Comment on Open thread, 24-30 March 2014

Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:09:52 GMT

No, I don't think that's likely at all.

Worlds only interfere when they evolve into the same state. Because the state space is exponentially large, only worlds that are already almost-equivalent to our world are likely to "collide with us".

If you've based a decision on some observation, worlds where that observation didn't happen are not almost-equivalent. They differ in trillions (note: massive underestimate) of little ways that would all need to be corrected simultaneously, lest the differences continue to compound and push things even further apart. Their contributions to the branch we're in is negligible.

Your thought experiment used a "super duper quantum eraser", but in reality I don't think such a thing is actually possible. The closest analogue I can think of is a quantum computer, but those prevent decoherence/collapse. They don't undo it.

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