this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
112 points (76.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
29827 readers
697 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The mind-bending thing about it is thus: there are an infinite multitude of "you" throughout the multiverse expressing every "you" that could, or even could not, be. However, there are infinitely more realities with no "you" at all. The set of infinities containing an expression of "you" is necessarily smaller than the set of infinities that do not contain an expression of "you" simply owing to the very narrow nature of eventualities required to express "you" into existence. In point of fact, that set if infinitesimal labeled "you" is infinitesimal in comparison to the set labeled "not you", and yet still uncountable in its infinity.
I'm not sure how sound that reasoning is, it's difficult to use intuition to determine whether one infinite set is bigger than another. Infinity is weird.
Say for instance you have two infinite sets: a set of all positive integers (1, 2, 3...) and a set of all positive multiples of 5 (5, 10, 15...). Intuitively you might assume the first set is bigger, after all it has five times as many values, right? But that's not actually the case, both sets are actually exactly the same size. If you take the first set and multiply every value by 5 you have the second set, no need to add or remove any values. Likewise, dividing every value in the second set gives you the first set again. There is no value in one set that can't be directly mapped to a unique value in the other, therefore both sets must be the same size. Pick any random number and it's 5 times as likely to be in the first set than the second, but there are not 5 times as many values in the first set.
With infinitely many universes one particular state being a few times more or less likely doesn't necessarily matter, there can still be as many universes with you as without.
The ultimate conceit is that infinities are a wonderfully engaging concept, but truly comprehending them as a tangible thing is inherently futile. We want to make these comparisons. They do, in some ways, hold some kind of meaningful as a concept, because we like one thing to be bigger or better than the other. But, at the scale of infinity, these comparisons are arbitrary and largely meaningless in any practical way.