[HN Gopher] The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript
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The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript
Author : hachibu
Score : 32 points
Date : 2020-05-15 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hachibu.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (hachibu.net)
| holoduke wrote:
| It's funny that there is such a pro and anti js movement in the
| hardcore professional programming world. I know it's a bit off
| topic. But in every js topic here at hackernews you can feel this
| tension. I have never seen this before. And this place is visited
| by the best programmers out there . Very interesting
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I don't like a lot of the vitriol, but I do find reading those
| threads interesting and sometimes really enlightening.
| Sometimes I disagree, sometimes I agree, sometimes I learn,
| other times it's just bickering but just the same... it's
| strange, but interesting.
|
| Pro JS (more TS) camp here.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Here is my theory: it is a limitation of the medium of the web.
| In other software fields, one can use the tooling they like.
| But with the browser, JS is a must (nascent webasm may change
| that though). The Go people don't really fight the Rust folks,
| they just go off to their own camps, occasionally comparing and
| contrasting. But in the web/js world, everyone is forced to
| commingled, and so preferences collide.
| seemslegit wrote:
| No.
| hachibu wrote:
| Author here. Thanks for educating me on the subtleties. It seems
| like I was mixing up a Level 3 multiverse with a Level 2. I made
| a small edit to remove the sentence about constants changing. And
| I also added a note that I edited the post.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum
| mechanics, your universe branched into many universes the moment
| you decided to use a for-loop. In this universe you wrote a for-
| loop, but in another universe you wrote a while-loop.
|
| Nonsense. If universes branch into many other universes, they do
| so when an event on the quantum level needs to be resolved. I
| presume that during any single decision-making operation, there
| are trillions of probabilistic quantum events took place in your
| brain, but your decision to use the for loop was _almost
| certainly_ fully deterministic, because at this point in time you
| personally almost always pick for-loops.
| fastball wrote:
| I was actually delighted to discover that I've matured
| (ossified?) enough as a programmer that my source code is in
| fact fairly deterministic: the other day I somehow managed to
| completely wipe a fairly complex function (100+ LoC) from my
| repo before I committed it. I did this a week or so after I
| initially wrote the function. I then rewrote the function from
| scratch, with very little memory of how I wrote it the first
| time, just knowledge of what it needed to do. Ironically
| enough, almost as soon as I finished writing this function, I
| found a copy of the original one that I'd somehow stashed and
| forgotten about, and the two functions were literally
| identical.
| hachibu wrote:
| That's pretty cool actually. That speaks to your consistency
| as a programmer.
| codethief wrote:
| Exactly. If I may add: We (as humans) don't get to choose when
| and where god flips the coin. Any claims to the contrary fall
| in the realm of esoterics.
|
| For a similar reason the measurement problem and the question
| of whether the presence of (conscious) observers makes the wave
| function collapse should not be misinterpreted as "You can
| influence reality with your thoughts alone" or "If you believe
| in something strongly enough, it will happen."
| AgentME wrote:
| This idea seems like it might be useful for anonymizing code.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I sort of wish I could trade places with the version of me in the
| universe where Flash wasn't murdered.
| lalaithion wrote:
| > The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines
| our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of
| universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own
| universe. And each time a universe branches, it creates a child
| universe that is slightly different from the parent universe,
| e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of light
| might differ.
|
| Pretty sure this is flat out wrong; the Many Worlds hypothesis
| does not include universes in which universal constants differ.
| rantwasp wrote:
| right. it's more like copy-on-write than a completely different
| replica. also, the probability of the outcomes is not the same
| (ie some worlds may be more equal/present than others).
|
| it's questionable if it's one world or a split happens and we
| have multiple worlds. I would lean toward one world with
| phenomena that we don't really understand.
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| The main thing that's wrong is that we have no reason to
| believe the fundamental constants change.
|
| Regular quantum mechanics is compatible with the many-worlds
| interpretation (of course it is), but talk of fundamental
| constants changing would require new theories that we don't
| have (not to mention evidence of those theories). That would
| be something incompatible with quantum mechanics as we know
| it, within which the fundamental constants are, well,
| constant.
| EdJiang wrote:
| The JS equivalent would be for this to use different babel, and
| node.js versions? Random compatible dependencies based on
| semver?
| hachibu wrote:
| That's hilarious. I should have done that.
| hachibu wrote:
| Author here. Sorry, I guess I misunderstood that part of the
| hypothesis. Do you have a source, so I can edit my post and
| correct it?
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| I'm not sure which Sean Carroll talk you saw, but I think he
| only mentions the differences between worlds in terms of
| different "choices"-- and these universal constants don't
| "choose" to be what they are, right?
| hachibu wrote:
| This is the video that inspired this project, but I don't
| think that I'm knowledgeable enough to answer your question
| with 100% certainty.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpEvv349Pyk
| rantwasp wrote:
| if you read "Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the
| Ultimate Nature of Reality" by Max Tegmark, many worlds falls
| in the bucket of L3 multiverse. What you're describing is a
| L4 multiverse (see comments below. seems it's L2, not L4.
| will leave my mistake in, although i'm sure there is a
| parallel universe where i did not make this mistake)
| hachibu wrote:
| Whoa, I'm so out of my depth. This is really cool. Thanks
| for sharing. I didn't know about the multiverse levels!
| orangecat wrote:
| Level 2 is universes generally like ours but with different
| physical constants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivers
| e#Level_II:_Universes.... Level 4 includes all abstract
| mathematical structures, like a universe embedded in a Game
| of Life simulation.
| rantwasp wrote:
| i guess i got it wrong but it's still L2 != L3
| hachibu wrote:
| This is great. I'm learning so much from this thread.
| AgentME wrote:
| It seems you're mixing up MWI with a Max Tegmark Level II
| multiverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_II
| :_Universes.... Tegmark considered MWI a separate idea from
| that and used the label "Level III" for it.
|
| MWI is just one of multiple multiverse ideas. Most multiverse
| ideas (like Tegmark's Levels I, II, and IV) are basically
| what-if ideas without any direct evidence, but MWI
| specifically happens to be a more-grounded idea based on
| trying to make sense of what the (well-tested) Schrodinger
| equation says about reality.
|
| The first part of your description of MWI ("The many-worlds
| interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as
| one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where
| every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe.")
| is pretty good, if a slight though common simplification
| (different branches aren't entirely separate, so envisioning
| it as a tree is only mostly correct; different branches can
| sum together or cancel each other out if their configurations
| are identical).
| hachibu wrote:
| This is a great comment. I updated my post based on your
| suggestion.
| codethief wrote:
| > trying to make sense of what the (well-tested)
| Schrodinger equation says about reality.
|
| Nitpick: The Schrodinger equation predicts unitary time
| evolution (which is another way of saying that physical
| systems evolve in a deterministic manner). Interpretations
| of quantum mechanics exist to make sense of the part of
| quantum mechanics that _doesn 't_ follow unitary time
| evolution, namely the measurement process.
| hachibu wrote:
| Ah, I think I'm beginning to understand. Perhaps I should
| just remove the sentence about constants changing.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I might be conflating this with parallel universes, but what
| would be an example of this?
|
| If variations of 'me' exist in all worlds, am I the universal
| constant?
|
| Speaking as the center of the universe as far I'm concerned
| over here :p
| rantwasp wrote:
| an example would be the speed of light is different. or the
| mass of certain particles is different. or the dark matter to
| normal matter ratios are changed.
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