To: <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 7:38 PM
Subject: RE: many worlds theory of immortality
While I'm a supporter of Tegmark's Ultimate Ensemble, I think it is by no
means clear that just because everything that can happen does happen, there
will necessarily be a world where everyone becomes omniscient, or lives for
ever, or spends their entire life dressed in a pink rabbit outfit.
"Everything that can happen does happen" is not synonymous with "everything
we can imagine happening does happen". Worlds where we live forever or
become omniscient or are born dressed in a pink rabbit suit may not be
*logically possible* worlds. Just as there is no world in the multiverse
where 2+2=5, there may be no worlds in the multiverse where I live forever
or spend my entire life dressed in a pink rabbit suit.
I think universes are more like frames of a movie, time is descreet, and we continually move from one universe to the next where continuity exists. Given this, all the universes that ever are, or will be exist right now in a platonic view. We just cruise through them. They are infinite in number and there are ones with every possible arrangement of matter, laws of physics, combinations of dimensions, etc. Once one thinks the universe is infinite, there's no reason to limit it to one universe or a multiverse with only specific components.
"How about a universe that is simply an empty dodecahedron? In the Level IV multiverse, all these alternative realities actually exist."
"[Level IV multiverses] are almost impossible to visualize; the best one can do is to think of them abstractly".
-- Max Tegmark, SciAm 05/2003
