Along with an infinity of near-identical copies, etc. ad infinitum (Colin Bruce, Tegmark, et al.) In a nutshell, this affirmation is based on the fact that a non-zero probability (you exist, so the likelihood of your existence is provably non-zero) multiplied by infinity (the infinity of events, and space and time within a multiverse) yields a probability of infinity. The Tegmark calculation is that the first exact copy of yourself is 10 to the power 10 to the power 29 meters away.
The calculation seems to be arrant nonsense however.
The probability of you existing is one over infinity (infinity of the elementary events of requisite confluence to yield up you, incidentally augmented at every confluent step by a further layer of infinity - random event outcomes from a non-finite pool of possible outcomes owing to quantum fuzziness.) Hence the probability of you existing more than once within a metaverse is infinity over infinity, i.e. indeterminate.
It's not just absurd, not just an extreme example of the abuse of physics by abstract mathematics, but a flagrant violation of the scientific standard of economy of explanation.
James, I agree, but the view is defended by stellar figures ..: David Deutsch, even Tegmark, et al. who is otherwise quite reasonable and factual in his approaches.
Read 'Schrödinger's Rabbits' by Colin Bruce (which has to qualify hands down as the weirdest book I have ever read in non fiction - amongst other things, the author would think nothing of commiting suicide because quote it would not change anything since the other exact metaverse copies of himself would continue to live without a hitch, so that his suicide would be a non event '
And without taking any philosophical approach, it's plain wrong from the pure math angle!
It's abuse of physics by people who don't do math very well (granted, infinities are tricky to deal with, but still) and uncharacteristically don't seem to pause to ask where they went wrong
Too weird.
One other question. Why does a "nearly identical" universe extend to commonality of details to the extent that a person on Earth would find his nearly identical copy in another parallel universe ? Parallelism may only mean almost identical starting points for the new Earth, and a subsequent very different later time evolution.
Andrew, you are right , there is absolutely no reason why near-alike starting points would lead to anything like even slightly similar universes down the line.
There is an infinity of possible starting points, and then at every step in the way there is an infinity of alternative evolutionary paths (including, critically, random components due to quantum effects)
So we're back at a situation where it's an indeterminate ratio of infinities ... and there is absolutely no reason why this indeterminate number would be more than 1.
In other words - the likelihood of this universe, this sequence of events, this person existing, is 1 over zero.
You could envision a lottery where there would be an infinity of numbers (as opposed to the few millions in ordinary lotteries) but where the number 4925423905, say, would be the winning number. The fact that there is an infinity of numbers and that the likelihood of winning would be 1 over infinity does not mean that no one would ever hit the winning number: that's the situation we're in.
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