All bad books are alike , each good book is good in its way\s (I think Tolstoy will forgive me for stealing his most famous quote.As the rating indicaAll bad books are alike , each good book is good in its way\s (I think Tolstoy will forgive me for stealing his most famous quote.As the rating indicates, we are in the second state, good book, or rather a fucking unbelievable amazing good and fresh book.
Max Tegmark is(as I see him) the Pythagorean of our era.Pythagoras and his students were interested in the mysticism of numbers, realizing that when odd numbers starting from one are added together, the sum is always a square number. From here, they got the idea that everything in the world can be measured and described by numbers, and that "all is number" In this book Tegmark using theoretical physics, he wanted to show us something similar, but in scientific way not mystic, in a journey from the vast infinite space to the tiniest particle inside our brains (which are part of the journey)
This book stands in three parts. Part one talked about space in general and our place in it, putting us in the most recent (sometimes most complex) problems of modern cosmology.He showed us how the Inflation Theory by Alan Guth solved these problems such as the horizon problem and the flatness problem.
The inflation theory says that our baby Universe grew much like a human baby, an accelerating growth phase where the size doubled at regular intervals was followed by a more leisurely decelerating growth phase.So where and when did this inflation end?! Indeed it ended 14 billion years ago, in the part of space that we now inhabit, This means that there must be some physical process which can get rid of the inflating substance, causing it to decay into ordinary non-inflating matter, which then keeps expanding, clustering, and ultimately forming galaxies, stars and planets.
Alex Vilenkin Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of cosmology at Tufts University, found that the question of where and when inflation ends is quite subtle and interesting. We know that inflation ends in at least some places, since 14 billion years ago, it ended in the part of space that we now inhabit, No not our planet, neither our galaxy, but our universe. Inflation theory gave us the Level I and Level II Multiverse which occupy the first part of the book.
Part tow talked about the subatomic world, it gives us a new picture of the current Standard Model(new at least for me), and produced the level III of multiverse(The Quantum Multiverse).Tegmark used the analogy of Schrodungar's cat experiment and made what he called The Quantum Card thought experiment and showed how you can be in quantum superposition(in tow places at once)
Part Three is the heart core of the book in this part Tegmark showed how mathematics by means of numbers and symbols can describe out physical world precisely, I will quote the author to be more sincerely and to avoid falling in troubles:
"The fabric of our physical reality contains dozens of pure numbers which all measurement constants can in principle be calculated"
"Our reality isn't just described by mathematics ,it is mathematics not just aspects of it, but all of it, including you."
"our external physical reality is a mathematical structure" Tegmark called this the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis(MUH) call it Hypothesis number one.The External Reality Hypothesis (ERH)(number tow) stands that "There exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans."
Tegmark's argument is that our most successful theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics describe only part of the reality, for a complete description of external reality must be defined in a form "devoid of any human baggage like 'particle', 'observation' or other words" in other words it have to be a Mathematical Structure .Thus everything physical is ultimately mathematical, including you and me, "making us self-aware parts of a giant mathematical object".
This means that all structures that exist mathematically exist physically as well, forming the Level IV multiverse (this is a mind blowing conclusion)"Exploring the Level IV multiverse doesn't require rockets or telescopes, merely computers and ideas". (reminds me of Berekley)
"Mathematical structures, formal systems and computations are closely related, suggesting that they’re all aspects of the same transcendent structure whose nature we still haven’t fully understood"
Now the question of whatever we have to believe in all of this or not, one simply can be narrow minded and reject all of it, ,another one influenced by Popper's thought, can say that this is unscientific non-sense and can't be tested or falsified, for my part I found this Level VI Multiverse a little bit strange (as another levels) but worth thinking .Tegmark as he said moved the thinking of Multiverse from " this is non-sense I hate it " to "I hate it"
The book was complex and hard to follow in some parts (and hard to remember in all parts), but it was "Fantastic" in every sense of the word. ...more
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