I am wrong about something

Today I learned I am (probably) wrong about something. I am an anti-multiverser. Don't get me wrong, I totally love the idea of multiple alternative universes where the Confederates won the Civil War and therefor Leonard Nimoy wears a goatee. That would be awesome.

But what hangs me up about the concept of multiple realities is this: what could possibly caus a multiverse to come into being? I've argued this around and around with people, both, live and on the internet till I was blue in my Atlantean gills. The basis for most of these arguments is the theory that there are all sorts of real alternate realities "out there," each reflecting possible different historical outcomes that might result from humanity making different historical choices--so that there's one history where the Nazis nuked London in 1943 and another universe where zeppelins replaced the luxury liner in the 1930s and yet another where alpacas have taken the place of the common house cat.

For me this notion breaks down at the point where you start asking how big a change, or how big a choice, is required to create a new universe... and by logical extension by what mechanism is an entirely new universe split off from the molecules of this universe every time some kid on Betelgeuse chooses between chocolate and vanilla ice cream with his birthday cake. (I know--trick question: Betelgeusean kids have to choose between asparagus and onion-flavored ice cream).

I just can't picture how a human choice made here, or a cat choice in Albuquerque, or a Rigelian blubber-rat choice made in the swamps of Rigel 17-B could cause all the molecules in the universe to split up into separate realities, creating quite definitively an infinitude of parallel universes. I don't see a causative link between a mental process and the resulting physical outcome. I can't even imagine where all that energy would go to once it split reality in half (or for that matter where all that energy would be created from--since Einstein among others tells me energy can't be created).

Of course I'm not a scientist, so most of what I say in this post is bullshit.

Of course, serious scientists think about bearded Vulcans when speculating on what dark matter and wormholes are and what they could mean for the parts of the universe that seem to be in places where we can't see or measure. What these bearded labcoats think about, instead, is truly different realities: universes with different physical laws, universes without planets or gravity, universes where the relationships between mass, space, and velocity might be entirely renegotiated. Shit that would blow your mind, man.

The evidence for there being more reality than Horatio's philosophy can imagine has to do with dark matter and the strange ease with which the universe creates life. Blame it on carbon molecules, I say, but given the bigness of the vacuum and the relative smallness of earth's surface (the only place where life is known to exist), obviously the phrase "the universe's basic properties are uncannily suited for life" should be seen in relative terms.

The argument pro comes from physicist Andrei Linde:

If... protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve.

There's also a lot of "dark matter" out there that scientists can't account for and apparently some strings tying it all together in ways my mind simply can't understand. Taken all together, Linde and likeminded theorists conclude there's more to it all than meets the electron telescope. The best accounting for it they can come up with, so far, is that there's other realities, or maybe blindspots in our reality, where the physics that we know and love don't fully explain how molecules and their sundry subatomic particles behave.

Just no soul-sucking lizardmen so far.

As Evolution Blogger Jason Rosenhouse phrases it: "The hypothesis of a multiverse explains a lot of data, and is strongly suggested by the best physical theories we have." Still, Rosenhouse adds, "I can understand why it is a bit frustrating as an hypothesis, since the best we can hope for is indirect evidence that it is correct."

So maybe I am wrong. And maybe I am right, although if I am right about there being no alternative realities, it's entirely by accident.