Yep. I find many-worlds the more intriguing topic philosophically, but the infinite-universe version of things (which I *think* is what you're referring to) is its own interesting can of worms. (AFAIK, they're compatible but largely orthogonal to each other -- they're talking about very different ideas. Correct?)
What I find myself wondering about both models, though, is how probability plays into it. I'm not at all convinced that "exists" is even the right word to be using. If everything is probability waves (or infinitely large statistics), is it meaningful to speak of existence even as a binary state? Or is it more appropriate to focus on the overall probability of getting from one state to another? (More interesting question for many-worlds than infinite-universe, I think, but I hadn't been thinking about the latter before.)
I honestly don't know the math well enough to understand this one as well as I'd like, to know whether my intuition here is even mathematically appropriate -- might be a study project for me at some point. In either model, statistics and probability are driving forces, so it *seems* appropriate to incorporate them into any philosophical worldview derived from them. Hmm...
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Date: 2012-03-23 06:25 pm (UTC)What I find myself wondering about both models, though, is how probability plays into it. I'm not at all convinced that "exists" is even the right word to be using. If everything is probability waves (or infinitely large statistics), is it meaningful to speak of existence even as a binary state? Or is it more appropriate to focus on the overall probability of getting from one state to another? (More interesting question for many-worlds than infinite-universe, I think, but I hadn't been thinking about the latter before.)
I honestly don't know the math well enough to understand this one as well as I'd like, to know whether my intuition here is even mathematically appropriate -- might be a study project for me at some point. In either model, statistics and probability are driving forces, so it *seems* appropriate to incorporate them into any philosophical worldview derived from them. Hmm...