Pages

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Bringing up baby in a quantum world

Just so you know, this is about to get really geeky.

We have a lot of choices bringing up Autumn. What food to give her? Do we let her cry it out? If she falls, do we run and pick her up? Is she warm enough? What time should she go to bed? Should we feed her blueberries? What kind of diaper? What about diaper rash? What should we read her? Should she even see a TV on?

As you can see, questions. And this, dear reader, is but the tip of the ice burg. So it goes without saying that one might ponder each question and wonder if one made the right call. What if the blueberries were the wrong choice? What if not letting her cry it out was wrong? What if anyone of the millions of decisions we have to make turns out wrong?

That's one way to ponder things. Another is that every decision is right. Because everytime we make a decision, we actually pick all of them.

I bet I just lost ya. Let me allow Hugh Everett (via wikipedia) to explain:
The many-worlds interpretation or MWI is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that claims to resolve all the "paradoxes" of quantum theory by allowing every possible outcome to every event to define or exist in its own "history" or "world", via the mechanism of quantum decoherence, instead of wavefunction collapse.
There, clearer now? In this theory, we pick every option. And there are multiple universes that every option is being addressed. It sort of eliminates our need to ponder free will. Because free will implies we have an option. But this theory implies that we take every option. So in essence, we don't need free will. It's kinda silly. But theoretically possible.

So, as we make all the decision for Autumn. We can sort of relax. Because somewhere, we make the right one every time. And that's kind of a nice feeling isn't it?

Oh, and I'm posting this on my laptop swinging in a chair on my porch. At least, in this universe .

No comments: