Ah, yes, multiple histories. Given only what we know now about the universe (and not what we “remember from before”, since our memories are actually just patterns encoded in our brain at the present moment), what’s to stop us from thinking that entropy was higher in the past and things just spontaneously arranged themselves into the present low-entropy state? In other words, the second law of thermodynamics might not be true and the arrow of time could be more of a parabola with our present selves at the bottom. That ripe banana in your hand might have been rotten 6 days ago.
If multiple histories is true, then MOST (by probability amplitude) of the universe’s histories are paradoxical in this way, since there are more possible pasts with high entropy than there are with low entropy. Furthermore these counterintuitive histories might be weird in other ways (for instance, some of them might not feature a Big Bang or expanding universe at all, but rather the light distribution just fluctuated in such a way as to mimic one). Everything we think we know about “the past” might come into doubt if MWI and multiple histories are true. I once tried asking this question on Physics Forums but it got deleted for being too weird. Apparently they don’t like anything that upsets their common sense too much. Actually I find the idea that the past is not as it seems to be oddly fascinating. I’m thinking I might write a story about beings who perceive time as parabolic, with their present selves at an entropy minimum: their language is structured so that they can only talk about possible pasts and not “the” past, and also they have words for all the Second Law-violating reverse processes that had to have occurred in the high-entropy majority of their possible pasts. -Mason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
