Always seen the multiverse idea as nothing more than a thought experiment, a kludge, a total cop-out if seen as representing or explaining anything like reality, (pretty much the same as Schroedinger’s Cat in that respect). By adding a massively complex explanation – whole new universes of infinite posssibility – to answer simpler problems and questions, it’s the antithesis of Occam. It’s just not cricket. It’s basically dishonest.
Nice convergence yesterday and today. Two or three of my favourite physicists and a favourite philosopher.
Here Carlo Rovelli praising and succinctly summarising Sabine Hossenfelder’s piece on why multiverses are unnecessary speculation. Madness she calls it.
Brilliant Sabine @skdh! Newton explained innumerable phenomena with one constant. The “multi-universe” explains one constant with innumerable universes! https://t.co/bROdEAQgnn
— carlo rovelli (@carlorovelli) January 23, 2018
And here Massimo Pigliucci also recommending the same piece, whilst also reminding us of his own post from yesterday referring to Sean Carroll and Sabine on the same topic, in which he calls Larry Krauss and Stephen Hawking “ignorant” of philosophy. Hear, hear!
More reasons to think the multiverse hypothesis isn’t good science. https://t.co/iYrGtLjhiq @skdh (see also my post from yesterday: https://t.co/cxd8dRuqlt) pic.twitter.com/8HhW2NWYve
— Massimo Pigliucci (@mpigliucci) January 23, 2018
Onward and upward.
[Post Note: I have some problems with Sabine. I think I’m on her mute list, she sees me as some cranky-old-guy with his own personal theory of everything – and a model of it in my garden shed(!) – and therefore to be ignored, even when all I am doing is pointing out where some of the questions with existing standard models are worth asking. I’m not alone in that. But she’s not stupid and seems to be gradually finding the questions for herself. I have another – critical – draft post on her recent flatness, simplicity and elegance of the universe piece, where she is too dismissive again – especially of Anthropic questions. My interest really is epistemological and philosophical, and scientists do need to listen.]
[I should add / clarify – the multiverse is distinct from multiple universes. The madness, the kludge is to see many parallell worlds that have their own universal behaviour that can support any conceivable possibilities – every possible combination of quantum “choices” – an explanation for “anything” that explains nothing. The idea of many “universes” is quite different, causally linked through time each with their own big-bangs, big-crunches and evolving properties from their original boundary conditions is part of one (possible) continuous explanation of cosmology and cosmogeny.]