Don Page - Many Worlds of Quantum Theory

Don, as a quantum physicist, do you believe in the many worlds theory where, because of the wave function of quantum mechanics, there is a branching of reality into virtually an infinite number of parallel worlds that are quantum worlds? I more or less believe that. I do agree with Everett that the quantum state of the universe never collapses. There's not what's called wave function collapse, that when there's basically a choice, when a photon could either come through a window or be reflected back, I believe both possibilities really do occur. So in that sense, I believe in the Everett many worlds. Now what this means is that there's a branching in some way, an exponential branching that creates an enormous number of parallel worlds in which you and I exist in different ways. In a sense, I think what I think to be actually the many are many different conscious perceptions. In other words, I guess after you were born and after I was born, there were a sequence of perceptions that we have, but I think it is a branching sequence of perceptions. And so there's some worlds that I feel very privileged to be here talking with you about this issue, and there are probably other worlds in which I never had the chance to meet you. And of course there are worlds in which you exist and I don't, and there are worlds in which I exist and you don't. It's even finer than that. There's worlds that are exactly the same that we have, except one of my mustache whiskers is this way and one of your mustache whiskers is that way. Everything else is the same. Right, right. Yes. There's every possibility. Yeah. So there's, right. There's every possibility. And I think each one does have, at least when you come down to observations, they have a different measure, which can't, if you normalize it, can be interpreted as a probability of finding of actually having that. But it's not zero. Right. So I think it would, yeah, it would not be zero. So there'd be a huge number. So in other words, if you toss the coin a million times, and then at the end you observed how many heads there were, and you were consciously aware of that in each of the cases, I think there really would be an observation of zero heads, one head, two heads, all the way up to a million heads. Yeah. A million in one possibility. All observed. All observed somewhere. Right. Okay. Let me try to relate that to your very overt and very honest belief in God. So if God indeed would have created this, you believe God's the creator, so if you believe in multi-worlds, many-world theory of quantum physics, you believe in God, you believe God created that. Yes. So now God created and had all these worlds in which we're doing every possible thing. So what happens to some of the basic elements of theology? What happens to our future life, whether it's a resurrection? You resurrected in some of those worlds and not resurrected in others? I mean, that sounds ridiculous. Well, I know, as Jim Harlow once drew a diagram on a napkin that there would be some probability for me to be resurrected to eternal life and for others for me to be sent into hell. I suspect that there are those things. So you'd be like the dead cat, or not dead and alive cat at the same time. In some worlds you'd be in hell, in some worlds you'd be in heaven. Yes, I think that's... Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Well, no, I mean, it would be different experiences. I guess I am, in some sense, I may be even more radical, but I believe in God as a person and I believe we're in the image of God, but I don't believe that we're truly persons. So I believe in all these experiences, but I don't believe that there fundamentally is a fundamental person that's experiencing. When the cards said cogito ergo sum, maybe it's better in the Latin because there's just the verb, but there's no noun for the I. I don't believe in the I, but I do believe in the conscious perception. Because you're giving God perhaps even more power than others, and more, what's it called, they say it, the independence and strength, right? God is so much in control that we don't even have free will or something. I mean... Yes, I am skeptical of free will. I mean, partly... Because God does everything. Yes, but now if you combine that with your theory of many worlds, God is sending everybody, everybody to both heaven and hell at the same time. Well he might be doing that. I mean, hell is something that I haven't really completely formulated my ideas on. I'm a bit open to the possibility that some people have argued is consistent with the Bible that even though hell itself might be eternal, maybe the experiences of people in it aren't. Maybe it's a redeeming thing. I don't know. I'm hopeful that maybe he'll use it to redeem people, and maybe eventually everybody will end up in heaven. I don't know. That's a possibility. That is a possibility. It's a separate issue, separate theological issue. So you believe that God created many worlds of quantum physics and therefore has to deal with maybe a trillion or more Don Pages in the sequence of your hundred year life. And some of them do this, and some of them do that, and whether there's a hell or heaven, there are a trillion of them around in some worlds. So there may be indeed a fantastic number of Don Pages, or even if I can initialize upon this conversation, even if I have a memory of this conversation going in my mind, there may be many different futures that I have without. There may be some in which I'm on my deathbed next year, and there might be some in which I'm on my deathbed at year 100, if I'm lucid enough to remember this conversation yet. So it is a fantastically large number, but I don't see that it's qualitatively enormously different from the maybe hundred billion people that have lived on earth or anything.