Comment on What is it like being drunk? How much control do you have?

• WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Things get really weird when you start chasing infinities of probabilities. There is a non-zero chance of nearly anything happening. In theory, you could turn around right now and find the literal historical Genghis Khan standing behind you, complete with all his memories, having instantly been assembled just then through random molecular motions. In theory, you could be walking down the street, and a blue London police call box could materialize in front of you, and out could walk a man who honestly believes himself to be the literal Dr. Who. Ever feel nostalgia for the events of your childhood? There’s a non-zero probability of the entire Earth spontaneously rearranging itself to recreate that long-gone setting, including placing everyone back in age-appropriate forms.

  The probability of such absurdities is so low that “astronomical” doesn’t even begin to convey how remotely small they are. So low that if the universe was maxed out on population, and everyone sat there watching until the heat death of the universe, that the odds of any one person observing such a thing would be less than 1%. But according to Many Worlds, any possible quantum interaction does occur.

  Which means that there’s a universe out there where you have a magic light switch. Every time you flip the switch, in addition to the light turning on, a gold bar appears in the middle of the room. Again, the gold bar was simply assembled by random chance from particles in the environment. In this universe, one day your light switch just started making gold. At first you were astonished, so you tried it again. In most universes, the second time did nothing. But in some, it happened again. And in some particularly rare universes, it’s worked the dozens of time you’ve tried it. You showed your loved ones just to prove to yourself you’re not crazy, and the light switch still made gold. You brought in outside experts, even bringing in physicists and chemists from your local university to observe. And damnit, even in front of them, the light switch still makes gold! They examine the light switch but cannot find anything out of the ordinary with it. As far as repeated testing has shown, you have a magic light switch that makes gold, the one seemingly supernatural oddity in an otherwise completely rational universe. According to Many Worlds, there is a universe out there where this happened to you.

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  • nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    very fun stuff. there’s a bit in an episode of Midnight Burger (audio drama about a time-travelling dimension-spanning diner) where they’re explaining it to someone and they say “there’s a world where mark david chapman missed and the beatles got back together! i like that world.” :)

    what’s even crazier to me than the sci-fi stuff though is how often we encounter vanishingly impossible odds, 52! blew my fucking mind the first time I heard it explained.

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