Rob asked - "In response to the points you were making in your reply, 1 question; do you agree that EVERYTHING and I must stress that I mean EVERYTHING literally, can be explained by mathematics?"
Rob, I am happy to discuss this but I have a question first. Do YOU believe that everything can be explained by mathematics?
I may be wrong, but the answer to this question seems to indicate the type of universe you believe in...
Do you believe you have free will (the ability to impact the universe and change its course with a conscious decision, as opposed to being just a manifestation of the universe in action) or do you believe that all of your actions are explainable at the sub quantum level and are in effect just reactions?
Can you act, or just react?
I would be interested in discussing this in a non-adversarial fashion and for you and others with a greater knowledge of physics to inform me.
Am I right in thinking that the universe is a series of reactions all stemming from the first action? If you made an exact copy of this universe, would its outcomes diverge from this one or would they both continue along identical paths, subject to the same interplay of forces?
Amaranth elsewhere has said, "I think identical universes would be like identical twins. At the first moment, they share everything alike, all DNA is the same. Then as development proceeds, cell differentiation takes place, maybe one twin was blessed with a bigger share of blood from the placenta, various genes on various chromosomes switched on and off, change begins to creep in. Then at birth one is first the other second, differences in the time taken to birth make changes in stresses, oxygen supply, etc. Even though seemingly identical at birth, they diverge behaviorally. I think identical "multiverses" would soon diverge into distinctive and unique existences".
I am not sure that I defined the question too loosely at the time, but the difference here seems to be that with identical twins there are differing environmental factors affecting them. I am talking about the two identical universes being immune from any outside factors.
If those universes depart from one another - how so? This would mean that not everything is explainable because they are subject to random or unpredictable actions.
If they remain identical then they are utterly deterministic and therefore everything can be explained and predicted. I guess the second is your position.
Please excuse my relative ignorance of physics.
Regards,
Blacknad.
