Parallel dimensions

I'm currently suffering writers block involving the world building of my multiverse. What flavor do you guys like better? The kind where there are only about a dozen or so universes and they were separate from the beginning, or the ones where there are an infinite number of realities, because a new one is created as a result of every outcome of every decision made in every reality? Are there any I missed? What do you think?

edited 1st Mar '16 3:17:12 PM by youcanthandlethishandle

UNABLE TO PROCESS — PLEASE RESTATE INQUIRY

Seriously, that extended run-on sentence with sub-clauses is just incomprehensible. Can you please break it up into smaller chunks that other people's brains can digest?

Sorry pwiegle, you're right. How's it now?

edited 1st Mar '16 4:05:27 PM by youcanthandlethishandle

That's much better, thank you.

Speaking strictly for myself, the "infinite quantum realities" thing can quickly get much too complicated to follow. But if you think you can pull it off, more power to you. A limited number of "separate but equal" worlds is often easier to deal with (for both the writer and the reader), although it does restrict your options as a world-builder.

Then of course, there's the good old Mirror Universe option: a single alternate reality, where everything is similar, but with a twist. Usually, it makes use of the Evil Twin or Bizarro Universe tropes, but you don't have to stick with those.

edited 1st Mar '16 5:33:34 PM by pwiegle

You're right that a story with infinite realities can quickly become hard to follow, but I personally think that they lend themselves more to the cosmic horror genera than finite or bizarro world realities. I'm not sure why, but just the thought of infinite universes being endlessly birthed from each other with every subatomic action has the potential to be the best kind of nightmare fuel. An interesting aspect of the infinite universe theory I've never seen anyone go into, is the question of what exactly happens to the inhabitants of a universe when it divides? Does the timeline of the new reality start over from the beginning? If so, it would essentially mean that all of history before the divergence is "locked into place" and free will couldn't exist in that universe. If the new timeline begins at the point of divergence than that means everything the inhabitants of the new reality remember didn't really happen to *them*, it happened to their duplicates in a parallel universe, so their memories are essentially faked. Think of the moral dilemmas this could cause if anyone knew! And this is all happening sextillions of times a second! See what I mean?

edited 1st Mar '16 7:58:12 PM by youcanthandlethishandle

It provides excellent fodder for speculative fiction, I would say.

edited 1st Mar '16 7:39:44 PM by cake1

In that scenario wouldn't any past belong equally to every timeline that branches off from it? There wouldn't be an original timeline and a new timeline, it would be more like the branches of a tree.

I can imagine cosmic horror in an infinite quantum realities setting, particularly if time travel is involved. Consider the following:

The protagonist goes back in time to change something that happened in the past (Timeline A), then discovers the new reality (Timeline B) is worse than the original. But since any attempt to go back and "make it didn't happen" would violate causality, he can't put things back exactly the way they were in Timeline A. Every possible choice of action crates its own separate timeline, so his efforts to unmake Timeline B and restore Timeline A merely results in the creation of another separate reality (Timeline C.) Multiple tries, like in The Butterfly Effect, would create even more alternate realities (Timelines D, E, F, etc.)

Slowly he begins to realize that he can never go home again, in a very literal sense. He's hopelessly lost in the infinite realities of space-time. The best he can possibly expect is to create yet another timeline that is almost, but not quite, the same as Timeline A — and then live out the rest of his life with this eerie feeling that things are "off" somehow...

edited 2nd Mar '16 8:20:18 PM by pwiegle

I think I read a creepypasta like that once! The one big problem with infinite quantum universes as far as I can see is that, because of the laws of probability your characters should be running into alternate universe versions of themselves ALL THE TIME. Hey....that's kind of cosmic horror-ey.

edited 5th Mar '16 7:26:42 AM by youcanthandlethishandle

I don't read it that way. As I envision it, you'll never meet yourself, because there can only be one "you" in any given timeline. But meeting the alternate-universe versions of your friends and family would be kind of creepy — you know these people, and yet they're total strangers to you.

Are we talking about alternate timelines or alternate universes?

The problem with sextillions of alternate universes being spawned every second (and each of them spawning sextillions of other alternate universes every second and so on ad infinitum) due to decisions and other differences, is that we're talking about the creation of an entire universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies each containing hundreds of billions of stars, planets, asteroids, interstellar hydrogen, dark matter etc (never mind replicating every single person on one particular planet and presumably all life forms on any other planet that might be inhabited) - all in exactly the same state right down to vector, velocity and state of mind.

Think of the 9x10^1,000,000,000 of worlds back in 1939 in which there is an Adolf Hitler running around causing problems, not because of his own decisions, but because some random bloke on the other side of the world decided to leave the house a second later or chose the fish platter rather than the steak or stubbed his toe, thus spawning another universe that has an Adolf Hitler in it...

Or the squillions of squillions of Earths near identical to this one because some random rock in a distant galaxy had/didn't have a near impact with something else.

Every little random thing or person's decision, no matter how trivial, is supposed to expend the energy to call entire universes into existence.

And, yes, you would exist in those universes, too (unless they were spawned from a universe in which you never existed or had already died), just because some guy on the other side of the Earth that you've never heard of did/didn't see a dog having a shit on his front lawn or whatever.

The premise seems to be predicated on the idea that our universe is nothing but one small planet surrounded by a black sphere in which there are holes that "let God's Light through" rather than a vast, complex array of matter and energy in intricate relationships with one another that suddenly have to spring into existence "sextillions of times per second" due to trivial matters.

We know enough about the formation of our own universe, to know how long and complex a process it has been to get from rapidly expanding simple matter, through forming heavier elements in the hearts of stars and scattering them wide with novae then forming new star systems with rocky planets, to the abundance and variety of life on this planet - 'fourteen billion years, man, it's not something that can be reproduced in its near-infinite complexity - right down to people and the decisions they've already made in their past lives up to that point - in an instant because "fuck it, I'll have a black coffee rather than a latte."

The Multiverse hypothesis does allow for the spontaneous formation of new universes, yes, but they would - like our own - have to develop over time in accordance with whatever physical laws and constants apply (perhaps the "fine tuning" is different in each and some never form atoms, let alone life).

They would not, by "sheer random chance" produce another universe that is like our own in every respect except for one small detail. They wouldn't (Chaos Theory) create a universe that has the same configurations of stars, stellar systems, galaxies etc as our own, let alone have a habitable planet in exactly the same location with the same orbital period and a species indistinguishable from our own, and they certainly wouldn't replicate by sheer chance the history, cultures and language of our species - all of which were the actions of thinking human beings.

edited 4th Mar '16 5:20:18 PM by Wolf1066

With the endless quantum universe theory I wasn't really imaging each individual little incident forming a permanent new universe every time. More like with every quantum fluctuation, the universe would split apart for like a planktime, form an energy feedback loop, and collapse back into one universe. This could happen gazillions of times per second but would only very rarely, maybe every thousand so years, stay divided instead of collapsing. Of course this would still mean there is a very nearly infinite amount of alternate universes but still only one or two with your specific character running around in it.

edited 4th Mar '16 7:57:19 PM by youcanthandlethishandle

Well... that kind of depends on how many universes you have, doesn't it? If you just keep trying out different combinations of physical constants and configurations of matter for long enough, you're bound to see some repetition at some point right?

This is with an infinite number of "independent" universes though. The quantum-split-thingamajig hypothesis is a whole different can of worms.

"Some repetition" with regard to numerous universes having the right conditions for atoms, stars etc to form, yes, "some repetition" to the point that one particular planet has identical geographical features, the same constellations are visible from its surface and developed the same life (given that if you rolled back time to the point that life first formed on this planet and let it roll forward again, it's highly likely that it would turn out completely different due to small random differences) that just happened to come up with the same languages, borders, names of key people....

Not a chance.

Quantum split sort of stuff, as you say is a whole other can of worms but seems like a lot of energy being required to create a whole "universe clone".

Sure, the chance of all of those things happening is ridiculously small, but on the other hand, "infinity" is well... infinity. If something can happen at all, even once, I see no reason why it couldn't happen twice, or a million times over given enough time. Granted, "enough time" here would be an unimaginably huge amount, but still.

Regarding the quantum split thing, I'm pretty sure that "choices you make magically poofs a new universe into existence" is just a simplified way of describing something that's actually not really like that at all, similar to how quantum superposition doesn't actually involve cats in boxes.

edited 5th Mar '16 2:57:23 AM by Corvidae

Corvidae has a point. The multiverse hypothesis makes more sense if you assume that the universes are coming into existence because of tiny little microscopic fluctuations, which would influence the outcome of a certain event, and not the other way around.

edited 5th Mar '16 7:23:20 AM by youcanthandlethishandle

To be perfectly honest, I think you're making this more complicated than you need to. The character who goes reality-hopping is probably not doing so voluntarily, and likely isn't educated in quantum mechanics, anyway. So it really doesn't matter how it works, as long as it's internally consistent. Just come up with a few basic rules, stick to them, and it's all good.

We probably are making this more complicated than necessary but it's just so much fun

edited 6th Mar '16 6:57:25 PM by youcanthandlethishandle