There is no probability, every action takes place in a parallel universe

The quantum physics equations, if they are solved in an approach that advocates the existence of parallel universes, make it possible to solve problems in probability, and also to understand, after 300 years, what probability is at all, says Prof. David Deutsch from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, that at a recent conference the interdisciplinary concept he developed about five years ago was accepted into the scientific consensus * and He has nothing to say about his colleagues in the UK who are boycotting Israeli scientists

Avi Blizovsky

Prof. David Detutch, copyright David Detutch 2007

Seemingly two completely different fields - probability theory which is part of statistics and can help us predict the probability of events such as winning the lottery or alternatively a plane crash, while the parallel universes approach is one of the competing approaches to explain the results of quantum physics experiments.

Prof. David Deutsch, a British physicist born in Israel (but his parents left for London when he was less than three years old) is one of the physicists who advocates the parallel universes approach as explaining the equations of quantum physics. About five years ago he published an article, in which he proved the connection between the two distant teachings, and he also tried to explain it to us (as we will read later), but his article was attacked. After a senior mathematician was able to match the physics he presented in his paper with developments using the latest mathematical insights, his theory was proven immune to attack. About a month ago, a conference was held in Oxford on the 50th anniversary of the parallel universes approach, and according to Deutsch, which was also quoted extensively in an article in the New Scientist magazine, this approach is now accepted by most researchers in this field.
In a telephone interview with the website Hedaan, we asked Deutsch to understand what the fuss is about, what the theory means, and what has prevented others from recognizing it until today:
"I am a quantum physicist. Although the equations of quantum physics are not in doubt, as they have stood up to countless experiments and the predictions of those experiments have been consistent with the theory, throughout the years of quantum theory's existence and even before it was called by this name, there have been heated discussions as to the meaning of these equations, that is, what they describe in reality. An absurd situation has arisen where physicists can plan an experiment according to the same equation, perform it, get the results but not explain what caused those results to happen. (If we take a comparison from everyday life - it's like being able to predict how a car will drive, without knowing how its engine is built, AB). Many ideas have been put forward to explain this reality, but many of these ideas have been illogical and it is a scandal that physicists are forced to adopt illogical ideas about the nature of reality. In 1957 there was one exception to this rule when an American physicist named Hugh Ebert understood what these equations meant and developed the field known as parallel universes.

What are parallel universes?
Prof. Deutsch: "When we conduct an experiment or when any event occurs in the universe, the part we see is only a tiny part of reality. When you see an electron or an atom or a person or a planet - any physical object, you see only a small slice of a very large object, most of which we cannot see directly, so we refer to the parts that we do not see as other universes. The accepted name for this situation is to call them parallel universes, but this is not a correct name, because if they were really parallel, we would not have any evidence of their existence. But they do affect each other in some of the experiments in the phenomenon known as quantum interference (Quantum Interference Experiments). These experiments were carried out even before quantum mechanics was known, in 1909. For example, take a laser and place a black screen in front of it, with a hole in it that allows only one photon to pass through every few seconds - blip, blip, blip. When a photon is fired, many copies of the photon are also fired in the parallel universes, and there is a connection between them, it is possible to place a half-silvered mirror in which only half of the light hitting it goes on and the other half is reflected. The equation of quantum mechanics, says that if you shoot one photon through the mirror, in half of the universes it will go straight forward and in the other half it will be returned. If you look for the photon, you will find it in one place (either it went forward or it was sent back) because your copy is also only in one universe, but an experiment can be designed that will show that it is not in place A nor in place B but in place three, as a result of the interference of its copies parallel locations. For example, Prof. Lev Weidman and Abshalom Elitzur from Tel Aviv University developed a theoretical experiment in which it is possible to discover a bomb that explodes from any contact or if you shine some kind of light on it, without detonating it. That is, it is a bomb that cannot be detected except by quantum means, which are taken in the parallel universes approach, otherwise, the very discovery causes the bomb to explode. According to the interpretation of the parallel universes, we know about the invention of a bomb in one universe due to its explosion in another universe.

One of the main reasons physicists have avoided supporting the parallel universes approach as explaining quantum theory is the so-called probability problem. If you do an experiment, like the one with the photons, you can often calculate that the chance for each photon to reach a certain trajectory is half of the times. The experts in the field of quantum physics know that every time the photon follows both paths, therefore the term probability has no meaning. A few years ago I started working on the subject and I was able to prove it. I analyzed the problem of possibilities by referring to a rational decision-maker who knows the following: the theory of decision-making - which is a mathematical theory as well as the equations of quantum mechanics, according to the parallel universes approach, but does not know and has never heard the term probability or chances. If we ask him to bet on the outcome of a seemingly random process - for example in the experiment of passing a photon through the half mirrors - will he continue forward for ten consecutive times. It turns out, and it surprises many, that according to these two theories he can estimate how he will bet, without needing knowledge of probability theory. In other words, the probability is calculated by summing up the behaviors of rational decision makers, if they were familiar with quantum theory. In this way it is possible to solve all the situations in which we are required today to use chances, using quantum theory. Furthermore, we will be able to answer the 300-year-old riddle, what is it in all probability."

And what happened recently that made your colleagues change their minds and support your conclusions?
Deutsch: "About a month ago, a conference was held in Oxford to mark the 50th anniversary of the theory of parallel universes. All the important scientists involved in the field came to the conference. My article, like most previous articles, did not have an impact immediately after its publication, on the contrary, there were many who published articles in which they tried to attack it. However, an important mathematician-physicist took my article and clothed it with a stronger mathematical foundation and made it immune to attack. The feeling of the research scientists active in the field is that the approach of the parallel universes works and therefore the problem of probability, which was the most important factor in not accepting this approach, became the main reason for its acceptance.

The philosopher David Papineau appeared at the conference and said that regardless of quantum theory, the state of probability theory was also a scandal, that for 300 years there was no explanation of what probability is, and now this explanation comes precisely from quantum physics.

Tell about yourself:I was born in Israel, but my parents for various reasons moved to England when I was less than three years old. I grew up in London and then studied in Cambridge and Oxford. For a time I conducted research at the University of Texas at Austin and returned to Oxford, for the past three years I have been working for free in Oxford.

If so, what do you do for a living?"I make a living from writing books and papers in the field of physics. The books 'The Texture of Reality' were a great commercial success, and were published in 12 languages ​​(not yet in Hebrew) and now I am in the first stages of writing the second book 'The Beginning of Infinity'. Both books deal with the way in which the basic theories of science influence each other: the reference is to four theories that seem seemingly disconnected from each other: quantum physics, the theory of evolution, the theory of knowledge and the theory of computation, but it is not possible to understand any of them well without understanding the other three - in this I am discussing the Texture of Reality books. In The Beginning of Infinity I use the shared understanding of all four fields to deal with some of the unsolved problems in everyday life. Although not to solve them, but at least to link them together so that apparently unrelated problems are connected together."
Can you give an example?
"One of the examples for which it is appropriate to adopt the joint approach is the election system. There is a debate in the democratic countries which is the best voting system. In Israel - the system is the most relative in the world, the Knesset includes factions according to the ratio of the voters to that faction. In the British the system is the opposite - whoever gets even one more vote in a certain district gets the seat of that district. The relative method seems much fairer but for many reasons it is a good method and it is not successful in creating new knowledge. According to insights that come from quantum theory, information theory and calculation theory, the British method is much more rational, even though it seems silly. The reason for this is related to many of the seemingly unrelated issues - the problem of free will and this problem is related to the parallel universes. It is impossible to understand why one voting method is better than the other without understanding the parallel universe and as mentioned I will discuss this in my next book."

I saw on your website that you are against the academic boycott that is taking place in Britain against the universities in Israel?"The idea of ​​the boycott struck me with astonishment because it goes against the principle according to which academic life is conducted and secondly - it also goes against morality."
Do you personally feel anti-Semitic phenomena, as a result of the atmosphere in British academia today?I personally have never felt anti-Semitism. I see it on the news and am aware of the simmering anti-Semitic rumblings in British intellectual society. I am lucky that in my field of physics there is no sign of this. Unfortunately there are other academic fields such as history where the phenomenon is difficult. At the conference we talked about, about 50 of the most important people in the field participated - 4 of them are Israelis (if you include me, that's five, even though I'm not really Israeli), no one hesitated to invite them. In my field, everyone is so loyal to the subject and not to invite someone to give a good lecture just because he is Israeli is unthinkable. It should have been in all academic fields but unfortunately it is not happening.

Intermediate: parallel worlds and not universesLev Weidman, one of the Israeli participants in the conference in Oxford, left it with a somewhat different impression: "I have been advocating for many years the interpretation of the parallel universes. (I prefer to call it the interpretation of the parallel worlds: there is one physical universe that describes many parallel worlds that we are.) I came back from the conference a little disappointed. I hoped that the conference would give expression to the popularity of the interpretation that has been rising unprecedentedly in recent years and declare it as the leading interpretation of quantum physics. It turned out that there is still no agreement among the participants of the conference on the wording of the commentary. Some even expressed doubt about the superiority of the interpretation over the other alternatives. There were also diverse opinions on the subject of the meaning of the probability within the interpretation of the parallel passages. I have no doubt that even if quantum theory does not solve the problem of probability as Deutsch claims, the developments of the interpretation of parallel worlds/universes in recent years have solved the difficulties in understanding probability within this interpretation.

Lev Weidman's explanation of the parallel worlds approach

to the convention site