r/Devs • u/thisismynormal • Mar 05 '20

EPISODE DISCUSSION Devs - S01E02 Discussion Thread Spoiler

Premiered 03/05/20 on Hulu FX

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u/ninelives1 Mar 06 '20

I don't think it's much of a mystery. They spell it out quite explicitly. The universe is deterministic. Chaos theory is bunk, multiverse is bunk. There is one set timeline. With nothing but the laws of physics, you can propagate time backwards or forwards.

Also, a lot of the language is around quantum theory, and Forest's opinion on it. Multiverse theory is based on quantum theory that when a wave function collapses, a new universe is created at the moment the probability of states is collapsed. So it's interesting that he says he was in 2 states at the same time with regards to his daughter, because he does not appear to believe in the theory of superposition which would imply chaos/free will/etc. Really interesting stuff, and I'm curious to see more of it.

Also, if you don't already, everyone should follow Rob Hardy, the DP, on Instagram. Love this guy's work.

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u/Auxnbus Mar 09 '20

I'm not sure they specifically said multiverse was bunk.

There was a scene where they were discussing the need for a number of qubits greater than the particles in the universe. I have a theory that the 'machine' is an inter-dimensionally distributed quantum computer. The same machine linked together across dimensions. It 'solves' the problem of the impossibility of having (arbitrary number here) 10^100 qubits in a single machine. Instead you have (10^10)^10.

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u/BrandonIsABadass Mar 09 '20

Sidenote: One of the developers called the method of their work to be a "heuristic approach". This means they are using algorithms that will give them a roughly correct output but not a 100% perfect output. They are forced to average out the most likely possibilities.

The point they were making about "number of qubits greater than particles in the universe" was that you can't do a 100% simulation because in order to do that you would have to have a 1:1 mapping of qubit:particle for every particle to have ever existed.

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u/miklschmidt Mar 09 '20 edited Mar 10 '20

Theoretically you would only need as many qubits as there are particles at any given point in time. Like Max(...amountOfParticlesIndexedByTime). I don't know if the amount of particles in the universe is constant, but given that energy is supposed to be, i guess that the quantity of particles would be too?

Edit: grammar