free will in the multiverse

[AllanS]

Frank’s alone in a room. On the table are two pills: a red pill and a blue pill. The future of the entire cosmos depends on his choice. He must choose the Blue pill.

God is not about to take any chances. Unbeknown to Frank, he’s make a million exact copies of this scenario, identical down to the smallest quantum thingy. None of the copies knows the others exist. Each copy thinks he’s real, and each is real, since they are all identical.

The clock strikes 12. Drum roll… Frank must choose.

If the million Franks all choose the red pill, this strongly implies his choice isn’t free, but determined by the arrangement of the atoms in his brain etc.

But suppose 999999 choose the red pill, but one chooses the blue pill. Yay! Free will is real! God immediately annihilates the 999999, elects the one who chooses Blue, saves the cosmos from destruction, and does so without violating Frank’s free will.

Alas, the very next day, poor old Frank must choose again: the green pill or the orange pill. As before, the future of the cosmos depends on his choice…

No worries. God need only make a sufficiently large number of universes so that at every point, Frank freely makes the correct decision. Frank’s salvation is guaranteed, and the future of the cosmos is secured.

Many are called. Few are chosen.

[Wormwood]

Of course this carries the assumption that God perceives time as we do, that there is a before during which the perfectly free choice isn’t known, and an after when it is. Drop this assumption and it ceases to be a problem.

“Probability is just another word for not knowing. Toss a coin, heads or tails? Probability says both are equally likely, time travel tells you which.” (From one of my unpublished SF stories.)

[arlenite]

This is an interesting thought experiment, AllanS. I think something similar is at work when philosophers of religion like Craig and Plantinga invoke God’s “middle knowledge” so that God can see all possible worlds containing all of the various possible choices of free creatures. Of course, few (if any?) middle-knowledgers take a realist approach to the modal multiverse.

One interesting contention that the middle-knowledgers typically make, though, is that it is metaphysically possible that there is no possible world in which all people use their free world to continue willing the good only and never sin (in fact, the contention is that there is, in fact, no possible world in which anyone - besides Christ - lives her or his whole life without ever freely sinning). Plantinga calls this “transworld depravity,” and Craig attempts to utilize a similar notion to argue that there is no possible world in which everyone uses her or his free will to accept God’s salvific grace. Consequently, someone’s always gonna be in hell, and, for Craig, “some” means “most”! God knows all this through middle knowledge in eternity and chooses to actualize the (best? good enough?) possible world, despite the losses.

I think we can ask the same question about this example of an actual multiverse: whether, given unlimited worlds, we could ever hit upon a world in which a single individual freely chooses at every moment to make the morally correct decision. Your example seems plausible, since it is simple in its details. But what about a world (like ours) in which every single one of a vast majority of individuals must always freely choose correctly? The complexity of such a world would seem to imply that such a “perfect world” would be far more rare. That being said, given unlimited worlds, is this nevertheless metaphysically possible? It seems to me like there could. But, if it was, why didn’t God actualize that one?

Your experiment does have the interesting twist that the whole point is to get Frank to, at some point, continually freely choose the correct option so that the world isn’t annihilated. But you say that upon Frank’s choosing the correct blue pill, “God immediately annihilates the 999999.” The universalistic critique of an annihilationist eschatology might work here too: it’s all well and good that God gets God’s desired ends (a world in which Frank freely chooses the Blue pill and thus the continued existence of the world), but was it worth the cost of the thousands of worlds and Franks that were annihilated in the process? You say that “God is not about to take any chances,” but the fact seems to be that God did take a lot of chances, and almost all of those bets failed. It’s just that one didn’t.

Does this constitute a failure on God’s end to get what God wants? If God’s goal was just to get one such world, then it would seem not. But, is there reason to think that God would not want any worlds to end in annihilation? If so, then there would seem to be a problem. So, if there was something analogous to God’s universal salvific will for possible worlds, then it seems that the thought experiment runs into the same problem as the eschatalogical annihilationist. I think if there was to be such a principle, it would have to involve something like the consideration that since all those possible worlds are really real, there is real loss when each one is annihilated. The question would then perhaps come down to whether or not one thought that God’s end of one good world outweighed the loss of the thousands of others. Not sure how I fall with regards to that.

I’m just spit-balling here, though.

[Chrisguy90]

The real question is how God can know a freely made, contingent act before (causally or temporally) it is done? I used to be a Molinist, but found the grounding objection insurmountable. Craig and Plantinga, by the way, don’t even attempt an answer to it.

[arlenite]

The real question is how God can know a freely made, contingent act before (causally or temporally) it is done? I used to be a Molinist, but found the grounding objection insurmountable. Craig and Plantinga, by the way, don’t even attempt an answer to it.

Yeah, that’s definitely tricky. I think I tend to lean open theist, but I’m by no means well-read enough in the literature to make a sufficiently educated decision one way or another. Although I don’t have any great deal of confidence that I understood it correctly, David Lewis’s essay “Evil for Freedoms Sake?” seemed to raise the objection that libertarian free will would always entail the possibility that a freely volitional agent could nevertheless act contrary to what God, through middle knowledge, “foreknew.” But that’s an odd kind of divine foreknowledge that doesn’t seem to square with the traditional definition.

AllanS’s thought experiment seems to avoid this problem because it doesn’t say that God foreknew the outcomes of any of these worlds, but merely “rolled the dice” each time and hoped for the best. Of course, this is the type of risk that a Molinist is trying to avoid in order protect divine omnipotence (and, on their view, omniscience).

[AllanS]

Of course this carries the assumption that God perceives time as we do, that there is a before during which the perfectly free choice isn’t known, and an after when it is. Drop this assumption and it ceases to be a problem.

“Probability is just another word for not knowing. Toss a coin, heads or tails? Probability says both are equally likely, time travel tells you which.” (From one of my unpublished SF stories.)

No doubt God is n-dimensional. He always sees Frank’s free choice, even as he makes it. Thing is, God doesn’t want the cosmos to implode, so he simply makes enough copies of Frank to ensure he always takes the correct pill, freely.

[AllanS]

it is metaphysically possible that there is no possible world in which all people use their free world to continue willing the good only and never sin (in fact, the contention is that there is, in fact, no possible world in which anyone - besides Christ - lives her or his whole life without ever freely sinning). Plantinga calls this “transworld depravity,” and Craig attempts to utilize a similar notion to argue that there is no possible world in which everyone uses her or his free will to accept God’s salvific grace. Consequently, someone’s always gonna be in hell, and, for Craig, “some” means “most”! God knows all this through middle knowledge in eternity and chooses to actualize the (best? good enough?) possible world, despite the losses.

That’s very interesting. Suppose Frank’s world is populated by zombies that give every appearance of being real people, but are not. They exist temporarily only to provide the context for Frank’s moral choices. Again, Frank has to choose the blue pill or the red pill, and God makes enough copies of Frank to ensure he always makes to correct choice freely. In this way, Frank is saved.

Similarly, God puts Sally into a multiverse of her own, and saves her also. And so on. In this way, God can populate heaven with an infinite number of people all of whom have freely chosen moral perfection and are justified by their good works.

The universalistic critique of an annihilationist eschatology might work here too: it’s all well and good that God gets God’s desired ends (a world in which Frank freely chooses the Blue pill and thus the continued existence of the world), but was it worth the cost of the thousands of worlds and Franks that were annihilated in the process? You say that “God is not about to take any chances,” but the fact seems to be that God did take a lot of chances, and almost all of those bets failed. It’s just that one didn’t.

That’s a good point. The Frank who eats the red pill and destroys the universe is no longer identical to the Frank who eats the blue pill. Does God love them both equally? If God annihilates 1000 bad Franks, but saves one good Frank, how can God have destroyed Frank? Frank still exists.

since all those possible worlds are really real, there is real loss when each one is annihilated. The question would then perhaps come down to whether or not one thought that God’s end of one good world outweighed the loss of the thousands of others.

Yes. Would the loss be real? Suppose a super-scanner plotted the position of every particle in Frank’s body and beamed the information at light speed to a space station on Pluto, where a 3-D printer makes an exact copy. Frank steps out of the printer and goes about his duties. Meanwhile, as part of the deal, the original Frank on Earth is killed. Would this be murder, or simply a very clever way of sending people through space? Would it be rational for the original Frank to resist being killed, knowing that he now in fact exists as a few squiggabits of information zooming off to Pluto on a laser beam?

[arlenite]

That’s very interesting. Suppose Frank’s world is populated by zombies that give every appearance of being real people, but are not. They exist temporarily only to provide the context for Frank’s moral choices. Again, Frank has to choose the blue pill or the red pill, and God makes enough copies of Frank to ensure he always makes to correct choice freely. In this way, Frank is saved.

That’s a good point. The Frank who eats the red pill and destroys the universe is no longer identical to the Frank who eats the blue pill. Does God love them both equally? If God annihilates 1000 bad Franks, but saves one good Frank, how can God have destroyed Frank? Frank still exists.

Yes. Would the loss be real? Suppose a super-scanner plotted the position of every particle in Frank’s body and beamed the information at light speed to a space station on Pluto, where a 3-D printer makes an exact copy. Frank steps out of the printer and goes about his duties. Meanwhile, as part of the deal, the original Frank on Earth is killed. Would this be murder, or simply a very clever way of sending people through space? Would it be rational for the original Frank to resist being killed, knowing that he now in fact exists as a few squiggabits of information zooming off to Pluto on a laser beam?

Persistence of identity is something that really just baffles me. My instinct is that although qualitatively original Frank and space-beamed Frank are identical, quantitatively they are distinct. The latter would seem more important, since it seems to establish ontological distinction. So, it perhaps makes more sense to label original Frank Frank[1] and the space-beamed Frank Frank[2]. Since both exist at the same time, it seems that Frank[1] cannot be ontologically identical to Frank[2]. Consequently, Frank[1] really should resist being killed, since it is not him that exists in space. It might be different if, somehow, what was space-beamed somewhere was Frank[1], such that Frank[1] is no longer on earth.

So, I guess although on the example God is saving some entity that is qualitatively a “Frank,” each Frank (Frank[3], Frank[4], …]) that is annihilated is really gone and thus really lost. Again, if all God wants is a Frank to be saved, that’s fine. But, if we have reason to think that God would not want any person to be annihilated, God saving a single Frank wouldn’t cut it (unless only one Frank exists). Rather, God would seemingly desire to ensure that any and all Franks were not annihilated, since each Frank is its own quantitatively and ontologically distinct Frank that cannot be replaced by another.

Whew, my head

[Username1]

… each Frank is its own quantitatively and ontologically distinct Frank that cannot be replaced by another.

I agree, Arlenite. While Allan’s theory is intriguing, it doesn’t fly for me. God annihilating any moral, self-aware creature - even if there are countless clones or whatever they are of that creature in countless parallel universes - contradicts my understanding of God as love. And as you say (I think ), all those annihilated Franks get a pretty raw deal, just so that uber-Frank can have eternal bliss!

I find the whole concept of a true multiverse pretty meaningless, to be honest. And by true multiverse I mean a large, maybe infinite number of universes in separate dimensions, that do not interface with each other in any way at all - for if such a multiverse exists, it must forever remain purely theoretical, for if any empirical evidence for universes other than the one we inhabit turned up, no matter how small or faint, then by definition those other universes are, in fact, part of ours, and hence not part of a true multiverse.

From the little I know about current multiverse theory among secular scientists, they seem to be arguing in favour of universes that are connected with this one in some way - eg an eternally expanding and collapsing series of universes - which to my way of thinking is another thing entirely.

It’s a bit like a theory I heard on the radio this week alleging that the universe sprang into being from nothing. Which if it were actually true would be pretty amazing - creation ex nihilo. But then the person putting forward the theory qualified this by adding, “from a quantum foam”. Which may be nothing material, but it is certainly not nothing at all.

For me, all big bang theories flounder on this issue. For all I know the universe may have started as a singularity, a point of energy of infinte mass or density or whatever. But that still isn’t nothing at all, it’s a something. And where did *that *something come from?

So for me, and sorry for wandering off topic here guys, there are only two creation theories that fly:

1. God has always existed, and he created the universe.

2. The universe has always existed, and it created itself.

Seems to me you need a hell of a lot of faith to believe either. I choose Option 1.

Cheers

Johnny

[corpselight]

I have never liked the multiverse theory…i think it’s a bit lazy and convenient (from perhaps a story-telling perspective) to say that this universe is so great (when it IS great) because we’re the lucky one…but of course tomorrow, two billion more universes will have spawned, and one or more of THOSE gets to be lucky.

Saying that, what if Frank existed ACROSS universes, sort of how a Sphere could occupy an infinite number of Flatlands and still be the same sphere?
At each intersection, an interaction and choice could take place. Perhaps the Sphere is unaware of how vast he is, and is unaware that each part of him touching a flatland was making a choice. That way the whole Sphere could exist, and one day would know all the choices he’d made in each world. That way nothing is being lost…but the Sphere is perhaps able to be redeemed. There are problems with this too, but it’s just an idea, or another thought scenario.

Apparently the maths check out for multiverse theory, but then i’ve been told they check out for all this being a big holodeck simulation…

[sturmy]

Great Fun thinking about this one- thanks Allen.
Maybe it would be logically impossible (for some reason) for God to make exact replicas of Frank and for them to still be Frank.
I mean that just as God cannot make square circles there maybe something within a persons ‘Life framework’ ( I’m inventing a term here) that makes it impossible to achieve replication.
S

[AllanS]

Persistence of identity is something that really just baffles me.

It takes a few hours to beam Frank [data] to Pluto. During this time, Frank [1] robs a bank, hides the loot and pops a cyanide pill. When Frank [2] is printed out on Pluto, would he be arrested for bank robbery? How could he have robbed a bank when he was data encoded onto a laser beam zooming past Jupiter?

What’s more, because Frank [1] is able to rob a bank, but Frank [data] is incapable of doing anything, the two cannot be identical. Perhaps Frank [data] can be seen as software that needs a computer (the material universe) to run the code.

So, I guess although on the example God is saving some entity that is qualitatively a “Frank,” each Frank (Frank[3], Frank[4], …]) that is annihilated is really gone and thus really lost. Again, if all God wants is a Frank to be saved, that’s fine. But, if we have reason to think that God would not want any person to be annihilated, God saving a single Frank wouldn’t cut it (unless only one Frank exists). Rather, God would seemingly desire to ensure that any and all Franks were not annihilated, since each Frank is its own quantitatively and ontologically distinct Frank that cannot be replaced by another.

I think you’re right. If God made a million Franks (and if free will is real) we would immediately have a million different people with diverging perspectives, experiences and personalities. If they all somehow lived for a hundred years, Frank [1] and Frank [1000000] could well be speaking different languages, have radically different families, health, knowledge, skills, wealth etc.

As you say, persistence in identity is quite baffling.

George [1] is a very saintly man. Alas, he’s hit by a truck, suffers brain damage, changes personality to George [2], robs a bank and dies in a shootout with the police. Will God resurrect George [1] and (in effect) annihilate George [2]?

[AllanS]

what if Frank existed ACROSS universes, sort of how a Sphere could occupy an infinite number of Flatlands and still be the same sphere? At each intersection, an interaction and choice could take place. Perhaps the Sphere is unaware of how vast he is, and is unaware that each part of him touching a flatland was making a choice. That way the whole Sphere could exist, and one day would know all the choices he’d made in each world. That way nothing is being lost…but the Sphere is perhaps able to be redeemed.

What an interesting thought…

If I exist in the boundless mind of God, then every possible variation of me also must exist.

[AllanS]

for if such a multiverse exists, it must forever remain purely theoretical

Interestingly, David Deutsch (dreamed up quantum computing) is a big fan of the multiverse and reckons it’s possible to demonstrate its existence. All it needs (as I understand it) is to make a quantum computer that does more operations than can be accounted for given the number of particles in our universe.

1. God has always existed, and he created the universe.
2. The universe has always existed, and it created itself.

Yes. Because something exists, Something has always existed. This eternally existent Something is “God”. Energy (cannot be created or destroyed) is one candidate, in which case Materialism is true. But if true, materialism will always be true. This gives us another God candidate. Truth itself cannot be created or destroyed, in which case Theism or Panentheism is true. ie. God is like a body (matter/energy), or like a mind (truth, goodness, beauty), or like both.

[AllanS]

Great Fun thinking about this one- thanks Allen.
Maybe it would be logically impossible (for some reason) for God to make exact replicas of Frank and for them to still be Frank.
I mean that just as God cannot make square circles there maybe something within a persons ‘Life framework’ ( I’m inventing a term here) that makes it impossible to achieve replication.

Yes. A picosecond after God made the replicas, they’d no longer be identical.

[Cindy_Skillman]

It’s complicated enough with just poor ol’ Frank. What happens when you add his beloved Ruby, the little Frankies and Frankettes, and all their friends and parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, neighbors, and so on and so on . . . and we need a universe in which not only Frank but all these other folks always do just as God has decided must be done in order to accomplish His goals for the world. Anybody who steps out of line will have to be annihilated along with their whole worlds – and that probably includes Mandelbrot and his butterfly ranch, too.

Given that such is a thing that could be done, I’m sure God could do it. I’m not sure, though, that this wouldn’t be the same thing at its foundation as creating (or sustaining) only individuals who will always do exactly as God has ordained that they shall do – not quite but almost the same thing as those robots we Arminianists like to grouse about . . . .

[Wormwood]

No doubt God is n-dimensional. He always sees Frank’s free choice, even as he makes it. Thing is, God doesn’t want the cosmos to implode, so he simply makes enough copies of Frank to ensure he always takes the correct pill, freely.

Actually, I wonder if this explains the remoteness of God, and why he has to speak through prophets. If the raw information about the future that he has available were visible to us, might this create a sort of “feedback loop” that would make the universe shake itself to bits?

I’ve done this one in the novel, where my time travellers often have to use a bystander to perform the action that changes history, in order to break or prevent a loop.