The Multiverse of Madness and Fallacies

I am very excited! Production has begun on the second Dr. Strange movie, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness! I loved reading Dr. Strange comic books as a child, and I loved the first Dr. Strange movie, so when it comes to this upcoming Dr. Strange movie, I am like a kid at Christmas staring at the animatronic characters in a department store window.

Even more intriguing is the idea that Dr. Strange will apparently be adventuring across the multiverse – a concept introduced to movie-goers in previous Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies such as the first Dr. Strange, Ant-Man, the Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far from Home. The multiverse establishes a creative playground for endless adventures in alternative universes for the heroes of the MCU. The movie website, Cinemablend.com, explains the multiverse as used in the MCU:      

In short, the idea is that reality as we know it is simply one of an infinite number – including those that are almost exactly the same as ours with only microscopic differences, and others that are unfathomably different. In the film, Doctor Strange will presumably find himself on a kind of universe-hopping adventure, though the full extent of that is currently unclear.

Ah yes, the multiverse. While it creates a background for rollicking adventures across possible alternative histories, it’s not just a figment of the imagination of the writers behind the MCU. Lots of real scientists with real degrees (sorry, Bill Nye) accept the notion that there is a real multiverse out there beyond our reach. It is a place an infinite size and age where an infinite number of universes exist (bubbling out of an infinitely large cosmic pool of some type) which live just next door to us but remain undetectable by us. (Although at least one news report suggests that some evidence may have been discovered for the multiverse, the article shows that the evidence is pretty tenuous.)

Yet, despite the paucity of evidence outside of mathematical modeling (one might reasonably say, lack of any evidence) for the existence of this multiverse, the belief in the multiverse remains extremely durable. The multiverse has largely become a standard tenet for many scientists who spend millions of dollars in grant money seeking to prove its existence or who create theories that assume the existence of the multiverse. However, it is even more important for Internet atheists who need it to save the day for naturalism because, as these same real scientists with real degrees already know, the odds that life has arisen by chance without an infinite number of possibilities is so exceedingly slim as to be statistically zero.

Personally, I love writing about the multiverse because of the ridiculous places it takes us. One of my personal favorite is entitled, What are the Ramifications of a Universe where Zayn Malik Still Sings with One Direction?   And through articles like this, many of us on the CADRE have taken swipes at the logic behind the multiverse here, here  and here (to link just a few).

Well, now it appears that at least one contributor to Scientific American has finally caught up with the CADRE. In an opinion piece written by Philip Goth entitled Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse,  Goth points out how the belief in the multiverse, based as it is on speculation from mathematical models and a deep need to explain how we got here, is based on a logical fallacy – the inverse gambler’s fallacy.

Goth begins by painting the picture of the problem:

We exist, and we are living creatures. It follows that the universe we live in must be compatible with the existence of life. However, as scientists have studied the fundamental principles that govern our universe, they have discovered that the odds of a universe like ours being compatible with life are astronomically low. We can model what the universe would have looked like if its constants—the strength of gravity, the mass of an electron, the cosmological constant—had been slightly different. What has become clear is that, across a huge range of these constants, they had to have pretty much exactly the values they had in order for life to be possible. The physicist Lee Smolin has calculated that the odds of life-compatible numbers coming up by chance is 1 in 10²²⁹.

He then references the multiverse as the argument and notes the analogy to the Infinite Monkeys Theorem (IMT) which I previously tackled in two pieces entitled Infinite Monkeys, Keyboards and Time – What are the Odds and Infinite Monkeys versus Infinite Universes. But then Goth does the unexpected for someone writing in Scientific American: he notes a logical flaw in the multiverse reasoning.

However, experts in the mathematics of probability have identified the inference from the fine-tuning to the multiverse as an instance of fallacious reasoning. Specifically, multiverse theorists commit the inverse gambler’s fallacy, which is a slight twist on the regular gambler’s fallacy. In the regular gambler’s fallacy, the gambler has been at the casino all night and has had a terrible run of bad luck. She thinks to herself, “My next roll of the dice is bound to be a good one, as it’s unlikely I’d roll badly all night!” This is a fallacy, because for any particular roll, the odds of, say, getting a double six are the same: 1/36. How many times the gambler has rolled that night has no bearing on whether the next roll will be a double six.

In the inverse gambler’s fallacy, a visitor walks into a casino and the first thing she sees is someone rolling a double six. She thinks “Wow, that person must’ve been playing for a long time, as it’s unlikely they’d have such good luck just from one roll.” This is fallacious for the same reason. The casino- visitor has only observed one roll of the dice, and the odds of that one roll coming good is the same as any other roll: 1/36. How long the player has been rolling prior to this moment has no bearing on the odds of the one roll the visitor observed being a double six.

Philosopher Ian Hacking was the first to connect the inverse gambler’s fallacy to arguments for the multiverse, focusing on physicist John Wheeler’s oscillating universe theory, which held that our universe is the latest of a long temporal sequence of universes. Just as the casino-visitor says “Wow, that person must’ve been playing for a long time, as it’s unlikely they’d have such good luck just from one roll,” so the multiverse theorist says “Wow, there must be many other universes before this one, as it’s unlikely the right numbers would have come up if there’d only been one.”

Goth’s article highlights yet another reason to doubt the multiverse. The multiverse theory holds that if I accept the incredibly long odds that would lead to life, then there has to be a naturalistic explanation and that explanation practically requires that I assume that there are an infinite number of other universes that constitute the failed attempts so that the odds that this universe supports life are reasonable. But Goth points out an excellent hypothetical that illustrates the flaw in that reasoning.

You wake up with amnesia, with no clue as to how you got where you are. In front of you is a monkey bashing away on a typewriter, writing perfect English. This clearly requires explanation. You might think: “Maybe I’m dreaming … maybe this is a trained monkey … maybe it’s a robot.” What you would not think is “There must be lots of other monkeys around here, mostly writing nonsense.” You wouldn’t think this because what needs explaining is why this monkey—the only one you’ve actually observed—is writing English, and postulating other monkeys doesn’t explain what this monkey is doing.

I am certain that we there will be slew of comments sent to Scientific American from the true-believers in the multiverse arguing that the mathematics make it perfectly clear that multiple universes are not only possible but likely. However, mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox has noted:

Scientists create theories which include mathematical laws, in order to explain natural events. However, theories and laws themselves can’t create these natural events. Theories and laws are mathematical explanations for certain things that take place under certain conditions. A law of nature is descriptive and predictive. However, it is not creative and it can’t be.

To illustrate his point, Lennox has also noted:

1+1=2, this simple arithmetic rule has never created anything. This rule has never deposited some money in either my bank account or in someone else’s bank accounts. Today I have $1000 in my bank account. And if I put $ 1000 dollars more tomorrow, this arithmetic rule says I have $2000 in my bank account. But, if I don’t deposit any money and expect it from this rule of arithmetic, then I would stay bankrupt forever.

The mathematics may work, but until it is shown that such a multiverse exists in reality, it remains truly only theory. So, while the multiverse may be a fun background for a comic-book inspired adventure movie (which I am very much looking forward to watching), it remains largely in the realm of science fiction and appears to continue its existence through a desire to explain away the incredible unlikelihood that we should be here to create and watch movies at all.