusive equation to unify the fields and make his name, not to mention win his PhD ...

For context, Hugh's story is told as a tragedy, even though he was awarded his Doctor status ... clinically depressed, he married and sired two children, one boy, one girl, a perfect pairing in the USA at the time ... two was plenty, food was plentiful, Mum could stay home while Hugh pursued his interest in the deepest questions as might be revealed through mathematics, specifically Algebra or Al Gebra as it may have been known since it was Arabs who developed it when Christians had descended into the Dark Ages, Popes and Priests suppressing Science by force, torture and so on ... daring to enlist the Seers and Scientists of Greek and Roman Antiquity to support the notion of the Earth revolving round the Sun, instead of vice versa, was known to attract a Bonfire ... not just of books but also authors, burnt for their beliefs ... which is not nice, to say the least!

Basically Everett was a distant father, not geographically but emotionally ... a high functioning alcoholic also, which killed him in the end they say ... his son, an artist, survived him, his daughter killed herself and left a note: I wish to be reunited with my Dad, in a parallel universe ... which is beyond sad. Clearly, the sub-text read: A universe where Dad loves his little girl ... let's pray she found it ...

The equation unifying the fields, by the way, required Infinite Parallel Worlds,  an idea so outlandish his supervisor, Wheeler, suggested substituting Infinite with Many ... though Bohr and the Copenhagen Crew, holding sway in those days when the quantum world promised great results without such nonsense, rejected all of it ... Hugh licked his wounds, joined the Pentagon, helped prove that any First Strike with nuclear bombs assured mutual destruction, thus staving off the crazies on each side and saving the Earth ... a worthwhile outcome indeed! Mad presidents, by the way, were given big red buttons marked "Do Not Press!", which obviously did not work, since any parent knows such a button in front of most boys is irresistible ...

To be clear, Infinite does not mean lots, many, very many or any number at all ... which solves the Measurement Problem in one small symbol, not found on this limited keyboard  ... think a number eight on its side, a never ending loop ... obviously a problem for proper scientists, limited as they tend to be by the need to measure everything ...

Bohm and Peat, like many other scientists through the ages, dared to explore  the Right brain zone, where humans are unlimited, the possibilty of delusion notwithstanding ... accepting the risk of scorn from the Left brain dominant measurers who took over the asylum long ago, dismissing Infinity along with its temporal twin, Eternity, which rather compounds the problem ... though Space Time was long ago proposed by Einstein as a dimension of reality allowing him to demonstrate Relativity, with algebraic accuracy, still generally accepted ... as current theorists discuss String Theory, with more than four dimensions, Multiverses, even Everett's amended Many Worlds Theory, still out there in the realm of serious science ...

Mystics of many kinds have long expressed the timeless wisdom that Science, currently plagued by a new religion called Scientism, may catch up eventually ... Plato's Cave, for example clearly points to our tendency to create a false reality by mistaking our own shadows for the reality outside the cave ... and, by the Way, this old blogger does not add a creator big G God to confuse us further. .. as explored over the pages of the virtual reality world in Wear and Dao ...

NB as always: corrections from experts in the field of quantum mechanics welcome!

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