Multiverse theory predicts a headsplatteringly large number of parallel universes (>10^500);- So what if our cosmos manifests as merely 1 super-positioned, self interacting wavicle of varying dimensionality? ..... could it be that we're actually all part of this multiverse already?

In 1922, Ray Cummings scribed;- "Time, is what keeps everything from happening at once" .... Perhaps space, similarly, is that which allows all possible states to occur @ once.

A human body is composed of around 10^27 particles. Could it really be, that each and every particle is a mere facet of a single entity?

This type of thinking suggests everything in the universe is all inextricably connected, and from a far higher dimensional viewpoint is merely one solitary thing.

We already know of the "spooky action @ distance"/ quantum interconnectivety within our cosmos. Personally, this is good indication that we do indeed inhabit a multiverse environment.

The religious concept of 1 God. One which is part of all ...... now seems a tad more palatable.

except that "spooky action at a distance" was discovered and is potentially useful because it takes place within one universe. It is a good indication that there is a lot more going on than we are privy to at the moment.

Multiverse theory, AFAIK, is exactly the opposite of what you might expect of superposition. In the multiverse scenario, there is no "particle pair is 50% up/down, 50% down/up": they both actually happened - one of them in 50% of the universes, one of them in another 50% of the universes. It's a way out of having to explain spooky actions.

Your conception is the opposite, but still possible, in a way: if measurement never actually "measures", but instead ends up with a superposition of all the ways the measurement could have gone, you end up with a version of reality that never actually converges. You could further claim, I suppose, that an "ultimate measurer" collapses all the possibilities, but if it didn't "actually" do that for our own measurements, then you would either have to say it's possible that it's not the case, or that everything has actually already collapsed from measurement at the end of the universe somehow.

The spooky action at a distance thing does not really indicate a multiverse. We are in the unique position of having a realm of study that is so incredibly solid from a statistics point of view where there are multiple different explanations, none of which can currently be discounted. You have pilot waves, multiverse, consciousness-causes-collapses, reality-does-not-exist-until-measured, etc. We cannot tell which of these are true; we can only put limits on what can be true, and Bell's Theorem indicates that it cannot be both due to hidden properties of matter below the speed of light, i.e. a "local" theory.

There is also the giant relativity bear in the room, which is compatible with almost none of the above.

(Personally, I think if people are tackling quantum physics, they should go with something that isn't beyond explanation or measurement, even if it turns out to be wrong. Multiverse theory and the everything-is-infinitely-entangled scenario are beyond measurement and should be treated as dead last, not primary, explanations for research purposes :)

However weird quantum physics is, though, it's still strangely not mystical, even though lots of people, including some famous authors, have glommed onto its weird behaviour and used that to claim things that quantum physics does not actually entail. There are no sympathetic vibrations, no means to independently derive information from entangled pairs, no means to copy quantum states - it forbids more than it allows. You'd be better off trying to prove any feelings of connection with others through classical electromagnetic radiation than through quantum physics.

The religious concept of one God that would be related to anything like infinite entanglement would be Spinoza's God, Einstein's God, God-as-Nature.

To be puckish, though, it does not impute any sense of agency, caring, disapproval, sin or chosen people to any entity thus defined. Can you interact with it, though? Of course, it's nature! Push a rock :)

Ritchie - "I think if people are tackling quantum physics, they should go with something that isn't beyond explanation or measurement, even if it turns out to be wrong,"

Nicely put. If you can't know it, you can't use it. Your energy is better spent elsewhere. Even if our universe is not "real" from a perspective outside our own, we exist in our own.

But, if you're a fan of intelligent design, quantum physics supports it in a way, if I understand the line of reasoning correctly. Quantum's indicate finite amounts. In other words, there's a level of small that doesn't get any smaller. One wouldn't expect that to be the case in a "natural" universe. Why would you have to stop splitting something in half? Yet at some point, you do. It almost seems as if we're immersed in a program. That would indicate a programmer, which, as has been said, doesn't necessarily indicate an immortal, all powerful, all knowing, benevolent, superior being type programmer; just a programmer or programmers. Now we have to learn to hack the program.

EDuffy80911 said:

If you can't know it, you can't use it.

Even more succinct :)

EDuffy80911 said:

But, if you're a fan of intelligent design, quantum physics supports it in a way, if I understand the line of reasoning correctly. Quantum's indicate finite amounts. In other words, there's a level of small that doesn't get any smaller. One wouldn't expect that to be the case in a "natural" universe. Why would you have to stop splitting something in half?

Well, I'm not a fan of the creationist-spawned Intelligent Design movement, but I note you used lowercase and are thus referring to the pre-hijacked version :)

Actually, I think I would expect such a setup in a natural universe. If it were otherwise, there would be no whole units of charge, no exclusions in electron shells, and because of all that, no discrete chemical elements, perhaps not even such a thing as chemistry, since much chemistry comes from filling up electron shells, which there wouldn't really be a need to do, because there would be nothing discrete to fill up.

I never really cotton on to ultimate designer or programmer suppositions; they at the very least always succumb to the problem of infinite regress, i.e. "who programmed the programmers?", but they also usually only occupy but never fill the holes in our knowledge.

To be more philosophical: how can you tell the difference between a world where they exist and a world where people only believe that they exist?

Quantum systems have digital aspects to them (charge, spin) but they also have seemingly perfectly analog aspects as well (position, superposition). The no-cloning theorem alone sticks out the most as making nature non-computish - nature looks more like waves plus some complementary wave pairs that end up as discrete values.

Mind you, if there is anything to discover out there, and it's discoverable in principle, we'll find it if we keep looking :)

If the universe were programmed, it isn't necessarily, or likely one program with a specific end result in mind. It may be more of a loose collaboration, like the Internet or something. We're not that far, in cosmic time terms, from being able to create something similar ourselves. So it wouldn't necessarily take super-intelligence, just the accumulation of ideas and knowledge over time.

As for who programmed the programmers, that brings up a whole different can of worms. I think the self is an entity distinct from the universe. I have no theory on where that comes from. My own self-awareness has puzzled me since I was about 4 years old. How did I get personally involved in this....whatever it is? How is there an "I"? Not a clue...and if there's an intelligence behind it, I don't appreciate not having been consulted first.