"So you are telling me, that we actually live in a multiverse, and that all of 'this' is just one universe and there are many parallel universes with copies of me in them? That's insane. How can you believe such a thing?"
I get it. I totally get it. It is kind of insane. But consider for a second the alternative.
Picture young Laan in Quantum Physics I discussing Schrodinger's Cat https://grokipedia.com/page/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat.
[professor] So the cat is neither alive or dead in the box, but is in a superposition of both alive and dead states.
[young laan] What does superposition mean?
[professor] It means the cat is neither in an alive state or a dead state, but in a superposition of each.
[young laan thinks prof is just repeating himself] I still have no idea what a superposition of a cat means. I mean the atoms of the cat are still in the box correct?
[professor] Yes.
[young laan] So the heart atoms of the cat are still there, they are either pulsing or they aren't, right?
[professor] They are in a superposition of both.
[young laan] And you're saying that if I peek into the box, I can't see this superposition of the cat, because somehow as soon as I peek, every atom knows I am peeking and this superposition goes away, and the cat becomes either dead or alive.
[professor] Correct.
[young laan] Well how do we know that this superposition even exists if we can't ever see it.
[professor] {crickets}
[young laan] If a frog looks, does the cat collapse into dead or alive states? A mosquito? A virus? If we put a camera in there, and have it take a picture, do the atoms of the film show a dead or alive cat.
[professor] If you put a camera in there, then it becomes "engangled" with the cat and it also becomes a superposition of states.
[young laan] And so there is no way to observe a "superposition", or even ask questions about it. It is fundamentally unknowable?
[professor] Correct.
[young laan] [[thinks this is bullshit]]
So imagine my relief when I discovered the "many worlds" explanation. In some universes the radioactive atom decays, and in those universes the cat is dead, and in the other universes the cat is alive.
Yeah, that is extremely unintuitive, but at least we are allowed to think again. I can understand a universe with a dead cat, and a universe with an alive cat. Things aren't changing because I look their way. There are not "forbidden questions" in this explanation. It's not religion, it is science again.
In science we don't (or at least shouldn't) judge explanations by themselves. We are always comparing them. Which is the better of the explanations that we have? We go with the best one, and "There are many universes out there" is the best explanation we have.
P.S. Einstein intuited that superposition was bullshit as well.
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