Does God play dice with the universe?

[jack]

It only recently occurred to me that people who objected to the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics were *right* if you think many-worlds interpretation is correct.

It's like, since Newton, physicists had a tacit assumption:

#1. The laws of physics are deterministic.

But then we discovered lots of evidence for QM that we couldn't ignore, and many people adopted a different assumption:

#2. The evidence for QM

And these seemed contradictory, so people who had #1 were (rightly) suspicious of #2, but people who accepted #2 felt they had no choice but to reject #1.

But was also assuming without even realising:

#3: there is only one universe, not a giant number of parallel universes

And it turns out that if you drop #3, you can keep #1 and #2.

Now, I don't think that's sufficient reason by itself to assume MWI. There are lots of other paradoxes that disappear (if QM works the way we think it does, though many physicists still think that is premature). But it's interesting that we might have to drop #1 one day, but not yet.

And I knew all that _in theory_, but I'd not actually stopped to think about Einstein's "god plays dice" quip since I learned slightly more about MWI.

Comments

[jack]

If you imagine deity high on the omni-X scales, I think this is an obviously sensible interpretation. It's like "God's writing a novel in which we are the characters", or "God's dreaming and we are the players" or "God's playing a computer game"...

It makes several things about how people often view God make more sense, though I think it opens many other cans of worms in the process by contradicting other things people would like in the concept of "God".

the question of when the dice were/are/will be rolled becomes meaningless.

Well, it's not at a point in our timeline, but if it's fixed by a God to whom our timeline is a is unrolled like a film strip, etc, then from our perspective, it's fixed from the beginning of the universe, with all the benefits and contradictions that entails.

[ptc24]

Omni-X: I've heard of an interpretation of "omnipotent" that's reasonably low on the omni-X scale - I've heard someone say "an omnipotent god can do anything that can be done by power" - their words, or close enough. This lets tau stay stubbornly approximate to 6.28, while still leaving room for miracles etc., and I think it might just constrain God into keeping the universe consistent - no retcons, vaugeness, detail made up when needed, or other novel-writer stuff. That said, maybe you could conceive of a God who has the power to do the novel-writer stuff but who won't, possibly for ethical reasons (something to do with the Categorical Imperative, perhaps).

If you have an unconstrained novel-writer God, then you don't need to worry about unifying QM and general relativity, or indeed the compatibility of any theory with any other theory. Postmodernists would love it!

(Incidentally, why are there theists who have trouble believing in miracles?)

[jack]

"an omnipotent god can do anything that can be done by power"

Yeah, that's a good description.

I've also heard the other end of the scale: assuming any sentence starting "God can" is automatically true, even if it's so incoherent it doesn't really have a meaning attached.

I've heard a variety of ideas expressed: AFAICT there's no universally shared understanding that one is what's meant.

If you have an unconstrained novel-writer God, then you don't need to worry about unifying QM and general relativity

God certainly could rewrite the laws of physics from moment to moment. Or even just make them up as He/She went along, with no underlying physical theory at all, as almost all novelist do a little bit or a lot.

If He/She did, there would be no way to tell: a character in a retcon feels like the retcon was true all along.

But insofar as we can trust the history we're aware of, it generally seems suggestive that the more we learn about the universe, the more it looks like it's based on emergent behaviours of some underlying equations, and the less it looks like it's based on what "sounds plausible" to a personality. (I agree the opposite would be good evidence we might be in a simulation or a universe created by a personality.)

So it seems like, God or not, the best assumption is that the universe does run on rules. If I believed in this sort of God, I guess I'd imagine them running a simulation, not liking it, rewinding a bit and putting in a flood, not liking it, rewinding it a bit, putting in a self-insert character in galilee, etc... :)

[ptc24]

The making-it-up as They go along: the main thing I'm thinking of is the difficulty of unifying QM and general relativity in a satisfactory manner. A novelist God could be imagined thinking, "Hmmm, do I need QM or GR for this detail?" although if They need to pause then they're failing at a certain sort of perfection. I have a standard idea of telescopic observation of Mercury - you need GR to explain where it is and QM to explain why the rocks on the surface have the properties they have. My standard gambit is to boggle at how any bit of rock is meant to "know" whether it's meant to be behaving according to QM or GR right now; with a novelist god... that's not a problem.

Rewinding: I think this one of those cases where those ethics I alluded to come in; there's something icky about those rewinds. That said, I'm not sure it's any worse than floods. I should write my thoughts up some time.