I really enjoyed watching the moody first season¹ of Constellation and the terrifically weird Everything Everywhere All at Once. This is a surprise for me, because the inclusion of multiple universes in movies and television tended to exhaust me in the past. I thought having multiples of every person made the characters feel truly fictional. Knowing that at any moment someone from a marginally different universe could replace a character felt almost like a moral wrong. The possibility of multiple universes in a story felt like it cheapened the difficulties any character faced because a potentially infinite number of that character faced nearly the exact same problem. In one show, Star Trek: Voyager, two characters were replaced in an episode and barely anything was mentioned about it afterward. Even the actor was conflicted about the storyline, and it remained a nagging plot point throughout the rest of the time I watched that show. The character I’m watching may not be the one I knew. That’s horrifying.

I’m not sure if it’s due to my age or maybe I’ve run out of shows to watch and I’ve become desperate, but I was surprised by how readily I accepted the premises of Constellation and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Maybe they’re being written better these days.² I was not expecting to find the multi-universe element to be so fascinating to me. I found myself feeling an urge to learn more about the science they claimed to be following, which was far different from the disdain I treated multi-universe storylines in the past. So much of the stories seemed too fantastical to be true, but there was enough about it that seemed possible that I wanted to learn more. I decided to read a little more about the double-slit experiment that was referenced in Constellation. What shocked me, while considering their need to entertain audiences, was how close to reality the storyline appeared to be.

Qiskit

Bell’s Inequality: The Weirdest Theorem in the World | Nobel Prize 2022

John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Their groundbreaking work was built upon one of the most significant discoveries in the history of physics: Bell’s Theorem, which was originally formulated by the late John Stewart Bell. In this video, we delve into the reasons why Bell’s Theorem stands as one of the most important and perplexing results in the annals of physics. Join us as we celebrate the achievements of these three remarkable scientists who, through their contributions, laid the foundation for cutting-edge technologies rooted in quantum information.

Josh Collinsworth

The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking. “Local” means that objects can be influenced only by their surroundings and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead the evidence shows that objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings, and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement.

Caltech

What Is Entanglement and Why Is It Important?

Entanglement is at the heart of quantum physics and future quantum technologies. Like other aspects of quantum science, the phenomenon of entanglement reveals itself at very tiny, subatomic scales. When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, they remain connected even when separated by vast distances. In the same way that a ballet or tango emerges from individual dancers, entanglement arises from the connection between particles. It is what scientists call an emergent property.

The way these articles describe reality seems counter-intuitive to my own senses. Things exist and always exist. But even in my own safe version of reality, I know that things are already weird. Light feels instantaneous on Earth because it’s so small, relative to the universe. Yet when I look up in the sky I see ghosts. The light of long-dead stars might travel faster than any speed I could hope to reach, but it’s still incredibly outdated by the time it reaches my retinas. That feels impossible, yet I already believe it to be true. What more could I not know that might be true?

Maybe this isn’t interesting to everyone, but I have always found these kinds of conversations or discoveries deeply fascinating. I am in no way claiming to be a thought-leader or anywhere close to the intelligence level of those who are asking these questions or providing the answers, but listening in on these sorts of discussions is what I’ve found the most fulfilling memories throughout my life. I deeply enjoy the unknown, and all of this is a new option that I hadn’t permitted myself to consider until now.

Alex O'Connor

The Multiverse Is Real — David Deutsch

Pondering the ramifications to all this new data has been thrilling but also a little frightening. I’m still reading and trying to understand this new information. If every decision we make has the possibility of creating (even temporarily) a universe where any number of different reactions could have occurred is incredibly daunting to consider, because my identity and the consequences of my choices felt bound as a unique moment, not duplicatable. If every choice I make has a literal alternate reality out there, then am I really making a choice or am I making all the choices and being bound by one? I only have knowledge of my choices and have only myself as the known version of my existence in the universe. I can continue to go on acting as if there was only ever one of me, but I don’t know how I’ll calm my nagging sense of uncertainty without better answers to my questions.

I’m reeling from the idea of multi-universes not just being the realm of fiction. Does this mean that energy is continually being generated since a universe is duplicated, or do all of these universes collapse into themselves after some time? Is there a “true” reality, like a single line with branching paths, or are we creating a fractal-like web of realities that have lost all sense of what came first?

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to know what is happening in reality. I’ve not even fully understood the articles I’ve posted here and will have to go through them several more times to figure things out. This stuff has me feeling incredibly uneducated. Hamilton Nolan wrote in a recent article on his Substack How Things Work something that feels applicable to my current situation, even if it was about something rather different.

Even the experts barely understand what’s happening, and most of the loudest voices are just making stuff up.

Anyway, while all that was going on in my head, I learned even more about the world that we can see.

Pallab Ghosh — BBC

Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds

Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds.

But if new evidence emerges of animals’ abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious?

Factually! with Adam Conover

Your Houseplants Can Think with Zoë Schlanger

Our understanding of intelligence is always growing, but recent research has thrown a fascinating curveball: we’re discovering that plants are intelligent too. Though they might not look like creatures we typically describe as intelligent, plants can store information, solve problems, and develop complex social networks. This week, Adam sits with Zoë Shlanger, author of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, to explore this galaxy-brain concept of plant intelligence and what it means for how we see all life and our place in the world.

I’ve learned that hypotheses like these can go to extremes that even in my current state of attempted open-mindedness I’m not yet ready to accept, but I do wonder if perhaps more things are conscious than we realize — and that also horrifies me a little bit. Are we truly in a cycle of murdering and eating each other every day, all the time? Plants were supposed to save us from harming living things, but now I’m wondering if M. Night was prescient.

Okay, so maybe the universe isn’t as permanent as I expected (please don’t be a simulation) and maybe everything is alive and mowing is actually really painful for plants.

I’m in a bit of a weakened state here. How much more of this new frontier of thought can I take?

Alex O'Connor

There’s No Free Will. What Now? — Robert Sapolsky

What. That’s new to me. But what if it’s true?

Here is where I find Everything Everywhere All at Once to be of considerable help to my mental health. The film contains a moment where the two main characters speak to each other in the form of rocks (it’s weird to write that out, but the sequence in the film is profound), talking about the perspective they now can share after seeing everything of every reality in existence. The mother character finally begins to form a solution to the problems that I and many others face when contemplating the absurdity of reality not being as permanent as one might believe, or that any numbers of realities might exist, or that we are life-destroying murder robots. A TikTok³ user gives a good summary of the situation, though it still can be a little confusing, so another TikTok user clarifies some terms.

I’m relived to know that there are many people who have come before me who have considered all these things. Some of this stuff has been deeply worrying until I was able to learn more. I’ve had questions about reality for a while now, and in the past I’d found solace from answers within my community or group. I’d even trained myself to run from the possibility of considering these questions, finding safety more in the bravado of claimed understanding, even while feeling deeply insecure. Some reading this may believe they have “ultimate” answers to questions such as mine, but I’ve found those types of responses less compelling when considering the breadth of groups or cultures making similar claims. I was raised to pursue truth, and that continues to remain my goal, but I also think I’ve found there is something exciting about uncertainty.

Footnotes