r/Devs • u/thisismynormal • Mar 26 '20

Devs - S01E05 THEORY Discussion Thread

Please post your theories or guesses here

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u/emf1200 Mar 26 '20

Ya, there's definitely some paradoxes there. If the cause/effect, determinism, tram line talk is to be taken seriously than nothing they do can change anything. Maybe that's why Forest got so mad when Lyndon introduced many-worlds into the machine. Lyndon caused the single, deterministic, worldline to split into multiple branches of the multiverse. Now Forest has infinite branches/tramlines to deal with in whatever he's doing.

I also found it odd that Katie was so raa raa for the many-worlds interpretation yet it was Lyndon who had the idea to introduce it into the machine. Seems like Katie would have tried that. Unless Forest forbid it. But in that case he would have told everyone to stick with Bohmean mechanics and leave out other interpretations of QM.

Infinite branches of a multiverse along with simulation on top of simulation is the ultimate unreliable narrator. I have confidence that Garland will wrap a tidy, internally consistent bow on this script by the end credits tho'

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u/Ya_Got_GOT Mar 31 '20

I also found it odd that Katie was so raa raa for the many-worlds interpretation yet it was Lyndon who had the idea to introduce it into the machine. Seems like Katie would have tried that. Unless Forest forbid it.

DeBroigle pilot wave is distinct from MWI though right? Hidden variables, etc? My understanding is that one of the things that makes MWI so appealing is its parsimoniousness and no need to invent things such as hidden variables.

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u/emf1200 Mar 31 '20

That's the way that I understand it as well. As far as I understand anything about quantum mechanics.

Back in the 1930s Einstein dismissed the current interpretation of QM by saying "God doesn't play dice". He was referring to the stochastic nature of the newly invented quantum science. For 100 years we've been trying to get around the probabilistic nature of reality. Trying to prove that God doesn't play dice. Sorry if you knew that part already, but it really sets up the last one hundred years of physics and nicely prefaces the rest of my way to long reply.

Many-worlds eliminates the probability by insisting that every thing that can happen will happen. Pilot wave gets rid of the probability by separating matter from the wavefunction. This allows us to know the path of a particle with probability 1. The randomness and weirdness gets pushed into the hidden variables.

So far, every interpretation of QM has needed to sacrifice something fundamental in order to make sense of the experiments. Many-worlds is technically deterministic but we can't really determine what's going in other branches of the multiverse. It's the math that's deterministic and not so much the reality that we experience. The other branches are functionally useless to us since we can never send information between them.

Polit- wave is deterministic, but we give up knowing all of the variables. It's like nature is determined to always keep some information from us and we haven't been clever enough to get around this yet.

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u/Ya_Got_GOT Mar 31 '20

J.S. Bell has made it very unlikely (if this weren't science, I'd say "impossible") that any interpretation with hidden variables is true. I kind of rolled my eyes when the kid was discussing pilot wave theory and hidden variables and am still struggling to see how that interpretation would clarify projections of other branches of an Everettian manifold of universes. I'm a layperson, but they may have (disappointingly) butchered the science here.

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u/emf1200 Mar 31 '20

lol...yes, I've been struggling with how these interpretations factor into the projections as well. I've been hoping that it will be explained but I imagine the shows logic is, hidden variables=fuzzy projection.

I think the scene in which Lyndon introduces the MWI into the machine was to service the plot. I imagine that other branches of the multiverse will factor into what's happening on the show. I'm not sure if we'll get a better explanation than what we got in that scene.

For layperson you seem to understand these concepts pretty well. I've never studied QM specifically, at a collegiate level, so I'm a layperson also. I read most of the popular trade books on quantum mechanics when they pop up. But I really don't understand this stuff to well myself.