When my partner and I had already been living together for a while, we had one of those “cuddle on the couch and deeptalk” days, when she confided that, while she was not religious in any traditional sense of the word, she felt immensely comforted by the thought of an infinite multiverse existing.
“If there’s an infinite amount of parallel worlds, then I choose to believe that even if I die here, life goes on in another world, so in a sense my being and existence do not simply vanish completely. Same for you! And hey, even if we both die, we’ll get to continue living together in some version of the infinite multiverse!”
It was clearly a thought that comforted her a lot, and at the same time a rather intimate belief that she chose to share with me. So, like the idiot I am, I stared her in the face blankly and went “There’s an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, and none of them are 2”.
I really regret that. She let me know later that that one sentence shattered the belief for her. Which is sad, because it’s such an innocent thought. There’s no religious behaviors or conditions or rituals attached to it, it’s just comforting.
That’s a nice belief of hers but it also neglects the negatives of what that implies. If each of us had infinite variations of ourselves somewhere in a multiverse, then there are varieties where the two of you continue living a nice happy life together even if one of you dies.
However, there would also be versions where you never met and got together with other people, other versions where you hate each other, other versions where you go through terrible things together or by yourselves, versions where one of you or both are drug addicts living in the street, versions where you become millionaires but don’t want to share your wealth, versions where you become supreme leaders and act like despotic authoritarian rulers or versions where both of you just never meet or connect with one another.
If there are infinite variations of ourselves out there, not all of them will be happy comforting stories. Maybe this is one of those versions that are good. Maybe this is one of the best versions.
Your comment doesn’t really make sense though, a two doesn’t appear in the numbers between zero and one because it’s not the type of thing that appears in that set. Alternative version of you absolutely are things that appear in a multiverse.
Sorry, I should have gone more into the actual belief. For her it was less of an “if I make a decision that leads to my death in this universe, there surely is a parallel universe where I did not!”, it was “if I die in this universe, thanks to an infinite multiverse, there must be one where I spontaneously start exisitng with all my exact memories from the previous life”.
There’s an infinite amount of numbers within a range but the limits of the range are still constraints. What’s to say the end of our lives is a constraint on the multiverse? Maybe within a local minima of historically similar universes one individual’s life could be so important that theres a shared constraint, but I kinda doubt that that exists across the entire multiverse. But really we will never know. As such your partner isn’t wrong still, they just have to take an agnostic approach that there’s no way to know. But it’s not wrong to choose to believe that your deaths are not constraints on the entire multiverse, that’s just their interpretation.
Oof that reminds me…
When my partner and I had already been living together for a while, we had one of those “cuddle on the couch and deeptalk” days, when she confided that, while she was not religious in any traditional sense of the word, she felt immensely comforted by the thought of an infinite multiverse existing.
“If there’s an infinite amount of parallel worlds, then I choose to believe that even if I die here, life goes on in another world, so in a sense my being and existence do not simply vanish completely. Same for you! And hey, even if we both die, we’ll get to continue living together in some version of the infinite multiverse!”
It was clearly a thought that comforted her a lot, and at the same time a rather intimate belief that she chose to share with me. So, like the idiot I am, I stared her in the face blankly and went “There’s an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, and none of them are 2”.
I really regret that. She let me know later that that one sentence shattered the belief for her. Which is sad, because it’s such an innocent thought. There’s no religious behaviors or conditions or rituals attached to it, it’s just comforting.
It’s comments like this that make me glad I know how to read the room
😭
I usually do, I promise. Anyways, that was 6 years ago. We’re stil going strong, making the most of life in this universe :)
That’s a nice belief of hers but it also neglects the negatives of what that implies. If each of us had infinite variations of ourselves somewhere in a multiverse, then there are varieties where the two of you continue living a nice happy life together even if one of you dies.
However, there would also be versions where you never met and got together with other people, other versions where you hate each other, other versions where you go through terrible things together or by yourselves, versions where one of you or both are drug addicts living in the street, versions where you become millionaires but don’t want to share your wealth, versions where you become supreme leaders and act like despotic authoritarian rulers or versions where both of you just never meet or connect with one another.
If there are infinite variations of ourselves out there, not all of them will be happy comforting stories. Maybe this is one of those versions that are good. Maybe this is one of the best versions.
Your comment doesn’t really make sense though, a two doesn’t appear in the numbers between zero and one because it’s not the type of thing that appears in that set. Alternative version of you absolutely are things that appear in a multiverse.
Sorry, I should have gone more into the actual belief. For her it was less of an “if I make a decision that leads to my death in this universe, there surely is a parallel universe where I did not!”, it was “if I die in this universe, thanks to an infinite multiverse, there must be one where I spontaneously start exisitng with all my exact memories from the previous life”.
Ah ok.
Sounds like she’s essentially describing the Quantum Immortality concept. It’s definitely highly speculative but it’s not beyond the pale.
Ouch. I feel that comment on many levels.
There’s an infinite amount of numbers within a range but the limits of the range are still constraints. What’s to say the end of our lives is a constraint on the multiverse? Maybe within a local minima of historically similar universes one individual’s life could be so important that theres a shared constraint, but I kinda doubt that that exists across the entire multiverse. But really we will never know. As such your partner isn’t wrong still, they just have to take an agnostic approach that there’s no way to know. But it’s not wrong to choose to believe that your deaths are not constraints on the entire multiverse, that’s just their interpretation.