Many Worlds at the Edge of a Black Hole

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I love it when I encounter data that supports my biases. We all do. That's what makes fake news work.  We love the feel of our blinders. Breitbart or Slate, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, Fox News or CNN. Love one, hate the other. I try to get my students to occasionally browse across the ideological aisle. Who knows, maybe they do. But those blinders, so soft and comfy, so affirming. So mostly we stay curled up in our slanted digital silos. 

The point is that I just read in New Scientist that the black hole firewall paradox may have been resolved. Makes your heart go pitter-pat, doesn't it? Makes my blinders quiver! This particular paradox grows out of dueling notions regarding how space-time behaves around the edges of a black hole. General relativity says one thing, quantum mechanics another. For those of you intrigued by the debate, it is in the January 6, 2018 issue. Take a look, it is an interesting read. But I'm not going to go into the details of the debate, I'm going to cut right to the solution: "many-worlds," because that fits right here in my blinders. 

In a nutshell the many-worlds idea - found in quantum mechanics - asserts that our "here and now reality,” the one we wake up in, live in, walk around in, etc., is simply one iteration of countless realities that chain out as a result of our existence in a quantum universe. It is this view of reality that resolves the the firewall paradox at the edge of a black hole. There is no forced choice of either general relativity reality A or quantum mechanics reality B at the edge of a black hole. There is no either-or at the edge of a black hole, rather there is a both-and, and another and another and another. A cosmic kind of schizophrenia that is really amazing once you get past how freaky it seems. 

OK.  Being a fan of supersymmetry I ask myself, "Self," I ask. "What keeps this notion of many-worlds from functioning in our lives?" I mean what are our lives but a series of existential choices? Obviously we think that our "here and now" is the "real here and now." But what if the major choices in our lives were quantum branch-points? Each choice wasn't either-or but was rather “a both-and multi-path branching?” And we followed all the paths. One self followed the 5th grade aptitude test and became a forest ranger, another joined a religious order, a third went to Hollywood, a fourth married that pretty girl in seventh grade and had 8 kids, and so on and so on and so on. 

This isn't just idle rambling here. Well, maybe it is, but the New Scientist article reminds me that I have rambled down this path before. You see, there have been times in my life when I sensed that I was at a quantum branch point. I chose, and followed, a particular "here and now" yet never completely severed ties with the other self who chose another branch. I know, I know, they have medication for that. But consider this quote from the New Scientist article: 

"In this way of thinking, the formation of a black hole and its evaporation due to Hawking radiation - both of which are quantum mechanical processes with different possible outcomes - lead to possible branches of the wave function. An observer monitoring a black hole also splits into multiple observers, one in each branch." 

I just love that! If the observer splits along with the observed "here and now" weren't those myriad observers once one? And who is to say that those observers don't remain a bit "entangled" - another cool quantum mechanics concept. And if they remain entangled should they not be able to experience what their other entangled selves are experiencing? So maybe those dreams, or sensations of being present in "the paths not chosen," are not totally illusory or "an undigested bit of beef" as Scrooge Before the Change might claim. Perhaps they are instead echoes, not of the path not taken, but soundings from the paths taken by our other selves. 

Perhaps enlightenment, or grace, or nirvana, or however we might seek to define the undefinable, contains some element of consciousness across those many selves, down many paths, in many worlds. 

To what end? In truth, I don't think the idea of an "end" is at all relevant. At least it seems to have no place here, in my blinders. 

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