 |
 |
|
|
|
|
January 23, 2004 teaser for Wired article: dad recently forwarded an article by leonard susskind, the creator of string theory -- which is essentially the most recent theory-of-everything... with a special focus on the really small stuff, as in the things that make up quarks and gluons and so on. nobody's actually ever seen a string, but apparently the theory fits the evidence pretty well. anyway, one of the things that string theory supports is the notion of the multiverse... the idea that all possible universes, including both the one where you did brush your teeth this morning, and the one where you didn't-- and all other infinitely possible branching universes with all other infinitely possible decisions and events and their interdependencies-- all actually exist at the same time. that we live in only one infinitesimally small slice of possibility... and that there are a zillion other 'usses' living out a zillion other possible futures simultaneously. now i don't know what that means to me, and unfortunately i think its probably never going to fly with the teacher to tell them that there is a high likelihood that there is another you that actually did finish your homework, and actually did a perfect job at it too. but it is an interesting idea. and it got me to thinking that in a very real sense, we already work in this framework everyday. our minds continually evaluate all possible outcomes... or at least the ones that are most probable. we envision the most likely futures in advance... precompute them if you will, and then navigate our time-traveling, multiverse-aware selves through this thicket of prickly and unwanted futures in order to select the one most beneficial to ourselves. in the same way that our minds can remember images, and scenes and events in the past, which gives us awareness, context and meaning in our everyday lives, we also use our minds to create future scenarios -- like chess players working out the moves in advance-- in order to arrive at the most optimal outcome for ourselves. indeed, it may explain chess' popularity; it is an apt metaphor for the multiple universes that lay in front of us, and it exercises the capability of our minds to navigate to the best possible outcome. ibm created Big Blue, the supercomputer, and as its first challenge, gave it chess. perhaps in the future, we will pay for electronic assistance to help us navigate our possible futures, to pre-envision with more startling clarity and precision which road we should take... or simply to enjoy in high-resolution technicolor roads that we will never take--the big game we never won, the affair we never had. we already pay for digital cameras, and camcorders and use them to re-visit, and to share, the lives that we led, why not the same but in forward instead of reverse? after all, just as the hulking room-sized computers of 40 years ago are 1000x slower than the computer that's in your wristwatch today, perhaps the simplistic pre-cognition of big blue will be wristwatch sized and 1000x more capable of manipulating the symbols of our lives in the not-too-distant future. accepting the possibility of a multiverse really gets back to that age-old debate about free-will. after all, if there is only one possible future, then there is no free will--and perhaps no multiverse. but if there are multiple future possibilities... and maybe more importantly, if this capability of our brains to optimize our future is actually useful machinery--and not simply here for entertainment value--then choosing between those futures is part of exercising that muscle... a definition of free-will maybe? to me free will is more of a factor of nature and nurture. those organisms that are more highly developed and are able to live in more of a range of circumstances, or those organisms those that have enjoyed better resources, and perhaps a better education or standard of living, simply have more choices available to them. in a sense, the degree of free will a person, or an animal has is directly correlated with the number of possible futures available to them. a person who is locked in solitary confinement for 10 years has only futures which vary in terms of the pathways that their brain can take, pathways of thought, and even then... they can say for certainty that they will be in that room doing exactly the same thing for 10 years... barring a sympathetic warden or parole board. on the other hand, a person who has the liberty of interacting 'freely' with their surroundings has many more possible futures... and what's more their futures have an element of uncertainty which gives us a reason to use our future-thinking machinery. after all, there's not much point to have it if there aren't any environmental factors to feed into it. maybe that's why folks in solitary for 10 years can go a little crazy. i just read an article that scott peterson--the man accused of killing his wife lacy in modesto, california--enjoys playing chess to pass the time in jail... found that interesting.
multiverse is part of the answer to that age-old question of
of course, that begs the question: with the ability to record our entire lives in HDTV start to finish coming quickly, and the potentially more time-wasting ability to realistically envision the nearly infinite variety of possible futures lurking in our multiverse-- where are we going to get the time to live our real lives? how much time to we devote to reality, and how much to artifacts and impressions of reality? what we really need is more time, or ... faster brains?
---------------------- picked up two gringos. sara and stina... an american and a norwegian. they were headed the same way i am. traveling on quite a shoestring. the $8 hotel (called a hostal here) where i am now was too much for them. their ideal budget is 2.50 a day for accomodations. so i am sleeping here in the hotel... as is stina... but sara hiked off with her sleeping bag to a stand of trees down the road. sigh... i feel old... 15 years ago, i probably would have followed her. after all, i did ride my bicycle across the US, and camped out nearly every night in every conceivable rural and urban situation for 6 months. though even then, i imagine if there had been an $8 a night hotel i probably would have jumped at it. hell, its been 40 years since a warm bed and a hot shower could be had for that. motel 6? didn't they create their brand around the $6 hotel room? wasn't that in, like, the 50s or something? don't know if i can stand having someone around that's more extreme than i am... its damaging my reputation. |