by pgn674 » Sun Nov 03, 2019 5:00 pm
This reminds me of an interesting thought experiment I came up with a few years ago:
If the infinite universe theory were to be correct, and every outcome of every action took place in some universe somewhere, then there is a universe where all coins for all time have come up heads when flipped fairly. Always. By chance.
The people of this universe have developed theories of physics and probability describing and explaining this phenomena. Then, earlier today, suddenly all coins everywhere stated landing like they do in our universe, with an average of half heads and half tails. All by chance.
The people in that universe have no idea what's going on. Physics and probability have suddenly changed for no known reason. Technologies that depended on the fair toss theorem are failing. There's chaos everywhere right now.
I wonder if something like that is happening in our universe? Is there some universal constant, like perhaps the gravitational constant, that is constant only by chance, and in most universes it wavers a little all the time? Would there be any way for us to detect this and figure this out from within our universe?
I can see how the universe with the fair toss theorem would be able to figure it out without too much difficulty, unless I came up with something more intricate, like when they make a two sided flat disk that would normally land quite fairly, then the first side it lands on is the side it will always land on.
Remember, with the infinite universe theory, this universe exists. If you flip a coin 100 times, there is about a 1 in 1.27 nonillion {1/(1.27x10^30)} chance that it will land on heads the first 99 times, then tails the last time. Much much lower than infinity.
This reminds me of an interesting thought experiment I came up with a few years ago:
If the infinite universe theory were to be correct, and every outcome of every action took place in some universe somewhere, then there is a universe where all coins for all time have come up heads when flipped fairly. Always. By chance.
The people of this universe have developed theories of physics and probability describing and explaining this phenomena. Then, earlier today, suddenly all coins everywhere stated landing like they do in our universe, with an average of half heads and half tails. All by chance.
The people in that universe have no idea what's going on. Physics and probability have suddenly changed for no known reason. Technologies that depended on the fair toss theorem are failing. There's chaos everywhere right now.
I wonder if something like that is happening in our universe? Is there some universal constant, like perhaps the gravitational constant, that is constant only by chance, and in most universes it wavers a little all the time? Would there be any way for us to detect this and figure this out from within our universe?
I can see how the universe with the fair toss theorem would be able to figure it out without too much difficulty, unless I came up with something more intricate, like when they make a two sided flat disk that would normally land quite fairly, then the first side it lands on is the side it will always land on.
Remember, with the infinite universe theory, this universe exists. If you flip a coin 100 times, there is about a 1 in 1.27 nonillion {1/(1.27x10^30)} chance that it will land on heads the first 99 times, then tails the last time. Much much lower than infinity.