Thursday, June 5, 2008

"Now remind me again why we needed this multiverse theory in the first place?"

Physicist Rob Sheldon writes,

I have a blog where I ramble far too long on these things, and an academic web site, back when the WWW was academic.

So all that by way of introduction to your plea for a physicist to discuss multi-verses. I'm sorely tempted to recite Lewis Carroll's "Walrus and the Carpenter", where we could discuss
"ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.
Why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings."

But if I can't interest you in horticulture and paparazzi, perhaps I can be compelled to discuss porcine cosmology.

This is my brief answer to multiverse theory:

a) Suppose everything that the multiverse people say is right, including their mangling of the language.

b) Now suppose one of those gadzillion universes (I mean multiverses) has a very smart, self-assembling computer-life that has converted a galaxy or two into a giant brain. Obviously, since there are an infinite number of universes, this isn't a hard thing to imagine at all for a TV addict, and something that obviously perfect would be even more perfect if it existed, therefore it has to exist....

c) Now suppose that since the existence of these multiverses is as plain as the nose on your face to every intelligent astrophysicist, that this super-intelligence knows about your existence too, and knows how to communicate across multiverses. (It's a quantum thing, so don't argue with
me, besides, I told you that it was more intelligent than you.)

d) So, like, it's trying to convince you that it exists, and you're so overwhelmed by its intelligence that to you it appears to be God.

Ergo, multiverses prove that God exists and has a plan for your universe.

Now, remind me again why we needed this multiverse theory in the first place?

Denyse replies: We needed the multiverse theory because if we wanted to have a learned congress abut the universe we would be asked to narrow our topic a bit, right? The nice thing about the multiverse is that since absolutely everything is true, there is no such need.