Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site looking.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!looking!brad From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: QM and Multiple Worlds Message-ID: <331@looking.UUCP> Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 00:00:00 EDT Article-I.D.: looking.331 Posted: Sat Aug 24 00:00:00 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 12:49:27 EDT References: <486@talcott.UUCP> <1049@sdcsvax.UUCP> Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont Lines: 29 Summary: To me, in the multiple worlds interpretation, you should not talk about "an observer moving down his world line." An observer IS his world line, by definition. You didn't observe the photon as a particle, you *are* the world line that saw the photon as a particle. This translates as saying that the definition of a consciousness is an entity that is (or I suppose to make it clearer I could say traverses) a single world line in a universe of many. To me, this is also Zen. What this means is that you're a figment of my imagination, and I'm also a figment of yours, and it isn't inconsistent to say this. Now, being a concious human world-line is being a semi-continuous path though a large dimensional space of all possible configurations of space time. That's what makes us special. What QM and related topics might be showing is that the path is only semi-continuous, and doesn't have to be consistent at the lowest level, as long as it follows certain probabilistic rules. So this notion is not "absurd", just somewhat unusual and perhaps distasteful to our conceptions of consciousness. As a note, I am not saying I believe all this. Simply that is is a possible consistent theory and should not be dismissed out of hand as absurd (which I used to do.) -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473