🔄Many Worlds Interpretation

Assignment Dates and Due Dates May Be Subject to Change

Assigned 🔘 Week 02 Tue Feb 04 Due 🔘 Week 03 Tue Feb 11

EXPOSITION:

The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics holds that there are many worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time as our own. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics. - Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

ACTION: This assignment can be a continuation of your thought experiment from Week 01 (depending on its content) or can be something radically new. It can be in written, image-based, video, XR, or diagram form. This can be a collaborative work.

You can approach the concept of Many World Interpretation (MWI) from a few different perspectives:

• Quantum Mechanics: All possible outcomes are physically realized in some "world" or universe. If you choose this approach, choose at least four possible scenarios that involve you making a choice and the four possibilities of that choice. For example you do or do not meet a person, or you meet them in different circumstances. Example: Russian Doll television series, The Garden of Forking Paths

• Counterfactual: A historical fact is changed to see what might have happened, if there is an existing parallel universe for example, so that a major (or minor) event, discovery, development happened differently. Example: The Attenborough Design Group

• Fiction and Possible Worlds (Utopia/Dystopia): Imagine a scenario where there are two possible futures, one more inclusive of all citizens where many world problems have been addressed if not solved (not necessarily a utopia however) and one dystopic/unpleasant/catastrophic and an action or choice you (or a group of you) could make in the present to shape one scenario and avoid the other (at least in one timeline). Example: Woman on the Edge of Time (In this novel, a woman diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia shuttles back and forth between our U.S. American present and two possible futures, one ecotopian and ecofeminist in bent, the other technocratic.)

• Conspiracy Theories: A very popular "theory" circulating and first posited by paranormal consultant Fiona Broome in 2009 is the Mandela Effect, in which a large number of people remember an event, product or experience differently than it is currently documented. Many advocates for the Mandela Effect believe that they have slipped into a different timeline in the many worlds scenario. There is evidence to suggest that this is an example of collective misremembering (false memories) See snopes.com. Choose this or other conspiracy theories circulating, and take the position of a debunker or enthusiast.

UPLOAD all of your materials for this assignment into your class google drive folder for professor review. Please also share the link to this assignment on the class slack for your classmates to review.