Is speculation in multiverses as immoral as speculation in subprime mortgages?

[somone]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-speculation-in-multiverses-as-im-2011-01-28

Scientific American
Is speculation in multiverses as immoral as speculation in subprime mortgages?
By John Horgan

I'm becoming a moralistic prig in my dotage. Someone dear to me just proudly told me that her son, a freshly minted Harvard grad, is training to be an investment banker. This privileged young man, I grumbled, should try to make the world a better place rather than playing in a rigged, high-stakes gambling racket. I apologized later — and vowed privately to be less self-righteous in my judgments of others' career choices. After all, I ain't exactly Gandhi. But then I read Brian Greene's new book, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (Knopf, 2011), and my moral hackles got all quivery again. (Weird coincidence alert: In 2006, the publisher RiskDoctor, Inc., released a book titled Options Trading: The Hidden Reality.) A physicist at Columbia University, Greene is an immensely talented science explicator who has brought physics to the masses through his smart, witty bestsellers, The Elegant Universe (turned into a television series narrated by Greene) and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

My beef with Greene is this: He has become a cheerleader for the descent of theoretical physics into increasingly fantastical speculation, disconnected from the reality that we can access empirically. Greene has argued eloquently for the plausibility of string theory, which (as I pointed out in a previous post) postulates the existence of particles that are far too small to be detected in any conceivable experiment. In his new book Greene takes us even further away from reality, asking us to consider not just hypothetical particles but entire universes that lie beyond the reach of our instruments. Multiverses are old hat, of course. In a 1990 article for Scientific American on cosmology I included a sidebar, "Here a universe, there a universe…," about speculation that our universe "is only one in an infinitude of cosmos."

My tone was lightly mocking, because cosmologists themselves seemed to be kidding — even embarrassed — when they talked about all these alternate universes. But now Greene — as well as Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind, Sean M. Carroll and other prominent physicist/popularizers — want us to take multiverses seriously. In Hidden Reality Greene notes that different theories of modern physics yield many different multiverse theories. One of the oldest is the many-worlds theory, which conjectures that all of the possible histories of our world allowed for by quantum mechanics are realized in other universes. Greene also touts the inflationary multiverse, which holds that new universes are constantly springing into existence via a mysterious antigravity force called inflation. String theory yields the brane multiverse; strings plus inflation produces the landscape multiverse; and that still leaves us with the quilted, cyclic, holographic and simulated multiverses, all of which Greene cheerfully elucidates.

These multiverse theories all share the same fundamental defect: They can be neither confirmed nor falsified. Hence, they don't deserve to be called scientific, according to the well-known criterion proposed by the philosopher Karl Popper. Some defenders of multiverses and strings mock skeptics who raise the issue of falsification as "Popperazis" — which is cute but not a counterargument. Multiverse theories aren't theories — they're science fictions, theologies, works of the imagination unconstrained by evidence... Multiverse theories strike me as not only unscientific but also immoral, for two basic reasons: First, at a time when we desperately need science to help us solve our problems, it's irresponsible for scientists as prominent as Greene to show such a blithe disregard for basic standards of evidence. Second, like religious visions of paradise, multiverses represent an escapist distraction from our world. I find two multiverse concepts especially loathsome. One is the idea that an infinite universe contains infinite copies of our world. Greene writes that in another cosmos "your doppelganger is now reading this sentence, along with you. In others…he or she has, well, a less than felicitous disposition and is someone you'd rather not meet in a dark alley." Even worse is the proposition that our world is artificial, a simulation being run on a computer designed by an alien civilization. This sort of adolescent claptrap devalues our reality even more than heaven, Valhalla, nirvana and other ancient fantasies do...

[villager]

1. I've met Michael Moorcock, and I've dealt with bankers, and I say "no"

n/t

[Ghost Dog]

3. Hari Kunzru met Michael Moorcock: Guardian interview

from last Friday/Saturday. A very influential writer, back in the day. Interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/04/michael-moorcock-hari-kunzru

[villager]

8. Thanks!

n/t

[mindwalker_i]

2. Inflationary theory is just a way to explain the current state

of the universe. It sounds fantastic - at the beginning, stuff moved faster than light - but it's one of the only ways to explain what we see. Likewise, multiple-universe theories may at some point become the only way to explain what we currently see. Or not. I personally don't like the idea too much because it seems like a gratuitous add-on to current theories. String theory might be about stuff we can't see now and probably won't see for a long while, but the effects may lead to explanations of the universe that we would otherwise not have. I think string theory started with a set of equations that showed two forces united (being part of the same force) if the math was done in 5 dimensions.

A lot of this might not pan out. Maybe string theory will lead to equations that explain the world very well, even though the conceptual idea of string may turn out to be completely wrong. The idea of point-like particles also has some flaws, so there is reason to doubt them.

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. You are exactly correct on some points!

Brane theory and multiverses are not simply wild imaginings of scientists. They are fully grounded in mathematics. Both theories are found in equations that attempt to explain the universe we see around us.

[qazplm]

9. these theories are hypothesis

more than theories, which doesn't make them rank speculation, just simply at this time, and possibly at no time, we can't test for them.

Maybe later we will, maybe later we won't. I suspect at some level, the deepest possible understanding of the reality of the universe, and how it got it here and what it fundamentally is, may never be "testable." Simply because the tools we'd need to use to do such testing will never be precise enough.

[Jim__]

5. Is speculation about multiverses pure speculation?

I don't think so. I think statements like this one taken from the review:

These multiverse theories all share the same fundamental defect: They can be neither confirmed nor falsified. Hence, they don't deserve to be called scientific, according to the well-known criterion proposed by the philosopher Karl Popper. Some defenders of multiverses and strings mock skeptics who raise the issue of falsification as "Popperazis"—which is cute but not a counterargument. Multiverse theories aren't theories—they're science fictions, theologies, works of the imagination unconstrained by evidence.

are way over-stated. Can multiverse theories be falsified? I don't believe they can be yet. Does that mean they should not be pursued as possibilities? I don't think so, nor do I think the scientific method requires that they not be. My understanding of one of the hopes for string theory is that it will explain the masses for all the known particles and fully predict what other particles there are. If string theory successfully predicts the known masses, that would definitely be a strong argument in its favor and a good reason to pursue its predictions about other existing particles. If we can learn from string theory and from multiverse theories, then I think pursuing these theories is worthwhile. I certainly don't believe anyone should try to prevent such study.

Claiming that multiverses are either a theory (scientific theory) or a a science fiction is to pose a false dilemma. At present, multiverses are hypotheses, potentially rich hypotheses that deserve study.

[deutsey]

6. I've wondered sometimes if all this isn't the modern equivalent of

debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

But what you point out here captures why I agree that these theories are worth pursuing.

[gtar100]

14. And wouldn't the process of investigating string theory actually lead to

the discovery of evidence either in support of it or the means to disprove it, or aspects of it, giving rise to theories that may be closer to the truth? Either way, it makes no sense to suppress hypothesis or theories simply because they lack evidence to prove them correct at this time. So long as the scientific method is adhered to, our musings can be honed to reality.

[Orsino]

7. Daring theoretical leaps may be made with other people's money...

...but on a relatively small scale.

For serious scientific waste and fraud, one has to look to, say, the cold-fusion hucksters.

[struggle4progress]

10. Scientists have traditionally been skeptical of very long arguments,

that are unsupported by regular contact with experimental evidence. The good reason is that, however much one might want an ultimate theory, scientific progress can only be certainly claimed when one has a calculational method enabling us to better predict what we observe. A calculational method might reasonably postulate some unobservable entities, if one obtains better predictions as a result -- but obtaining accurate predictive techniques is the real test: the unobservable entities are, in themselves, of no interest except as markers used for the purpose of calculation

[Jim__]

11. Some thoughts from Brian Greene ...

Cosmic Log: Some people have said, "Oh, no, not another book about the multiverse ... all these things we can't see, all these claims that we can't prove. Why do we need another book about this subject when there have been so many already? And isn't it all speculation anyway?"

Brian Greene: Well, when we are doing mathematical investigations in physics, we as theorists allow the math to take us where it will go. We have seen, time and again, that math is a very potent guide to revealing the true nature of reality. That's what the past couple of hundred years have established. So all we're doing is following the same kinds of procedures that we always have. And as we follow the procedures, as we push the mathematics forward, the math is clearly suggesting that there may be other universes out there.

That does not mean that there are. It does mean, however, that there's a compelling enough reason to take these ideas seriously, develop them further, and try to make contact with observation and experiment. I fully agree that none of these hypothetical ideas can be put within the canon of established physics until there is some kind of observational confirmation. But you can't get to that point unless you understand the theories extraordinarily well. And that's what a lot of cutting-edge physics is now doing.

more ...

[silverweb]

12. So he downplays imagination?

Seems to me someone smarter than him had a few things to say on that subject.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
-Albert Einstein

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
-Albert Einstein

[somone]

13. Another take from Peter Woit:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3419

Is the Multiverse Immoral?

...My own moral concerns about the multiverse have more to do with worry that pseudo-science is being heavily promoted to the public, leading to the danger that it will ultimately take over from science, first in the field of fundamental physics, then perhaps spreading to others. This concern is somewhat like the one that induced Alan Sokal to engage in his famous hoax. He felt that abandonment by prominent academics of the Enlightenment ideals exemplified by the scientific method threatens a move into a new Dark Ages, where power dominates over truth. Unfortunately, I don’t think that revelation of a hoax paper would have much effect in multiverse studies, where some of the literature has already moved beyond the point where parody is possible.

For a while I was trying to keep track of multiverse-promoting books, and writing denunciatory reviews here. They’ve been appearing regularly for quite a few years now, with increasing frequency. Some typical examples that come to mind are Kaku’s Parallel Worlds (2004), Susskind’s The Cosmic Landscape (2005), and Vilenkin’s Many Worlds in One (2006). Just the past year has seen Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here, John Gribbin’s In Search of the Multiverse, Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design, and Brian Greene’s new The Hidden Reality. In a couple weeks there will be Steven Manly’s Visions of the Multiverse. Accompanying the flood of books is a much larger number of magazine articles and TV programs.

Several months ago a masochistic publisher sent me a copy of Gribbin’s book hoping that I might give it some attention on the blog, but I didn’t have the heart to write anything. There’s nothing original in such books and thus nothing new to be said about why they are pseudo-science. The increasing number of them is just depressing and discouraging. More depressing still are the often laudatory reviews that these things are getting, often from prominent scientists who should know better. For a recent example, see Weinberg’s new review of Hawking/Mlodinow in the New York Review of Books.

While most of the physicists and mathematicians I talk to tend towards the Horgan “I can’t stand this shit” point of view on the multiverse, David Gross is about the only prominent theorist I can think of known to publicly take a similar stand. One of the lessons of superstring theory unification is that if a wrong idea is promoted for enough years, it gets into the textbooks and becomes part of the conventional wisdom about how the world works. This process is now well underway with multiverse pseudo-science, as some theorists who should know better choose to heavily promote it, and others abdicate their responsibility to fight pseudo-science as it gains traction in their field.