FQXi FORUM
CATEGORY: Article Discussions
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TOPIC: Philosophy of the Multiverse
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The problem with a multiverse of universes having different settings (particular laws and constants) is that there must also be a mechanism of maintaining those particular settings. In one world reality is set up this way, but in this other world right over here this dial is turned up and this one is turned down, and two completely different forces govern subatomic particles. If there can be constant settings then why not variables, and why not constants that become variables, and why not every conceivable reality, and suddenly you have an absolute chaos. In chaos, the probability of existing in a universe without stable settings is far greater than existing in one with stable settings, since variability is just another word for potentiality. Unless you assume some limiting mechanism that only creates universes where settings remain constant, the stability of any given universe is destroyed by the far greater probability of 'settings' decay, in which case we shouldn't expect to see the sun rise tomorrow. The mystery is the same, whether we are talking about a multiverse or our own universe. Why settings and not chaos? So the multiverse idea doesn't really accomplish anything. It just relocates the mystery.
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It was very anthropocentric for earlier humans to believe that they were the center of everything, but it seems to me equally narrow-minded to suggest that we have the one (and only) winning lottery ticket, which is a fundamental basis for the multiverse theory.
Sure...the evolution of our *exact* manifestation of life may be very specific (= improbable), but the evolution of some sort of life may not be so rare in very-large-scale dynamic systems. And I certainly don't believe that we understand the basis of consciousness well enough to say what kind of organization / order might give rise to it, so who's to say that only one of the lottery tickets is a winner? Maybe they all are!
We're finding evidence for potentially life-sustaining environments elsewhere in our galaxy (i.e., practically next door), so maybe self-aware life is a lot more common than we think, and if we're open-minded about what life is (and acknowledge that our limited senses might not even be able to perceive it all), maybe there's a heck of a lot more of it around than we think.
And if so, then what's the justification / need for the multiverse?
(If what I wrote doesn't make convince you, don't worry...one of the other infinite me's in the multiverse wrote a lucid and compelling version of this post, so just pretend that you read that one.)
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Life is uniquely defined as physical matter capable of replication and adaption, properties that are fundamentally related to randomness in structural geometry on multiple scales.
A possible path to multiverse research may lie with such randomness but at much larger scale. At the scale we observe, why should the laws of physics be so elegantly precise - yet result in so much variation in life? Perhaps one layperson's randomness is another's intersection of universes.
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