Brian Greene was on the Colbert Report the other day, promoting his new book The Hidden Reality. Little did he know (one presumes) how much he was endangering the moral fiber of today’s youth.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Brian Greene | ||||
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Brian’s book is about the multiverse, a hot topic these days in cosmology circles. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but he is one of the clearest and most level-headed people we have writing about modern physics, so I’m sure it’s worth checking out.
We’ve certainly touched on the multiverse idea on this very blog, for example here and here. It’s a controversial topic, as you may have heard. People worry that talking about unobservable things is a repudiation of what it means to do science, a symptom of the decadence of modern society, etc. Click the links to rehash the usual debates.
But a new rhetorical strategy has appeared among the anti-multiverse crowd — not that the idea is wrong (which would be very interesting, if there were a good argument for it), or even that it’s nonscientific (the usual complaint), but that it’s immoral. We are actually violating the Categorical Imperative by talking about universes beyond our own. Points for novelty!
Or not. The immorality argument was recently advanced by John Horgan and Peter Woit. But if you read the posts, it’s the usual curmudgeonly sniping, with the shrillness knob turned up a click or two. The actual argument is the same as it ever was: talking about unobservable things is not science. [Update: Peter explains his objection here.]
However, a truly novel version of the immorality charge was leveled by Clay Naff at the Huffington Post. Naff introduces a “moral principle,” which informs us to “resist accepting any proposition that tends to disable moral reasoning, unless and until the scientifically interpreted evidence compels us.” That is, instead of judging ideas by our conventional criteria of whether they are likely to be “right” or “wrong,” we should include an additional new factor that weights against ideas that would disable morality.
Hopefully the problem with this idea is immediately evident: ideas about how the universe works can’t possibly “disable moral reasoning.” The world does whatever it does, quite independently of our moral judgments. The job of morality is to figure out what we think we human beings should be doing, which, as we’ve been discussing, does not reduce to looking at what actually happens in the universe.
Of course, what counts as a moral action certainly depends on what actually happens in the universe. (Saving lives would be less urgent if everyone who dies goes to Paradise in the afterlife.) But Naff’s worry is a little funny. What he seems to be concerned about — although he never quite comes out and says it, so a bit of interpretation is required, and I could always be misreading — is the possibility that our moral intuitions could be undermined by the idea that there are an infinite number of copies of ourselves out there in the multiverse, some of them exactly like us and many of them slightly different, e.g. worlds where Hitler was victorious, etc. In such a setup, should we be concerned that morality is pointless, because every good thing and every bad thing eventually occurs elsewhere in the cosmos?
I don’t think we should be concerned about that (even if it’s true, which it may very well be). An idea like this doesn’t “disable our moral reasoning” — in fact, it might be extremely helpful to our moral reasoning. If your version of morality depends on the assumption that what happens here on Earth is unique in the universe, then it’s time to update your morality, not to put your hands over your ears when people start talking about the multiverse.
The real problem with Naff’s position is its fundamentally paternalistic tone — even if, to his credit, he seems to include himself among those who need protection from these scary ideas.
The danger lies in how they take root in popular culture. If we come to believe that choices do not matter, that any action is matched by its opposite somewhere, we risk losing our capacity for moral reasoning. History shows that, inbuilt though that capacity may be, ideas can short-circuit it.
In short, what I am saying is that those of us who are NOT so brilliant as to be able to follow the math need to resist being seduced by visions of parallel bubbles in a multiverse.
I have this old-fashioned notion that if an idea about the universe is very possibly correct, there is no moral or scientific advantage to pretending otherwise, even among those who can’t follow the math. Our capacity for moral reasoning shouldn’t depend on what’s happening many googols of parsecs away in an unobservable part of the universe. If it does, our moral reasoning needs an upgrade. And if reading popular books about the multiverse help nudge people along that path, I’m all for it.
Zwiestien,
What trend? There has always been speculative ideas in science. Science is not just some automated process of just theory and experiments. There is enough room for imagination in science and also interpretation. However, all imaginations, opinions and interpretations are not created equal in science. The real worry for science is people like you and Woit play the loudest trumpet with sound bites about what is moral physics rather than actually studying and contributing to physics seriously.
#51, Antiwoit says “There is enough room for imagination in science and also interpretation. However, all imaginations, opinions and interpretations are not created equal in science.”
Indeed, they are not equal. What differentiates them is the evidence, fragments or hints of evidence, or at least the potential for evidence.
But for how long are we going to blunder down a speculative trail with no hint of evidence at the end of the trail?
And should we be so actively popularising this speculative trail? This objection is at the heart of Peter Woit’s objections and I don’t see anyone addressing Woit’s core objection. Before we start thrusting beliefs into the public consciousness there should be a real basis for believing in it. The more unsupportable speculation we plant in the public consciousness the more we weaken public trust in science and we give pseudo-science supporters more encouragement.
By all means research any direction you believe in but I suggest that it is not responsible to excessively popularise ideas that, for the time being, have no hope of being demonstrated.
dear psmith,
if an idea is sufficiently interesting such as string theory and it does not please the Woits of the world, you cannot really expect people to just abandon it and work on something so that one can regain trust from public and Peter Woit. here physicists should really learn from mathematicians- they dont just abandon trying to prove Poincare conjecture or Fermat’s theorem just because it had crossed some artificial twenty years deadline imposed by some outsiders like Woit. Sometimes a really good idea takes years to understand.
if an idea is as interesting as string theory, we ought to do our best to understand it.
Unfortunately, it also appears to take 30 years, or more, to get rid of a really mediocre idea, and its increasingly demented progeny.
When science is operating properly, this should not be the case.
By any chance are you from the What Me Worry school of physics?
Albert Zwiestein
#53, Antiwoit says “if an idea is as interesting as string theory, we ought to do our best to understand it”
Yes, I absolutely encourage you to pursue ideas that passionately engage you. We can’t foretell where the next big breakthroughs will happen.
But we do this in the science arena where our ideas will be vigorously examined, tested and criticised. It can get pretty rough in this arena but this is where the dross will be weeded out.
It is the science writers who move ideas out of the science arena into the public arena and they perform an important function. Among other things, this allows the society at large to decide what proportion of the national treasure to deploy in the service of science. And, as Woit and others mention, these ideas also shape the public consciousness and values. Remember that people in the public arena are not equipped to judge these ideas on their merit. So they must necessarily attach a lot of trust to the science writers.
Therefore, by and large, the ideas that move out of the science arena into the public arena should have discernible merit. If the idea has not progressed to that stage, leave it in the science arena where it can be subjected to continuing examination and debate by the people equipped to do so. This, at least, is how I understand Peter Woit’s argument.
1+dx does not equal 1. I am unique even if there is some infinitesimally similar variant of me. This is the inescapable moral predicament.
The discussion over multiverses is proof that we Americans have too much time on our hands. Multiverses were conjured up to answer what came before the big bang. Well what came before the multiverse? The super verse? Really, turn off your computer once a week and go help make this universe a better place. It’s the morially correct thing to do.
I’m baffled by the persistence of the idea that in an infinite multiverse every physically possible universe must exist. Mathematics certainly doesn’t dictate this, any more than it dictates that in an infinite number of die rolls a six must eventually come up. One possible outcome of an infinite number of die rolls is that you NEVER roll a six. Another possible outcome is that you ALWAYS roll a six. Mathematics doesn’t dictate that any particular possibility must eventually occur.
Similarly, in a multiverse containing an infinite number of universes, there’s no guarantee of another universe identical to ours, or just like ours except one small detail, or even remotely like ours. All are possible, just like the possibility that all universes in the multiverse are empty vacuums except ours. Mathematics doesn’t dictate or favor any particular scenario.
What are these physicists smoking?
An infinite number of universes requires that a universe must exists where an infinite number of universes does not exist.
So which universe are we in now? the one where infinite universes exist or the one where they dont.