Quote:
Originally Posted by G J Lau
Wait, wait! I just imagined multiverses. Problem solved.
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Problem not solved, because I'm talking about us, here, not our paratime copies. For
us, in
this particular world branch, there are innumerable sets of exclusive things. I just ate an onion, not a mushroom. All the imagining in the world can't make the thing on my fork into a mushroom (that was the next bite). It scales up from there. Saying "it could be true in some other universe, maybe one with different physical laws" is ducking the question.
Here's another example: if everything is possible in some universe, somewhere, then there will be, somewhere in that infinity, a universe in which someone (we'll call him Fred) has come to our own (not any of its copies,
this one) and made it blindingly obvious that he is a temporal traveler. And there will also be, in some universe, an organization aware of people like Fred and able to conceal the presence of such people.
Both cannot be simultaneously true -- that is, Fred can't come here and be obvious
and the paracops can't hide all evidence of Fred. Either he's obvious or he's not obvious. With an infinity of universes, if all things were possible, Fred would have to be both simultaneously. That is self-contradictory, so either there is not an infinite number of universes, travel between them is not possible, time travel is not possible, or the Paratime Police are better at what they do than Fred is. Any one of those things negates one of the premises.
So ... nope ... just because you can imagine something doesn't make it real.