The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript • Hacker News Board

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#51

Post by tines » Sat, May 16, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

philipov wrote: post #47

tines wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MWI explains that "Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't" is an illusion - everything that can happen, given the quantum probabilities, does happen. There is an infinity of branching outcomes. The only reason you perceive that Certain Things Happen is because, despite there being infinite paths from the root of the tree to a node, there is exactly one path from any node (where you are) to the root of the tree.…

I think a typical criticism of that is that Many Worlds replaces the mystery of wave function collapse with the mystery of why we are on this branch rather than one of the many copies of us on other branches.

I don't think this is a particularly effective criticism. It's about as insightful as asking why I'm me and not you.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#52

Post by akvadrako » Sat, May 16, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

lalaithion wrote: post #2

> The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe. And each time a universe branches, it creates a child universe that is slightly different from the parent universe, e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of light might differ. Pretty sure this is flat ou…

Within one of the Everett worlds you’ll likely have eternal inflation with many pocket universes that effectively have different constants.

There are even some papers that suggest the worlds of eternal inflation and MWI are the same.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#53

Post by throwaway_pdp09 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 9:38 AM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #19

It's funny that there is such a pro and anti js movement in the hardcore professional programming world. I know it's a bit off topic. But in every js topic here at hackernews you can feel this tension. I have never seen this before. And this place is visited by the best programmers out there . Very interesting

There are 2 issues with JS. First is simply as a language. Some people hate it's weirdnesses, which I do understand, but the easy way is to deal with it is just be very explicit.

The more interesting one is JS as a web tool. The reason I'm so against it (and I am making a point and do not want to start an argument) is that it exposes a turing complete language directly to the web, said language having very substantial access to the browser, which stores and ultimately can expose an awful lot of personal information to the world. Where else do we allow this to happen?

JS per se isn't an issue, just the dangerously privileged position it's been given. Any other lang doing the same thing would be distrusted by me equally.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#54

Post by suby » Sat, May 16, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

schwartzworld wrote: post #36

runawaybottle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be conflating this with parallel universes, but what would be an example of this? If variations of ‘me’ exist in all worlds, am I the universal constant? Speaking as the center of the universe as far I’m concerned over here :p

versions of you could not exist in all worlds, but there are still an infinite number of universes where you exist

I don't understand how this could be true. The chances of you coming into existence require an astronomical number of things to happen in an exact time and order. Changing any number of those variables will cause a chain reaction that will make your existence not happen.

If we assume the universe is deterministic, then changing any of the starting variables of the universe will cause a different course of events playing out. If the speed of light were different, for example, a different course of events would have played out and you and I would have never come into existence.

If we assume the universe is not deterministic, then even if we had another universe with the exact same starting variables, the chances that things would play out exactly the same are also absurdly small.

Just because a set of things is infinite does not mean that it will contain everything. I could have an infinite set of odd numbers, and none of those numbers will be even. It strikes me that infinite number of universes would be the same.