My Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Take 2

In the previous blog entry I wrote about an acceptance speech that Earl Flask gives for the Nobel Prize in Literature in another part of the infinite multiverse. It was a whimsical look at what would happen if the universe we observed was just a piece of an impersonal, chaotic, infinite multiverse.

One of my favorite science fiction writers is Arthur C. Clark. He had three interesting laws about prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Let add the observation that these laws work for a infinite multiverse. We don't even have to have an infinite multiverse. In the immortal words of many calculus teachers, given a sufficiently large multiverse, these things, if not absolutely impossible, would happen somewhere in the multiverse. Michael Shermer has reparaphrased Clark's last law as: "Any sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God." where an ETI is an extraterrestrial intelligence. In a sufficiently large multiverse, there are corners where the bizarre happens, and that can be indistinguishable from the activity of God. Here is another variation of Earl Flask giving a Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this time it is not for Literature, but the even more prestigious Peace Prize.

Your Majesty, members of the Nobel Committee, gentle women and gentle men. I cannot tell you how surprised and humbled I was when I received the phone call from the Nobel Committee that I had won the Nobel Prize for peace. But I also, like you all, am surprised by the amazing turn of events in the last few years. I remember the phone call from the Iranian President, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking me to be the opening speaker to the first General Assembly Meeting of the Iranian Presbyterian Church and that the day before the Iranian Parliament had adopted the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as the official state religion. All of this, from reading my blog, Metaschema. But that was just the beginning. That same week I received calls from the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia, the Swedish Parliament, the Norwegian Parliament, all informing me of their adoption of the Westminster Confession. All wanted me to speak to their newly formed General Assemblies. All from reading my humble blog, Metaschema. These remarkable events continued. A year ago today, I got phone calls from three people, emissaries from Osama bin Laden, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, each telling their conversion or adoption of the principles of the Westminster Confession of Faith. From all these surprising events, it is no wonder that peace broke out in the world.

Because these series of events culminating in this award are so unlikely, especially considering abysmal words that I wrote, I am now convinced more than ever of the hand of God in governing human affairs. This thought humbles me. With this I rededicate my life to the betterment of humankind and the glory of God.

This award is giving me great courage to continue my work. I will, with God's help, rise to the occasion. Again, thank you all for giving me this award.

This speech got a 30 minute standing ovation in this particular part of the infinite multiverse (or sufficiently large multiverse).

Unlikely, absurd? Absolutely. Is it impossible? Perhaps as unlikely as one chance in 10^{100,000,000,000,000,000,000} (you add the zeros in the exponent to express the unlikeliness). But given a sufficiently large multiverse, it would happen. This raises the question -- how can we tell what is the cause of anything in an infinite multiverse? Do remarkable or unique events mean anything at all? If Earl is deluded to the cause of the remarkable course of history in his part of the multiverse, how do we know we are not deluded in our thoughts about the universe around us? The concept of an infinite multiverse, or a sufficiently large multiverse, has the seeds of its own defeat in the universe of ideas.

My Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

This didn't happen in this universe. But, if there are an infinite number of universes, in other words, an infinite multiverse, then no matter how unlikely this event is, as long as it is absolutely not impossible, then in some universe far, far, away, Earl Flask gets up to deliver the following acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize in literature.

Your Majesty, members of the Nobel Committee, gentle ladies and gentlemen. I cannot tell you how surprised I was when I received the phone call from the Nobel Committee that I had won the Nobel Prize for literature. I thought there was a big mistake, that the committee confused me with someone else, because I had not published anything except for a few technical articles in some obscure software conferences. But when the committee member told of my articles in my blog, MetaSchema, and the Adventures of Erlenmeyer Flask, I was speechless. Never in my mind did I think I was writing anything worthwhile for humanity to read. These were just a few amusing things I wrote to keep myself entertained.

Because this award is so unlikely that I would ever get it, especially considering what I wrote, I am now convinced we live in an obscure corner of a vast multiverse. I can think of no other conceivable reason to get this great award. This thought humbles me. Mediocrity can truimph in this obscure corner of the multiverse. There is no rhyme or reason to what happens here. As a result I am walking away from my Calvinism and embracing the random meaningless of it all.

This award is giving me the courage to continue to write meaningless and pointless prose. I liked my previous life better, but what the heck. I'll take the award money and run. Besides, my sitemeter is skyrocketing, I'm number one in the New York Times Best Seller List with my brand new book, "MetaSchema and Other Worthless Insights", and I am getting multi-million dollar book contracts. Who would have thought this could happen to me?

Again, thank you all for giving me this award.

...and this speech got a 20 minute standing ovation in this particular part of the infinite multiverse.

Sperm Whales and Boltzmann Brains

It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a Sperm Whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet and since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought, as it fell:

Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello Ground!
[splat!] -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This is one of my favorite scenes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (you can watch the video clip here). The whale suddenly appears our of nothing but thin air when the spaceship, the Heart of Gold, activated its main propulsion engine, the Infinite Improbability Drive. Strange things happened when that drive was activated -- very improbable things -- like a intelligent whale contemplating its brief life.

Funny fiction. Of course such things would never happen, only in the mind of Douglas Adams. But there is an interesting twist. Some astrophysicists speculate our universe is one of or part of an infinite number of universes -- or an infinite multiverse. While a spontaneously generated intellectual sperm whale is next to impossible to happen in our universe, in a infinite multiverse, whatever is highly improbable but strictly not absolutely impossible-- happens, somewhere in the infinite multiverse -- an infinite number of times.

In the infinite span of the multiverse, there will be an infinite number of observers. Let me step back and explore what is meant in an infinite number of universes there are an infinite number of observers. Infinity comes in many varieties. Some infinities in some sense is greater than other infinities. Establishing a mapping from one infinite set to another, a rule to map each element in one infinite set to another uniquely in the other infinite set, is a way of determining whether one infinite set is greater than the other, or equal. In a strict sense we are not counting the infinite sets. We are determining ways to pair one element from one set to another.

One of the things to ask is what kinds of observers exist in all the multiverses? We know that one kind exists -- humans. If we take the path of evolutionary and cosmological big bang, it appears it took 13.7 billion years with current span of 92 billion light years across (see How Big is the Universe) -- this seems to be a rather inefficient and even unlikely process to produce observers. At the risk of quoting out of context, Sean Carroll of Cal Tech writes,

Cosmologists have contemplated the idea of baby universes for many years, but we do not understand the birthing process. If quantum fluctuations could create new universes, they could also create many other things—for example, an entire galaxy. For a scenario like ours to explain the universe we see, it has to predict that most galaxies arise in the aftermath of big bang–like events and not as lonely fluctuations in an otherwise empty universe. If not, our universe would seem highly unnatural. (Sean M. Carroll, Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?, Scientific American on the Web, May 2008, p. 5)

While Dr. Carroll is not saying that other kinds of universes are more likely than ours, his statement does seem to say that given our current information (or lack thereof), our universe is more improbable than many other kinds of universes. Considering entropy alone, our universe came into existence in an extremely low entropy state and an extremely tight configuration to ignite inflation, the engine that drove the incredibly huge expansion that took moments, inflating our universe in size faster than the speed of light.

This brings us to the concept of the Boltzmann Brain. Our universe, which has at least the billions of human observers, is huge and highly unlikely to arise out of a random fluctuation, even the kind that Dr. Carroll speculates arising from a near zero entropy de Sitter Space. Instead, much smaller configurations that does not require such small entropies would seem to be much more typical. Quantum fluctuations could give rise to a single observer organism, such a single brain -- a brain with false memories that would exist for moments, like the sperm whale in the Hitchhikers' Guide. These brains require much less entropy to come into existence from the quantum fluctuations. It means over the vast span of the infinite multiverse, these single brains would be more likely because of their modest entropy requirements than the universe that spans over 90 billion light years across that requires the passage of nearly 14 billion years to produce observers to note and contemplate the universe.

Let me make two observations (these observations are courtesy of Dr. Jeff Zweerink in a podcast I listened to recently):

1. Boltzmann brains would most likely observe a chaotic universe. A Boltzmann brain that has false images and memories that makes it consistently think it is in a large universe with regular laws would be a very unusual brain.

2. A universe that is huge, stable, and gives rise to many observers in the course of billions of years is extremely unlikely compared to the number of probable Boltzmann brains spanning the vast multiverse.

If we observe that we live in a huge, old universe with many observers, then given these two observations it is unlikely that we live in a spontaneously generating multiverse. This is because it is much more likely for each of us as an observer to be an isolated Boltzmann brain seeing the universe chaotically, which we do not observe.

For a rebuttal to this argument, see this Discovery Magazine blog article.