It’s unusual for a science writer not to be head over heels in the multiverse hogwash but, well, anyway:
The ‘mirrorverse’ is just one more in a long line of so-called multiverse theories. These theories are based on the notion that our Universe is not unique, that there exists a large number of other universes that somehow sit alongside or parallel to our own. For example, in the so-called Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are universes containing our parallel selves, identical to us but for their different experiences of quantum physics. These theories are attractive to some few theoretical physicists and philosophers, but there is absolutely no empirical evidence for them. And, as it seems we can’t ever experience these other universes, there will never be any evidence for them. As Broussard explained, these theories are sufficiently slippery to duck any kind of challenge that experimentalists might try to throw at them, and there’s always someone happy to keep the idea alive.
Is this really science? The answer depends on what you think society needs from science.
Jim Baggott, “But is it science?” at Aeon
Perhaps an increasing number of people need a system that accommodates anything they choose to believe, as opposed to a narrow, imperialistic system that insists on observable facts.
Baggott, of course, also feels the need to take the ritual swipe at ID:
And, no matter how much we might want to believe that God designed all life on Earth, we must accept that intelligent design makes no testable predictions of its own. It is simply a conceptual alternative to evolution as the cause of life’s incredible complexity. Intelligent design cannot be falsified, just as nobody can prove the existence or non-existence of a philosopher’s metaphysical God, or a God of religion that ‘moves in mysterious ways’.
Jim Baggott, “But is it science?” at Aeon
In fairness, it’s not as if he could afford to investigate whether non-intelligent causes of specified complexity are even possible. If he did, and admitted how serious the problems are, his criticism of crackpot cosmology would be rejected and lose all force.
Because, you see, he is allowed to criticize crackpot cosmology provided that he holds to no thesis about the nature of nature that would impede its actual advance. He can regret it but he must not undermine it.
Note: Jim Baggot is the author of Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe (2018) and Quantum Reality: The Quest for the Real Meaning of Quantum Mechanics – A Game of Theories (forthcoming, 2020)
See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide
Follow UD News at Twitter!