The Probabilities of the Possibilities: The Many Worlds Theory
As Paulo Coehlo said, “everything that can happen once will never happen twice.” The dinner you had as a celebration. The time you went late-night grocery shopping with your family. The day you went swimming at the city pool with friends. All the moments in our lives are perfectly calibrated, and they play out in unique ways. These events will never happen the same way. No matter whatever we do again and again, such as going to concerts repeatedly or having sleepovers with the same people, the events will unfold each time differently.
This reveals the unpredictable nature of the world we live in. We never know what will happen in the future. How will that lunch meeting go? Will the defendant or the prosecutor win the legal case? We can always predict a probable chance, but there are infinite ways where the likelihood of an event happening and its occurrence are at a total contradiction. This relates to the Probability Theory by French scientists Pascal and Fermat —
The outcome of a random event cannot be determined before it occurs, but it could be any of the various possible results. On the other hand, actual outcomes are determined by chance.
This idea of a completely unpredictable universe leads to another question: if we had made a different choice, how would our actions have been different? Would our paths have changed? This question has been pondered by many in the past. Upon research, one available answer has been theorized by the Many-Worlds Interpretation. This ideology says that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some “world” or universe. In simpler terms, it is saying that for each probable outcome, there is some sort of physical realm that consists of the sequence of events after each likely outcome, like a domino effect, but way more complicated. A couple of months ago, I talked to my father about the book Candide by Voltaire. This book adds a fictional twist to the question posed as Voltaire highlights the optimistic view of how our world that we live in could be conceived as the best of all possible worlds.
Overall, just thinking about how no event could ever occur in the same way possible led me to realize how many others before me have thought about this and the idea of the domino effect of our actions. To me, this is such an intriguing idea as in our current lives, we always think about how we would have acted differently or said something else that would have been better in the situation. The ability to think of alternatives and build a whole world based on doing just one small thing differently each time is terrific.
