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Mortal-Region t1_iwxefgl wrote

You left one out. If many-worlds is correct, there's a version of you who chooses each available option at every decision point. In the present moment, you're the person who made all those particular decisions in the past.

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KidKilobyte t1_iwxgymj wrote

I said determinism, but also believe in the many worlds hypothesis. That said I try to be the best me on this thread of existence, make well reasoned choices, and hope that leads to better outcome than the "other-me"s that fate chose to make poor choices.

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Kaarssteun OP t1_iwxhaci wrote

That sounds highly conflicting to me. A determinist wouldn't believe in the concept of choices in the first place, no?

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Mortal-Region t1_iwxjwnk wrote

Many-worlds is deterministic. Many deterministic worlds.

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red75prime t1_iwxzjqj wrote

Not exactly. You can't predict which outcome you'll observe, so for you it's indeterministic. For a "god" who knows the whole universe superposition it is deterministic, but the "god" will have computational difficulties untangling worlds from that superposition.

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Mortal-Region t1_iwy57dx wrote

Well, many-worlds or not, a deterministic universe is difficult to extrapolate exactly. The point is that a deterministic universe's present state contains all the information you need to do so (even if it'd be extraordinarily difficult).

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red75prime t1_iwy72kg wrote

You cannot precisely predict the future state of the universe while being within the same universe, even if you know all the data (which is impossible). Look for physical impossibility of Laplace's demon.

Belief in determinism is devoid of actionable insights (for now at least).

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Mortal-Region t1_iwyor4t wrote

The idea of a super-scientist making predictions is just a way to describe it. All that's really being claimed is that a given state is entirely determined by the prior state.

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Kaarssteun OP t1_iwxfimg wrote

I'd say that falls under dualism, no? A determinist would heavily disagree - how can you get to two end states with an identical starting condition? To me, theories like those sound more like a gimmick than anything else. Would love to be disproven though

Edit - thinking about it a little more, I'm more sure that that would fall under dualism. A splitting timeline would need a definition of an option, a decision. If i choose ball A over B, that's obviously a decision, but If i let go of a rock, it falling to the ground is not a decision. It will always fall. Where is the line? Is a synthetic neural network with just three neurons making a decision when it goes through a computation cycle? How about organic neural networks with just three neurons? Point I'm getting at, calling a decision a decision is more of a question of being human as opposed to true circumstances.

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Mortal-Region t1_iwxjcb8 wrote

Under many-worlds, each world is deterministic. But if there's a version of you who made decision A, and a version who made decision B, and you find yourself on the A branch, then you're the one who made decision A. Free will is preserved, in a sense, because not only could you have made a different decision, there's a version of you who did.

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treesprite82 t1_iwxw10q wrote

> A splitting timeline would need a definition of an option, a decision.

This is a reasonable conclusion to reach from the informal description you were given, but (I'd argue) not a valid objection to MWI itself.

Mainstream theories of quantum mechanics share the idea of entanglement and superposition. Think of Schrödinger's cat experiment where a radioactive atom gets in a superposition of "decayed" plus "not decayed", then interacts with the detector so there's a system in the superposition of "decayed & detected" plus "not decayed & not detected", and eventually a superposition of "decayed & detected & cat dead" plus "not decayed & not detected & cat alive".

Copenhagen interpretation says this stops when it interacts with a "classical" observer, which is left undefined, and collapses into one of the possibilities at random. Wigner interpretation says similar, but defines observer as being a consciousness somewhere between a mouse and a dog.

Many-worlds interpretation says there are no "observers" and the whole universe is a quantum system. Consequence of this is that entanglement "bubbles up" until the entire universe is in a superposition. There's no definition of "choices" or even "worlds" being relied on.

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turnip_burrito t1_iwydff4 wrote

No, it's not dualism. In many worlds quantum mechanics, every particle motion has alternate superposition branches. It happens constantly, every moment, not limited to when a human makes a decision.

It is very deterministic and only requires physics.

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