Book Stack

I finally finished Schrödinger's Rabbits: The Many Worlds of Quantum. I made this mistake the last time I read a book about advanced physics, and didn't learn my lesson. Don't read this stuff late at night. The advantage of course is that it puts you right to sleep. The disadvantage is that it takes you forever to get through a book.

I had high hopes for this book and was rather disappointed. The author was trying to justify something called "Many Worlds Theory"... but did it rather poorly. It ended up being a circular definition, where he justified its existence by talking about how it existed in many places. If you're not familiar with "Many Worlds"... it boils down to this. The idea is that any time there is a choice... all choices are made... resulting in parallel universes. Quantum computing is actually based on this theory, using the parallel universes to compute solutions to problems with lightning speed... if you can actually communicate with the other universes. By choice however, we're not simply talking about a choice your brain makes. We're talking about any time a particle has divergent paths... which happens an infinite number of times each second.

What seemed strangest about the author's interpretation, were some of the "thought exercises" that people have done as tests of the theory. One says that if you were to hook a suicide machine to some sort of indicator on a lottery ticket you won... you would actually always win the lottery. Some of your other selves may die, but since there are infinite number of you's... you will actually live on (and you'll be a millionaire). Apparently nobody has actually gone through with the experiment... I don't blame them.

The part that I can't seem to get past is that he implies that you'll live... even though some of you died. I don't see it. Just because one of me lives... some of me do still die. The nanosecond that the living me branches from the dead me... those become two separate people. They're distinct individuals with a linked past but an unlinked future. He never actually explains how that's not a problem. Instead he goes on the hypothesis that the dead versions of you are somehow unimportant. Either way... the booked turned out to be a lot more metaphysical than I was looking for.

I've decided to turn to some lighter reading, and picked up The Bourne Identity. Although I've seen both movies, I'd never read the books. I have all three in the series on my stack and plan on cranking them out.