Physicist Sean Carroll Explains Parallel Universes to Joe Rogan

a quantum being that exists in this super state? So, I mean, there's a couple of The answer to that one is, you know, if I think about it like I really believe it. You know, I have a chapter in the book that my editor resisted at first, but then he let me get away with it, which is a dialogue between a young man. philosopher and her father who was a

physicist

and the father is skeptical about all this philosophical nonsense and she tries to explain to him how many worlds work and in the end you know her last question is do you know, do you really believe this?

I said you feel like taking this seriously and look, it's a perfectly good question, it's a very respectable question because it's many worlds, it's not crazy or weird or strange, but it's certainly very, very far from our everyday experience, so I What it asks you to do is say: I have these equations, they are really very good at fitting what I observe in the world and make predictions, you know I can build the Large Hadron Collider, etc. I'll take them seriously even for things I can't directly observe because they are the best equations I have until a better set of equations comes along. you will believe these equations and the implication of that is that yes, there are a lot of worlds like a huge number like a real number, you know, joy, a huge number, unimaginably large, maybe an infinite number, maybe finite, we don't know different copies of you and them.

We are being created all the time, the good news is that it doesn't really affect how you live your life, it doesn't really imply that you should behave any differently than you would if you lived in one world, but do you think about every choice you possibly make? change everything about the world you exist in, how do you look at it if you don't know, because you know you're a guy who probably understands it as well as anyone alive, as strange as this. Things sound to me, it sounds like a I mean, it's almost impossible for me to understand it, so I'm trying to filter it out.

Yes, you understand well. I think he's masturbating. We'll see. I know it's hot here. physics is warming us up, yeah, I'm not exactly sure how to say it, best you know is that no, it doesn't change who you are, it certainly doesn't make a decision on which branch the wave function is in the universe. I guess it's the right thing to do because I want to stop everything, yeah, it can't happen that everyone you know believes the joke about how certain political decisions mean we're living on the wrong branch of the wave function. many, many times, but you say it's not that your choices create different

universes

, different

universes

are created and maybe you are a little different in them, in fact, you know, I would like to point out that there is an app that you can download if you have an iPhone called Universe Splitter that will branch the wave function of the universe for you and then if you agree in advance to do one thing on one branch and another thing on another, then there will be multiple copies of you or you will live different lives. so you can deal with it in your therapist however you want, but what exactly does the app do?

What you're doing is basically a spin metering version, it's called Universe Glitter Universe Splitters just for iPhones, sorry, yeah, sorry, it's not even a web page. It's just an app, there are equivalent web pages, but okay, I'm opening it right now, yeah, and what can you do. Basically, you send a signal to a lab that happens to be located in Geneva, Switzerland, but there's nothing you can do. with the Higgs boson or something, they send a single photon down a pipe to what's called a beam splitter so that the wave function of the photon is 50/50, it's sent to the left, it's sent to the right, and , if you agree, then send back if you ended up on the branch of the wave function where it went left or where it went there you go 199 come on, yeah, those are the colors of the universe change are in your hand, downloaded, it I paid, I have it right here, yeah, right, so If you have tough choices, you can write like you know I want to eat pizza or I want to have Chinese food for dinner tonight.

Well, it says that in one universe I'll take a chance on the other. I'll play it, yes, but you. Can you correct them? You can complete whatever you want. Yes, that's the good part, but what's going on? What will I ask her to marry me? I won't ask her to marry me. I will accept this job. I'll go somewhere else. equivalent to a quantum fortune cookie, yes, but except for all the fortunes possible in different universes, the bad news is that you can never find out how things were in the other universe. Not me, Cox is a different universe, that's the problem, so the problem. one paralyzed by analysis, that's why you have to act the same as if you lived in a universe because you can never talk to people and others hmm, but now let's hit the brakes again, yeah, because people would like it. believe that there are, I mean, are there an infinite number of views at the same time that make various decisions that send you in different directions?

So number one, we don't know if it's an infinite number or just a very large number, but there certainly is a really very large number, it's big enough to be big enough for whatever you want, but it's not everything, it's not the theory, it's not. says that everything happens somewhere true the theory says that the Schrodinger equation is obeyed there is an equation that is obeyed so that electrons never become protons because electrons have a negative charge and protons have a positive charge and nowhere in Schrodinger's equation conservation of charge can be violated, so there are a lot of things that don't happen, but there are also a lot of things that do happen and some things you are more likely to experience than others, so again, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of mind-blowing, but it's a simple prediction from the equations and it doesn't affect our lives.

There is no rule that says you know how to do it. be a moral person to be a good utilitarian and make the world happy knowing that in the world the wave function is branching into multiple copies. Actually, it should be different, somehow, it's exactly the same as it would be in the ordinary world, so you and you are the ordinary ones. world no matter how many copies there are how many copies of you there are how many versions of you there is nothing, so when all these copies are made there is no essence of you traveling through one of the copies, as if all of these people were separate people, like this that I use the analogy, they are like identical twins, they were the same zygote or whatever and now they are different people, okay, that's the same as if it were you now and if you press the button and branch the wave function, there will be two different people.

You both used to be you, but you're not the same person anymore because different things happen to you now when people think about the concept of quantum mechanics and the way you talk about describing things in the micro and the macro in what you think of your existence. itself is very similar in a very similar way to the way you think about electrons, the way you think about things being quantum is that you are a combination of all these quantum things, yeah, so you don't operate on some kind of static state, that's very similar. here and now and and and carbon and you could put it on a scale and it will never change there are constant versions of you yeah it's like a whistle where you know more and more versions of you are being created all the time and it's a it's kind of interesting because Even the best trained

physicist

s think intuitively and classically, like look, here's a table, there's a bottle, yeah, you had some on breaks and this is how we evolved, this is how our brains work, and he says like I said. you know many worlds is a respectable version of quantum mechanics, there are other respectable versions more respectable than the textbook presentation, but all the others are somehow based on our classical experience and the textbook version certainly says that You are a classic person. looking at a quantum mechanical system and so on, and Everett, when he was a graduate student, you know, had discussions across the ocean with people in Copenhagen, you know, who were trying to make their way forward and he said, why you get to be classical and the electron has to be quantum like why aren't you quantum like why isn't everything that makes you so special really right and he was trying to think of the quantum mechanics of the entire universe right where he's not a separate external observer because he is doing the whole universe at once and that is why everything had to be quantum and I think that is another thing that is pushing us to appreciate the fundamentals of quantum mechanics a little more: we are trying to understand the Quantum gravity We are trying to understand quantum cosmology, the universe once obeying the rules of quantum mechanics and the conventional Copenhagen theory simply does not measure up.