It's all maths!
Max Tegmark
If the characters in computer games attain consciousness one day, they probably won't believe that they are living in a world that's entirely described by the 0s and 1s of computer code. But something similar might go for us, too. Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT, argues that the Universe we live in is not just very well described by mathematics, but that it is a mathematical structure. It's an idea he explores in his book, Our mathematical Universe, and about which he talked to us in our recent interview in London.
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Anonymous
Link on left (to download) works. Link on right does not.
Marianne
Thanks for pointing that out! We've fixed it.
Anonymous
I have no deep knowledge of this matter but could it be that a wave function exists in many dimensions in Hilbert Space (which i understand has infinite dimensions) all at the same time and that we observe it in "our" 3 space and 1 time dimension
When it changes (collapses) or divides into many other worlds it in fact simply manifests itself in a different dimensional profile in Hilbert space ie not in our 3 space + 1 time dimension so we cannot observe it
example say a wave function has arbitrarily 10 dimensions in Hilbert space and we observe only 4 of them 3 space+ 1 time and the other 6 are zero to us
After change it could be zero in "our" 3 space and embedded in dimension 5 6 7 + 1 of time so it it beyond our observation
I hope this is not rubbish but I have a horrible feeling it is
Michael Shields
Anonymous
I like that analogy you mentioned about looking into the video game, we see the pixels and know it is made up of numbers.