The Fallacy of Predicting What We Should Be Like if the Certain Multiverse Were True

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

"I think that this question of predicting what we should be like if the certain multiverse were true is exactly wrong-headed," he says. "We're us. We are what we are like, and you could probably say this even classically in a big fluctuating ensemble." He continues: "If that probability is one, who cares if there's many more people not like you? ... Certain probabilities we just don't care about".

Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmological models, the universe includes more than one realm, with possibly different laws of physics, and these realms may or may not include intelligent observers. There is a longstanding puzzle about how, in such a scenario, we should calculate what we, as presumably intelligent observers ourselves, should expect to see. Today's guest, Thomas Hertog, is a physicist and longstanding collaborator of Stephen Hawking. They worked together (often with James Hartle) to address these questions, and the work is still ongoing.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Thomas Hertog received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven. His new book is On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.