BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory

Subject: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 03:17 AM

Parallel Worlds Parallel Lives

Since this theory referred to in the World's Worst Metaphor link---and I referred to this video in some other link, I thought I'd post it. It's an attempt by Mark Oliver Everett (The Eels) --a genius of a songwriter---to understand his father, Hugh Everett, who was credited for hypothesizing and (from his perspective) the existence of "parallel worlds" or parallel universes.

It's a great video---even though it's about an hour long.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Lavengro
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 10:59 AM

Saw this when it aired. A great documentary. Everetts book that covers this is great too.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 01:51 PM

Yes, that's a good theory. One of several to explain quantum problems. It's been around a long time.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 04:00 PM

It's a very interesting possibility. Will watch video later when I get some more time to.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 12:09 AM

Interesting? Well ~~ I suppose: if you have that sort of anti-wysiwyg mindset, where you can't bear the thought of what you can see being all you can get.

So they all come up with these Parallel Universe and Alternative Reality theories ~~ Hawking, Everett, the lot of them; tying the patently obvious up in evermore fantastic Gordian knots around ever-so-pretty cosmic giftwraps...

Just as so many other people have always come up with (and so providing an acceptably "scientific"-sounding version of)





GOOD OLD GODAWMIGHTY HIMSELF

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 09:42 AM

Lavengro, I agree that his book, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, is also great!

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 03:13 PM

The one thing that is 'patently obvious' is that there is no such thing as 'patently obvious'...

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 03:51 PM

Speaking of grand children, we have three here this weekend so getting an entire hour to watch this or do much of anything is impossible...

I'd like to think that there are a multitude of parallel worlds and lives... Some of them right here on this rock...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 01:03 AM

There's a separate world percolating around in each human being's head, that's for sure. And several separate worlds coexisting in some people's heads.

I, for instance, have to keep track of a whole bunch of them, but there's only one that I actually think is really me.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 01:55 AM

One thing that is patently obvious, Kevin, is the need of so many quite surprising people for some sort of anagogic explanation of phenomena which don't need them. If they can somehow claim them as 'scientifically' based, don't they love it, just! And if they happen themselves to be 'distinguished scientists', doesn't everybody else ~~ except for perverse little boys like me who can see what the emperor is really wearing, so get patronised for saying patently obvious things like 'patently obvious'.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 08:35 AM

It really is difficult to find a patently obvious explanation of the anomalies with diffraction grating experiments which underly the thinking that comes up with speculative theories like Everett's. i mean stuff that seems to demonstrate individual photons going through two separate holes at the same time.

It's not just a matter of word games.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 11:09 AM

No, MthGM - You are one of those hidebound, rigid chaps who already knows everything worth knowing and would have ridiculed the idea of the existence of radio waves prior to their actual use in various now common devices such as radio, radar, etc.

After all, we couldn't SEE them back then, could we? ;-) Therefore it's not in the realm of WYSIWYG, and it must all be a load of bollocks! Why, that fellow Marconi must be a madman or a fool," you'd have said, "And look, there he is pompously hiding behind a facade of psuedo-scientific jabber while he attempts to convince people of his silly theory..."

You're one of those who just likes things to stay the way they ARE. No surprises, please! Let's just believe exactly what our grandfathers believed and deal with bloody REALITY, because there's no sense rocking the boat or sailing into distant uncharted waters, is there? "That way Dragons lie, and we might go off the edge of the World!"

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 01:14 PM

"one of those hidebound, rigid chaps who already knows everything worth knowing and would have ridiculed the idea of the existence of radio waves"

,..,.,

WHO would? What have I said anywhere to induce such a fatuously ill-natured response, LH? Must rank as one of the most stupid posts I have ever read on a forum ~~ which is saying a good deal.

If you can't see the difference between open-minded receptiveness to new discoveries, and rejection of self-evident absurdities in the perception of actualities

then just let it pass...

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 01:39 PM

I think you would have reacted just that way, M, and the same way to any new and unusual theory that came along, had you been there at the right time in history.

In any case, I was drawing an analogy, you silly bugger. Think about it a bit, and you might get it.

Why is something "a self-evident absurdity"?....just because it strikes you that way? Are you the arbitor of what's possible and what isn't? I neither believe nor disbelieve in the concept of parallel worlds (I merely find it intriguing). I neither believe nor disbelieve in it because I have no basis for either believing or disbelieving in it...and neither do you.

I do, however, find it interesting, merely as a hypothetical possibility. Therefore I don't react the way you do to the idea, which is to charge out of your hole like an upset moray eel or a religious fundamentalist of some kind and call it an "absurdity", despite the fact that you have no real basis for doing so in the first place.

People far better versed in physics than you or I have merely proposed it as a possibility (and one among many). We have no way of presently investigating that possibility, therefore no basis for either categorically denying it or insisting that it must be so.

You appear to want a sense of certainty about things like that, and I think that's your real motivation...the comfort of being "certain" about things. I am not the least bit perturbed by living in a world where one is not certain about a good many things...therefore I don't react to such a theory by labelling it "an absurdity"...because I have no way of knowing about its validity one way or the other....and there's nothing in the idea that necessarily contradicts what I already am certain about...which is the stuff I know by direct experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 03:53 PM

Oh

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 04:07 PM

"Like an upset moray eel" - I rather like that, a neat bit of imagery.

Here's an extract from a Wikiedia article: "The morays are frequently thought of as particularly vicious or ill-tempered animals. In truth, morays hide from humans in crevices and would rather flee than fight. They are shy and secretive, and attack humans only in self-defence or mistaken identity. Most attacks stem from disruption of a moray's burrow "

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 05:00 PM

♮♪♬♬♪

Ye Hielands and ye Lawlands
O whaur hae ye been?
They hae slain the Eel o Moray..

〽〽〽♒♒♌♌♌
☠☠☠☠                     ♪♪♯♯♬♬

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 07:52 PM

Let me know when someone finds a monkey with ten assholes.

Some moray stuff:
Moray eels (Family Muraenidae)

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 01:23 AM

'In any case, I was drawing an analogy, you silly bugger. Think about it a bit, and you might get it.'
.,,.

A peculiarly inept & ill-considered analogy which would be seen thru in a microsecond by a 4-yr-old child, you, ah, foolish-anal-intercourser-right-back-2U.

Still, as my late wife used always to say when one was pursuing what struck her as a silly course or train-of-thought, play your games.

& I hope it keeps fine for you.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 04:42 PM

I took it Little Hawk's point there was that, until the technical stuff like radio came into the picture, the theoretical underpinning that made it possible must have seemed rather a far fetched self indulgent game played by jumped up academics to many people. Why couldnt these people stick to real stuff like steam engines, which made patently obvious sense, and got people to work?...

JBS Haldane wrote back in 1927 "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."   The years since then seem to have borne out the truth of that.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 05:37 PM

Now, now, Mr. Mcgrath: Shouldn't we at least put that in more up-to-date, less offensive, terms?

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only gayer than we suppose, but gayer than we can suppose."

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: olddude
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 06:22 PM

Well Mudcat is a separate world unto itself. It is where all of us crazies hang out

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Squeezer
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 05:38 AM

MtheGM

Re your post of 7th, I know little of quantum mechanics, but the little I've read shows that in the realm of quanta there are astounding phenomena which are not only counter-intuitive but (apparently) impossible. These really do need some sort of explanation, but to date the best minds on the planet are unable to come up with a form of words which satisfies both logic and experiment.

Are you suggesting in your post that you are in fact able to produce an explanation? If so, the Nobel Prize for physics will be on its way by special delivery. If not, why all the anger?

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 06:03 AM

Not anger exactly, Squeezer. More a sense that there is a mystic, anagogic element in such Alternative Universes or Multiversal [or whatever] suggestions and perceptions that, it seems to me, ill becomes what should be the aim of detached and objective scientific observation; far too redolent, IMO, of the religious impulse, as if Hawking, Everett, and all these bozos feel, and are endeavouring to satisfy, the need of some sort of experience "beyond", which in their cases conventional "religion" will not meet.

Still: I did not intend to sound aggressive or dogmatic, exactly; more dubious and interrogative.

But I'm just an English graduate from 60 years ago, and have obviously never aspired to any Prize for Physics, not even one delivered by the village postman with the morning's steam mail. What, indeed, do I know, of quanta and such concepts!?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 06:13 AM

MtheGM: Interesting? Well ~~ I suppose: if you have that sort of anti-wysiwyg mindset, where you can't bear the thought of what you can see being all you can get.

As others have said, the "patently obvious" isn't always "quite" so obvious, and "wysiwyg" is often absolutely not correct.Personally, I have a problem with quite a few aspects of some of the "Parallel Worlds" hypotheses, but a lot of the things that "Hawking, Everett, the lot of them" have come up with are not only mathermatically elegant but have made observational predictions that have later been verified.

I was studying Astrophysics at Leicester university in the early 70s when the radio emmissions from Cygnus X-1 were observed and evidence started to build that it was a black hole....something that was until then just a mathematical concept.

And looking at something like the human body...what you "see" (touch, feel, etc) definitely appears solid....yet in reality, atoms being most empty space, there's hardly anything "solid" there at all....you're just a bunch of molecules made up of atoms that themselves are overwhelmingly a bunch of nothingness. Not "what you see is what you get" at all!

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 06:39 AM

Anagogic is a great word to wield, but it doesn't really bear much relation to what theoretical scientists are doing, which doesn't have too much to do with spiritual uplift.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 07:00 AM

I have been to a parallel world and did not like it. The currency exchange rate was a rip off, the food, service and hotels sketchy (at best), and the shopping dismal. It's not for everyone, only those willing to "rough it" should chance this venture.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Squeezer
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 07:13 AM

MtheGM

Well, I see what you're getting at. Of course, mathematicians and physicists are human beings too, and no doubt at least some of them, even if unconsciously, would like there to be more to Life, the Universe and Everything than merely manifold manifestations of electromagnetic radiation. But at the same time, these people have not invented their surprising experimental results. Because what they see is inexplicable, scientists would much rather have found predictable results. After all, explanation and prediction is what science is all about. Parallel universe theory is a spin-off from attempts to explain quantum phenomena mathematically, but I think it's a mistake to say in developing this sort of theory that scientists are trying to satisfy some sort of need for the mystic. Certainly, quantum mechanics is mysterious, but that's obviously different.

From your post of 6th, and from your reply to me, it's evident that you haven't come across the astounding universe of quantum mechanics before (and yes, in effect it really is another universe - one where our 1 + 1 = 2 logic does not apply). In quantum physics it's not a case of "what you see is what you get", more like "what you see negates any conception of cause and effect". Hmmm .... having written that, perhaps I should say maybe you're right and there is something mystic about quantum physics after all. Anyway, if you would like to dip into some science fiction that is actually fascinating scientific fact, I cannot do better than suggesting that you get hold of an introduction to quantum physics. Mine was "In search of Schroedinger's cat" by John Gribben, and I'm sure there are many others that can be recommended.

Nothing about quantum mechanics is either satisfactory or patently obvious to either scientists or layman.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 07:28 AM

..."doesn't have too much to do with spiritual uplift"...

.,,.


But, Kevin, don't they seem to go on as if it did, just? ~~ as if what they are doing will do nicely to fill the gap left by 'spiritual uplift': seems to me to be an identifiably anagogic content to the whole atmosphere of the work --

as Squeezer put it above "astounding phenomena which are not only counter-intuitive but (apparently) impossible"

-- just my point and the explanation of my doubting attitude, which seems to be so unpopular around here.

But, as I've already said, what do I know of quanta 'n' all such!?

possible-schmossible......

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 09:03 AM

You mean this kind of stuff? Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

I can't see that "flling the gap" particularly well.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 10:03 AM

Can't you? I can see no possible purpose for it other than to sit cross-legged under a bo-tree contemplating it to ∞∞∞∞∞

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 11:28 AM

One of the consequences of highly abstruse speculation about Quantum Theory is the computer you use to dismiss the value of such speculation as pointless...

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:22 PM

I can see that many incidental benefits might have come, and will probably continue to come, from these speculations.

(Tho I feel bound to ask in passing if you are asserting that this computer before me would in their absence not have been here or existed in any form whatever?)

Many important medical and chemical discoveries came, likewise, from the alchemists' searches for the Elixir Of Life, and for the Philosphers' Stone which would transmute base metals into gold. But that is hardly an argument for the proposition that we should retrospectively take such searches intrinsically seriously, on their own terms, as science ~~ is it?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:26 PM

Anyhow, I have never heard that Charles Babbage or poor Alan Turing were proponents of any sort of parallel-universe theory while they were about it. Have you?

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 02:12 PM

"The fundamental idea of the MWI, going back to Everett 1957, is that there are myriads of worlds in the Universe in addition to the world we are aware of," it says here in that link you gave us so obligingly above.

But why doesn't Mr Everett then go on to answer the vital question? ~~

viz ~ Are they all mounted on the back of the same Giant Tortoise, or do they each have a separate individual Giant Tortoise of their own?

I think we should be told!

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 09:26 PM

I'd think it highly unlikely that the personal computer on your desk or the ipad I'm holding would exist if people hadn't rattled around carrying out seemingly crazy speculative and pointless speculation about quanta and cats in sealed boxes and stuff like that.

There might possibly have been some magnificent vast machines in government skyscrapers...

Most ideas turn out to be not quite true, often not at all true, but the turning out comes later. And often the ideas that turn out to be least useful are the ones that seemed patently true, and the crazy ones turn out to be the ones that turn out most useful in getting closer to the truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 05:14 AM

MthGM: Can't you? I can see no possible purpose for it other than to sit cross-legged under a bo-tree contemplating it to ∞∞∞∞∞

Well when the Quantum Tunnelling Effect was first hypothesised in the early 20th century, this would have been a common reaction...."all very interesting for the navel-gazers, and some elegant maths, but what possible use could it be?...."

Fast forward 60 years or so and we have the Tunnel Diode and the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope. After 80-90 years the Tunnelling Field Effect Transistor is in development and we are making progress in the field of Quantum Conductivity, with the potential to lead to much faster computers.....

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Squeezer
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 06:20 PM

Anyway, what's wrong with sitting under a bo-tree and contemplating? Don't think it's ever done anyone any harm; in fact, I'm led to believe it's done a lot of people good.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 11:37 PM

The young scientist in the movie talked about looking forward to the future where experiments may prove older Evertt's theories true.

Me too! But I think all of mes will end up going to sponge off the me that became a rock star.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 03:04 AM

Jack, it's great to know that somebody actually watched the video!

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 05:59 AM

Squeezer ~~ Where did I suggest that such an activity as sub-bo-tree contemplation would be in any way deleterious? My point was simply to emphasise the quasi-spiritual* nature of these undemonstrable multiversal speculations. I know that I have spent much of my life in sitting and thinkingºº, tho bo-trees were not readily available in my milieu; a most productive activity indeed.

~M~

*[since someone above -- was it you? - I recall that at one point you did admit a modicum of the mystic element into the discourse - took exception of my use of the word 'anagogic']

ºº I have always valued the old Punch cartoon of the elderly man telling the officious district-visitor of his lifestyle ~ "Well, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits"

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Squeezer
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:15 AM

E-mails are often very imprecise means of communicating. I assumed from what seemed to me to be a flippant response from you that you thought that contemplation was rather of a waste of time. So, glad we have cleared that up.

Yes, I did admit the permissibility of subsuming the mystic into the mysterious. Therefore - no, I did not object to your use of "anagogic". You perhaps had in mind McGrath of Harlow's post of 9th.

There is still an omission which arouses my curiosity, viz. what to you is "patently obvious" about the Parallel Worlds theory? It is, after all, the subject of this thread and you appear to have firm views about it. Did you not obliquely suggest that you have the means to slice through this knotty problem which, like Schroedinger's cat, is superpositioned simultaneously in both physics and metaphysics? Or are you only a big tease?

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:43 AM

What was 'patently obvious' was that it was being used by some in a mystic-experience-substitute way. I have not the physics to comment on its content, so far as it is a question of physics; but as a (supposed) postulation of a physical actuality, it appears to me to have more of the mystical than the physic-al [ie pertaining to physics rather than to physique, tho not perhspas exclusively so] about. I am a struggler in that confusing hinterland between the physical & the metaphysical, rather than a big tease ~~ I think...

Reading that Stanford Encyclopedia entry on MWI linked above does not appear to me a million miles removed from the activities of the alchemists to which I refer above.

Compare the tone and ambience of {Wikipedia}

"H.J. Sheppard gives the following as a comprehensive summary:
Alchemy is the art of liberating parts of the Cosmos from temporal existence and achieving perfection which, for metals is gold, and for man, longevity, then immortality and, finally, redemption"

with

"The fundamental idea of the MWI, going back to Everett 1957, is that there are myriads of worlds in the Universe in addition to the world we are aware of. In particular, every time a quantum experiment with different outcomes with non-zero probability is performed, all outcomes are obtained, each in a different world, even if we are aware only of the world with the outcome we have seen"

Do you perceive no similarity in tone and approach? They set the same sort of nerve-tingle going in my shoulder-blades.



~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST,Jack Sprocket
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 04:37 PM

Stop playing the C P Snow game Mr Meyer. As a student of literature, you know better than to take metaphors literally. And both the Copenhagen interpretation* and the multiple worlds description are metaphorical attempts to describe what goes on in quantum interactions. As are others, the pilot-wave etc. What is certain is that there are lots of queer phenomena to talk about, and to get a handle on somehow, and that common-sense, Newtonian, physics can't do it. The purpose of metaphors is to inspire ways of exploring further, leading to experiments that support the metaphor, or disprove it (note: NOTHING in science can be proved, only falsified or not). For what it's worth (I can't play the quantum game because there's a glass ceiling on my maths), if you can base an industrial process on something, it's real. Let's see where quantum computing gets us.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure all the real participants feel sure they are missing something important (that's what they are in science for, after all). A bit like astronomy pre- Copernicus: if it doesn't fit the data, add another epicycle. I wonder what science would have been like if the Fourier series had been discovered in the fifteenth century?

*that the state is indeterminate until observed:

There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that that tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad.

Which elicited the response:

Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.

Touche. However, if God observes everything and collapses all wave functions, there shouldn't be any quantum effects to explain.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 04:50 PM

Who is this Mr Meyer you address, Mr Sprocket? Anyone I should know?

~Michael Grosvenor Myer~

C P Snow & I happen by coincidence to have been members of the same college. I am unaware of any other connection. I do not enjoy his novels greatly, & know little of his other activities.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 05:03 PM

The thought of "experiments that support the metaphor" is altogether too abstract and [to my perception] muddled a concept to make any sort of communication to me whatever. I daresay Mr Sprocket thinks he knows what he means by it. Does anyone else have any idea what he is groping for here? How can an experiment support a metaphor? If it be granted it can, what, precisely, is the nature of this support? of this experiment? of this metaphor? It sounds to me like an assertion with no identifiable referent.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 05:47 PM

Don't play dumb.

Metaphor:

My love is like a red, red rose.

Experiment 1:

Using visible light spectrometer, compare L with RRR.

Result:

L occupies a similar spectral region to RRR, the similarity increasing as experiment continued.

Discussion:

Metaphor still tenable.

Experiment 2:

Fill L's boots with horse manure. Apply similar treatment to pot RRR stands in.

Result:

L's colour now exactly matches RRR. L removed boots and hurled them at investigator. RRR did not.

Discussion:

Inconclusive. Metaphor still maintainable, with caveats.

Experiment 3:

(1) Cut L's head off and put it in a vase of water. See how long it lasts. As a control, cut the head off RRR and treat likewise.

Result:

L's colour tended to spread over spectrum before tending to green wavelengths. RRR colour remained largely constant.

Discussion:

Love not greatly like a RRR. Metaphor not supported.

At this point the investigation was terminated. The results were published in the 6 0'clock news.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:36 PM

It's easy enough to think of examples of metaphors that can be used in a scientific context. For example, if it were predicted that in a proposed chemical reaction a liquid would boil furiously, that would be metaphorical use of language, and carrying out the experiment might validate or disprove it.

At a more sophisticated level, when an attempt is made to help us understand concepts such the bending of space by gravity, and this is illustrated by drawings such as these, it is fair to refer to this as the use of a kind of metaphor.

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 10:10 PM

The known universe does not appear to double in mass every time a decision is made anywhere. Nor did it appear to do so when one young Everett stayed home and the other went to explore his dad's legacy.

I think that the documentary reads a little too much into the double slit experiment, (to make older Everett look wiser?) and its metaphor, implies the parallel universes occur on a macro level. Nice science fiction. Highly unlikely physics

Subject: RE: BS: Parallel Worlds version-Quantum Theory
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 12:22 AM

"Metaphor:
My love is like a red, red rose."

.,,.,

WRONG

That is a simile.

~M~