I mean, like, every time something happens, like election results, coups in other countries, dictator gets overthrown by rebels, some corporate ceo getting shot, etc…, I say “hmm, what an interesting timeline I’m on” like half joking as a reference to time travel Movies/TV, but its also kinda half serious.

I mean like, I think about the Cold War and the two famous nuclear close-calls (Cuban Missile Crisis with Vasily Arkhipov, and the Radar False Alarm incident with Stannislav Petrov) amongst many other less-known nuclear close-calls, and I just think, there’s no way we should’ve survived those, like if each incident was a 50%/50% of ending in a nuclear war, then amonst that many close-calls, like 9 out of 10 timelines would’ve been the end of the world. Like it doesn’t really make sense for the world be a non-many worlds type with many different possibilities, cuz we’d be dead from nuking ourselves.

So we just got lucky with ending up on the 1 in every 10 timelines where the world didn’t end. And it seems like out luck has ran out since… I mean look at how the world is dealing with climate change, no country seem to care much, USA just elected a climate change denial party.

So I mean, don’t y’all think this “different timelines” thing make sense?

(Basically what I’m asking is, Many-Worlds Theory? Do you believe that, Yes or No?)

(Sorry if this makes no sense, IDK how to express thoughts properly 😅)

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Yes, I do, but only because the other theories make even less sense. The 3 main interpretations of the observations made by quantum mechanics are the Copenhagen interpretation, the pilot wave theory, and the many worlds hypothesis. They’re made to explain the weirdness of wave-particle duality

    The Copenhagen interpretation is the most accepted interpretation, and it (essentially) states that particles are just waves until they are observed, which collapses the wave back into a particle. In other words, the wave is a physical, real thing.

    The pilot wave theory says that the particle stays a particle, and the wave that we observe is just a wave of probability that “pushes” the particle along, like a surfer being pushed by a tidal wave.

    The many worlds hypothesis agrees with the pilot wave theory in saying that the wave isn’t a physical thing, but says that the wave of probability exists because the particle is being split across multiple timelines, and we can only observe 1 timeline, thus making the particle inherently probabilistic.

    Out of the 3, the many worlds hypothesis makes the most sense to me. But I don’t believe in it in the way that people think about it colloquially. The particle splitting is an extremely small event, so there’s probably like a billion timelines that are just exactly like the current one