Musing on the Many Worlds Hypothesis

post by David Gross (David_Gross) · 2021-07-05T19:38:26.407Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

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The All, it seems, cannot commit
But at each crossroads makes a split.
When quanta have a chance to vary,
It answers “both” to every query,
Nine tredecillion times a minute
At every place with quanta in it.
With each mitosis, it is reckoned,
One universe creates a second
That from the other slips away
(Least that’s what the equations say).

If what the physics says is true
I have my doppelgangers too:
Each minute tredecillion nine
For each quantum I call mine.
Each then spawns another clutch,
Which strikes me as a me too much.
From each seed mote a dynasty
Emerges from me like a tree.
Like pollen I from there disperse
In countless destinies diverse.

What if I play Russian Roulette?
I prune the tree; it survives yet.
And this leads me to suppose
The “me” survivors will be those
(Especially as time advances)
Who survived by uncanny chances.
In one of these unnumbered threads
Each coin I flip will come up heads.
In some set (infinite, though small)
Schrödinger’s Cat outlives us all.

We all beat odds to be alive
(a third of embryos survive).
Fell down a cliff; got just a sprain,
A roof tile dropped and missed my brain,
Suicidal adolescence,
Internal organs in senescence,
Passing out while on a bender:
Look at that: just bent a fender.
In all this how was death denied?
Unlikely? No: I also died.

But as I tend my future me,
How ought I care for this vast tree
That sprouts fathomless avalanches
Of egos in its greedy branches?
Could I, would I make the call:
“All for one, and one for all!”?
For now let’s zoom in here below,
To the only me I’m sure I know.
My tire is flat, I’m out of glue.
And I’ve forgotten what to do.

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