"Multiple Universes" is redundant and misleading

[jmpet]

I don't think time travel to the past is possible because it violates causality: your grandmother is old before she was born? Creating an alternate timeline along with an alternate identical universe to achieve time travel to the past seems outrageous to me but I don't know.

No- it boils down to INTENT. Do you indend to send someone back in time knowing they will change history and undo their history? How could you fund millions for a time travel experiment that yeilds no measurable results (because success means unmaking the future)? Who would send a time traveler back in time with absolutely no payoff?

This does not, however, make causuative time travel impossible.

 

[quantum_wave]

Ok which one is where you have:

* <- a universe.

* <- another universe (maybe 10 billion light years equivalent away)

* <- yet another Universe (maybe ours)

And so on in infinite directions.

That would be the universe composed of a multiverse, what else? :shrug:.

 

[Read-Only]

You seem not to have noticed that the OP has been posted in the Philosophy sub-forum of a scientific forum. Some people here are motivated by intellectual curiosity and a quest for understanding. This is why you'll find many topics discussed here that may not even remotely concern practical solutions for world hunger or the best way to fix a fuel injection system.

Finally - something with which I can agree! Correct, I didn't notice what subsection this thread was in and mistook it to be a genuine scientific discussion.

But on that note, I'll gladly exit and leave it to you and others who wish to spend (waste) however much time you wish squabbling over such trivial semantics.

And by the way, my interests range MUCH farther than what you've indicated above. I'm a retired researcher who worked in several fields and my interests covered practically everything of a scientific nature - and I still make a strong effort to remain current on practically anything you could name. But I never once wasted a single moment of my professional life arguing over such unimportant things as this subject.

 

[Gustav]

But I never once wasted a single moment of my professional life arguing over such unimportant things as this subject.

don't go
at the very least, give us a physical grounding to our speculations in phil and leave it at that. i find having a scientist in discussions here invaluable. especially when we natter about qm and the like

thanks

-------------------------------

please move thread to p&m so it can be subject to the proper level of scrutiny

 

[hardalee]

Time travel is said to be possible in a spinning universe where solutions to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity allows "closed time like curves" but our universe does not appear to be spinning.

Good thing.

 

[Read-Only]

don't go
at the very least, give us a physical grounding to our speculations in phil and leave it at that. i find having a scientist in discussions here invaluable. especially when we natter about qm and the like

thanks

-------------------------------

please move thread to p&m so it can be subject to the proper level of scrutiny

I appreciate your interest and kind words - really, I do. It would be a wasted effort, though, because the majority of people who participate in a thread like this aren't seriously seeking answers, they just enjoy arguing for argument's sake. Trying to get them to change their positions is somewhat like locking a Democrat and Republican in a room and expecting one to "convert" the other to his side. It just isn't worth the time, effort and aggravation involved. Nothing ever gets resolved.

 

[Pierre-Normand]

Nice point P-N.
Well put.
I shall follow this thread with interest.

I was a little surprised that you opened it in Philosophy rather than Physics,
but I can see the reasons for your choice.
Probably wise.

It is Hesperado, not me, who started this thread. Although I did my undergraduate studies in mathematical physics, my current interests mostly concern philosophical topics.

 

[Hesperado]

The word "redundant" infers to me that it is a question that has already been settled.
The word "Misleading". I don't get that at all.
How can a theory be misleading?

Yes, a better title would have been "Multiple Universes" is semantic nonsense.

 

[James R]

The term "universe" implies "all", "the only one".

One dictionary says "everything that exists anywhere". A physicist might equate that to "all of space and time".

But when physicists talk about multiple unverses, they mean completely separate pockets of space and time, quite possibly with their own sets of physical laws that may be very different to the ones we are familiar with. Multiple universes cannot be causally connected to one another. They do not share a common notion of time or of space.

So, our "universe" can happily consist of "everything that exists anywhere" and yet there may still be other universes that have their own set distinct sets of "anywhere".

The problem with the term "multiple universes" is the same as the term "multiple totalities" or "multiple alls". It's senseless.

I have just explained to you why it is not senseless.

You learn something new every day.

 

[lightgigantic]

One dictionary says "everything that exists anywhere". A physicist might equate that to "all of space and time".

But when physicists talk about multiple unverses, they mean completely separate pockets of space and time, quite possibly with their own sets of physical laws that may be very different to the ones we are familiar with. Multiple universes cannot be causally connected to one another. They do not share a common notion of time or of space.

So, our "universe" can happily consist of "everything that exists anywhere" and yet there may still be other universes that have their own set distinct sets of "anywhere".



I have just explained to you why it is not senseless.

You learn something new every day.

There are other philosophical systems that don't hold time and space as the final last word in establishing "everything that exists anywhere"

IOW its only a requirement of reductionist thought that a universe be deemed independent from another if there is no causal relationship of time and space (since reductionist thought holds all things accountable to time and space)

 

[Hesperado]

So, our "universe" can happily consist of "everything that exists anywhere" and yet there may still be other universes that have their own set distinct sets of "anywhere".

Perhaps the "anywhere" you can get away with; but not the "everything".

"Everything" means everything, not less than everything.

 

[James R]

I can't see any reason to labour the point, so I'm stopping here.

 

[AlexG]

Word play.

Typical of liberal arts majors, who think the map is the territory.

 

[Telemachus Rex]

The premise of my "OP" (you kids with your abbreviations) is that the symbolism Universe properly speaking signifies everything -- and so to start generating "multiple universes" is specious and semantic nonsense.

When you say "properly speaking" I think you focus too heavily on the original understanding /etymology of the word "universe", rather than on its modern meaning which is, "everything within the spacetime continuum in which we reside."

It's much like the meaning of the word "decimate" *used to be* "to destroy one-tenth of a thing" (hence the "deci-" in "decimate"). Now, it is perfectly acceptable to use it to mean "to destroy *a large percentage* of a thing" and dictionaries reflect that as one valid definition for the word.

Etymologically speaking, an "atom" was a particle that could not be broken down into smaller particles, from "atomos" meaning "indivisible". Now, we have split the atom, discovered "subatomic particles" but the original name remains intact.

 

[Stryder]

One point that tends to get misrepresented is the notion that "creating a parallel" requires a universes worth of energy to do. Now this is correct if you are creating an exact duplicate from scratch, however I'm pretty sure it's works a little differently.

The big bang wouldn't be the creation of one universe, it is "a start" and because it's a beginning, it's shared by all parallels of a multiverse. Initially they will all be absolutely identitical, this is because to begin with they are all sublayers of a whole.

When it gets to a point that a paradox is created by bridging these sublayers, the universe that is different from the majority splinters of on a tangent.

A hypothetical is that if this new universe occupied a space next door to the universe in which we exist, that volume of space wouldn't suddenly be populated by that universe at the point the bridge is made, instead that spacial volume would actually have the exact same history that the original volume would have. Which means up to the point of that bridge there would be an exact duplicate.

(This is a simplified subset of Emulator theory, as the suggestion is that the whole universe [a "Container" if you will] has been populated by an infinite number of emulated volumes, that would have all been the same had it not been for a paradoxical bridge method for communicating different commands to each emulator.)

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Yes, a better title would have been "Multiple Universes" is semantic nonsense.

Not sure that you are right on that one.
It does fit in with some mathematical theories.

I must admit that when I hear the words, I become unreasonably angry.
I think it's because the intensely annoying Michio Kaku is always barfing on about it.

 

[wynn]

Word play.

Typical of liberal arts majors, who think the map is the territory.

Word play.

Typical of natural sciences majors, who think the map is the territory.

 

[wynn]

The premise of my "OP" (you kids with your abbreviations) is that the symbolism Universe properly speaking signifies everything -- and so to start generating "multiple universes" is specious and semantic nonsense.

If we must speculate "multiple universes" then what I mean by "everything" would be the Totality of all those "multiple universes". I.e., those "multiple universes" aren't universes in the proper sense, but sub-universes -- subsumed under the one Universe that is the totality of all of them combined.

As an afternote, I find it odd that such an unremarkable point has to be made at all...

There aren't that many options:

We either agree that there is one perspective to look at the Universe; and when our observations don't make sense, we posit there are numerous Universes.
Or we agree that there is one Universe to look at from numerous perspectives; and when our observations don't make sense, we posit there are numerous perspectives.

There are advantages and disadvanatages to each option.

 

[Hesperado]

Telemachus Rex, Stryder, and Signal:

I suppose there may be an argument for the linguistic evolution of the word "universe" where the modern Western natural scientists may co-opt the term for the rest of us.

If conceded, I then move on to my next point and query: are modern Western natural scientists willing to posit a Whole (or an All or an Everything or a Totality -- to clarify needlessly with more synonyms) of which all these multiple universes are a part?

And even more interesting than that question is: Why aren't they trying to unify this Whole? That should keep Stephen Hawking's wheels spinning.

Oh, but I know what will happen. Hawking will propose an elaborate Unification Theory of the Whole that includes all Multiple Universes -- and then he will discover Multiple Wholes (with more holes than Swiss cheese; but that's another story).

 

[billvon]

The term "multiverse" is fine

That makes sense.

as long as it does not imply more than one universe, but rather parts of the one universe.

Of course it implies more than one universe. The term means "multiple universes" and includes the real, tangible universe (i.e. all existing, observable space and time) and other theoretical universes that do not have measurable existence.