A human in a multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics

Grishin Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Independent researcher 241012, Russia, Bryansk region, Bryansk, Orlovskaya str., 22, sq. 1 m-rgreen@yandex.ru

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Modern science began quite recently, with Descartes' "Reasoning about the Method" ^[1], when the cultural evolution of European societies gave rise to empirical scientists who were able to understand and accept his thought; and it originated as a continuation of metaphysics, an attempt to unravel the Divine plan through understanding the laws of nature. Since then, science has abandoned both the idea of God and any great plan, almost proving the existence of the Universe as a thing in itself, requiring neither an end nor a beginning.

In the last hundred years, people have learned more about the world around them than in all previous history. However, even the most daring authors from science do not undertake to openly apply the conclusions of their theories to the place of man in this newly acquired knowledge, leaving such inventions to science fiction (scientists themselves are often recognized authors of works of fiction on topics close to them in research activities).

In the first chapters of his book "The Structure of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes" ^[2] David Deutsch implicitly describes a phenomenon related to human psychology, which I would, with his permission, call the "Illusion of Common Sense":

"How is the Earth not flat?! Look around you! Yes, use common sense – if it were round, we would all slide off the edge and fall down!"

"Of course, a lead weight falls faster than a wooden one! She's heavier! It's as clear as day!"

"Quantum mechanics is really impressive. But an inner voice tells me that this is not ideal yet. This theory speaks volumes, but still does not bring us any closer to solving the mystery of the Almighty. At least I'm sure He's not rolling the dice."

The last statement belongs not to anyone, but to Einstein ^[3], and he, of course, was partly right. He is one of the greatest "debunkers of illusions" in history, who described space-time itself in the language of mathematics and physics and showed that parallel lines do not become so parallel at all, as soon as we (or any other mass-energy) approach them.

The "illusion of common sense" is rooted in us subconsciously, as is the belief in the infallibility of our own selves. It is very difficult to get used to the idea that something may not be what it obviously seems.

Einstein may have been wrong about only one thing: it is not the quantum theory that is incomplete – we ourselves are incomplete, passing off the illusion of visible reality as an immutable truth! He did not live two years to the moment when, in 1957, the American physicist Hugh Everett proposed his multi-world interpretation, realizing this ^[4].

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The probability of accidental crystallization on the primitive Earth of a self-reproducing DNA replicator, from which we originate, is 10-1081 (in fact, it is much more likely, because our universe is sharpened by the laws of physics for its appearance, but still) ^[5]. It would take a longer amount of time known to us than for the last atom in our universe to disintegrate. However, in the infinity of universes, this does not matter – in some of them it happened only 8 billion years after its origin, and now we live in it.

Actually, the scanty probability of the appearance of a universe with such physical laws that allowed us to arise in it and realize ourselves – the so–called anthropic principle - is one of the arguments in the assumption of the existence of an infinity of universes ^[6].

In addition, quantum physics, as interpreted by Everett, also assumes the existence of our Multiverse – variations of our Universe since its inception, in an amount with an unimaginable, but theoretically still finite number in the exponent of the tenth power. These variations – "parallel universes" – may in principle be available to us.

The rationale for the multidimensional interpretation of quantum mechanics is well considered again in Deutsch's "Structure of Reality" ^[2]. The bottom line is that this interpretation is the only one that consistently describes the paradoxes of quantum physics that Einstein noticed. Many are afraid to admit it because of the very "illusion of common sense" - why do we need infinite parallel universes when we realize only one, let's better introduce additional entities like the "pilot wave" (de Broglie–Bohm theory) or a new law of physics in the form of spontaneous collapse of the wave function of a particle ("half-life") depending on time (Gherardi-Rimini-Weber theory) or on the displacement of gravitational masses (Penrose). To get acquainted with alternative interpretations of the physical justification of quantum mechanics, I recommend looking at the chapter "Alternatives to a multi-world interpretation" of Sean Carroll's book "Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Space-time" ^[7]

However, the principle of Occam's razor – "one should not attract new entities unless absolutely necessary" – cuts off just such alternative theories, and not alternative universes at all.

No one in any way infringes on the rights of any of the interpretations of quantum physics from the point of view of the mathematical apparatus that they use - it is, in fact, the same for all of them; the classical Copenhagen model assumes using only mathematics to describe the physical phenomena of the quantum world, with its imaginary numbers and probabilities, Hilbert space, etc. But, following Deutsch, I choose for myself the most consistent interpretation from the point of view of the physical apparatus. Therefore, next I will allow myself to describe the effects of our quantum reality from the point of view of Everett's multidimensional interpretation. In my opinion, she alone is able to explain the essence of things using only the already known laws of physics; and the fact that this explanation offers to look at reality from a different angle will only allow us to get rid of another "illusion of common sense."

So, if our awareness of the uniqueness of the universe is another illusion, then how does it arise? Firstly, due to the fact that it is possible to observe the presence of "parallel" universes directly only by following the interference of elementary particles, for example, single photons, and their existence became known precisely as a result of the development of quantum theory, that is, in the last hundred years. Secondly, just as our consciousness is a product of the interaction of neurons in our brain, the universe we are aware of and all objects in it, including the brain and consciousness itself, are "projections" of the Multiverse. Just as consciousness is not able to directly see that it is a process, it also cannot see that the entire surrounding world is a process generated by a huge number of physical fields interacting with each other; and only those fields that as a result manifest themselves in the world to which our consciousness belongs, in the form of elementary particles, and create as a result, this world. In other words, we are only able to see our own universe and the universes directly adjacent to it, the neighboring universes. These universes are perceived by us as space, the past and the future. (What is described here and further is a brief and rather free, but necessary retelling of concepts from ^[2] Deutsch and ^[7] Carroll, so I ask the reader not to judge me strictly for possible lack of intelligence in the presentation, and turn to the primary sources.)

Time is perhaps the most interesting illusion created by our consciousness. We used to think that "time flows" somewhere independently of us, hung up the clock and watch how its hands move, ostensibly tracking the "passage of time" - although in fact we see what we see – the movement of the hands. Time is the same dimension as any other dimension of space. We are not able to go back in time in the same way as we are not able to return to the same place in space, or literally enter the same river twice – even if we get up from our chair, go to the window, and then return to the chair – we will move not in space, but in space-time And neither we nor the chair will be the same anymore! From the point of view of quantum physics, the physical fields that make up our body, and after them our consciousness, evolve according to the Schrodinger equation in the Multiverse, obeying the second law of thermodynamics, when interacting with each other, "choosing" one at a time in an effort for the greatest entropy to manifest in them as elementary particles; they They make combinations with each other that generate this particular universe of yours. The second law of thermodynamics prevents you from going "back in time", say, a second ago. You are like a gas that was released from a balloon a second ago, where it was compressed; and just as the gas is unable to return back to the balloon, you cannot return to a state of superposition with respect to your current self: the probability of this should be approximately equal to the number of elementary particles that make up your body multiplied by the number time quanta per second, that is, approximately 7x10 ²⁷ * 10 ⁴³ = 7x10 ⁷⁰. The probability, as we can see, is depressingly small, although in the infinity of universes, somewhere on the periphery of the normal distribution curve, there is one in which it has come true.

The question of how many invariants of the universe exist, and in general, whether it is finite or infinite, remains open. Theoretically, there is only a Multiverse in which all quantum states are in superposition with each other, and the number of observable universes in it depends only on the number of "observers" inside, and on their points of view. The term "observers" refers to any physical objects interacting with each other.

Moreover, according to the theories of quantum gravity being developed, spacetime itself is only a property of quantum entangled fields: the degree of entanglement of fields is equivalent to the geometry of spacetime, and their entropy is energy in the equation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (see §13 ^[7]).

***

How can knowledge about the quantum nature of the universe be applied in practice? Has evolution mastered this knowledge over billions of years of life? Or will man be the first of its offspring, who, thanks to reason, will succeed?

First of all, a person strives to create a quantum computer ^{[2, p.229]}. In a classical computer, the calculation is performed sequentially, bit by bit. We can parallelize the process by adding the number of cores to the processor. A quantum computer is inherently built to use parallel universes for computing, a huge number of them, theoretically indefinitely. Accordingly, calculations that would have been performed by a classical computer for years (for example, factoring large numbers) would have been performed almost instantly on it. The difficulty here is that, firstly, we can track the interference of only individual elementary particles, and secondly, that these particles are easily exposed to the environment, even the slightest thermal fluctuations, interact with it and lose contact with their counterparts from parallel universes (this phenomenon is called decoherence).

In fact, the Multiverse is quantum computing, which contains all the possible outcomes of everything that has ever happened and will happen, from our point of view. The problem is how to extract useful information from it without becoming part of this calculation!

As of today (2024), our most powerful quantum computer is capable of operating no more than 1,200 qubits, and performing a very limited range of tasks ^[8].

But couldn't Nature have gotten ahead of us here? Isn't our consciousness itself, and the consciousness of living beings in general, the result of quantum computing carried out by our brain? Maybe Nature has learned to bypass decoherence without using cooling to ultra–low temperatures, and the molecular machines in our cells can operate with qubits?

This question is raised, for example, by Roger Penrose in the book "Shadows of the Mind. In search of the science of consciousness" ^[9].

Penrose believes, very controversially, that our consciousness, or more precisely, "understanding", cannot be explained by the work of a classical universal Turing machine, and it is necessary to involve some "uncountable" component, which he suggests looking for at the quantum level of functioning of brain neurons. However, as critics of his book rightly point out (^[10],[11]), the consciousness of living beings is very primitive compared to the computing apparatus on which it works. A Turing calculator, whether it is built on silicon transistors or amino acid sequences, as in our case, only needs to create a model of a trained neural network, and already, through trial and error, it forms a more or less workable scheme of consciousness, from which it is not required at all to prove Godel's theorem or accurately calculate the potential incalculability of the algorithm. She is required to feed and protect the body entrusted to her, and if she has developed so much in this process that she can simultaneously cope with solving the above tasks – well, not bad, but not necessarily. Most likely, the "classical" physical apparatus is quite enough for the emergence of consciousness. However, Penrose's book does not lose its quality from this, and I will return to it more than once further.

Even more odious assumptions are made by proponents of the theory of reduction of the state vector through consciousness (see, for example, § 6.8 ^[9]). They assume that the universe we perceive arises only in the consciousness of living beings; inanimate objects, such as a stone, are constantly in a state of superposition. From some point of view, they can be understood; indeed, quantum paradoxes look as if the behavior of a quantum system directly depends on the observer; but on the other hand, the role of the "observer" may well be played by the same stone, standing in the way of the measured photon. The multidimensional interpretation of Everett is precisely designed to get rid of paradoxes by removing the phenomenon of wave function reduction itself into the category of illusions. A quantum event happens or does not happen, regardless of whether we have observed it or not – it always happens, and is always observed, only by different "us".

The most logically justified of the concepts of the direct influence of consciousness on the evolution of the state vector of the quantum world is, perhaps, the extended Everett concept proposed by Mikhail Mensky in ^[12] RCE.

Mensky does not directly identify the act of awareness by living beings with the reduction of the wave function; he takes Everett's multidimensional concept and includes the observer's consciousness in it, which, by choosing the most appropriate alternative-projection from the variety of superposition of the Multiverse specifically for this conscious subject, provides him with a vision of the classical picture of the world and the opportunity to build predictive models in it. But, in my opinion, in this context, we can talk about the fundamental property of life – reaction to the external environment, but not about consciousness – a complex process accessible only to multicellular organisms. From this point of view, Mensky is quite right – life is really able to "choose" the most suitable alternatives for it, and is forced to operate with a predictable classical world instead of a chaotic quantum one. But to identify consciousness with the act of reduction–or, in this case, with the choice of the right universe– would mean that any simple interferometer or quantum logic element, or even just a stone, has consciousness.

Moreover, I believe that our consciousness is in the most "deplorable" position among all the objects of the physical world. If a stone lying on a field does not care at all whether it is in a state of superposition in a myriad of worlds, or has just been kicked by a person passing by me in one of the universes, then it is very sad for me to realize that I cannot even observe my own superposition in any way, although I am constantly in it for in relation to myself in the "future", as I cannot observe the world in infrared light or hear ultrasounds. The paradox, however, is that only in this way – through the consciousness generated by it – the DNA replicator that makes up my body, unlike stone, can ensure its existence in a much larger number of worlds than stone. In any case, sooner or later the stone will crumble to dust; genetic information, organized and embodied in a living organism, through consciousness is able to avoid many options for destruction, before which the stone is powerless, for example, to dodge my foot, and transmit its replica to many worlds, theoretically to Infinity itself; however, for this it needs It is necessary that the alternatives to my personality fill as many possible universes as possible, in which they could calculate as many best outcomes as possible. From this point of view, our consciousness really is a "quantum" computing process, but it does not work for itself, but for a genetic replicator, thanks to which it exists. I put the word "quantum" in quotation marks here, because any process in the Multiverse can be called quantum for such reasons, but in fact, the concept of "quantum computing process" means a calculation whose result will be uniform in all universes in which it occurs, so that the observer who launched it everywhere he could get the only correct solution to his problem. This, in fact, is the basis of quantum computing. Mensky does not explain anywhere how consciousness can launch such a mechanism and use it, for some reason believing that a part of consciousness in superposition can somehow "contact" its projections in separate universes.

I would have been very impressed with such an opportunity, especially since I once started thinking about this topic, keeping something similar in mind - in fact, this essay appeared as a result of my research on this issue. Next, I will try to propose a mechanism for the interaction of biological organisms and the quantum nature of the world, somewhat more reasonable than Mensky's, and see if it has already been implemented by Nature, and if so, why in such an unobtrusive form that it does not immediately catch our eye.

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Fig.1 (Source: https://u.9111s.ru/uploads/202104/18/da4a2a50001af5471035bc0d6e4fea41.jpg )

The theme of choosing a path is deeply embedded in human culture.

Imagine that all the inscriptions have been erased from the stone in the picture above, and there is no one who could tell us where to turn. Quantum theory tells us that, in this case, if we follow a random choice, in the Multiverse we will choose all three paths at the same time, and in the end, even if two of our versions die, one will find the way to the goal, and since she is the only one who remains aware, we (she) will be sure that we We were lucky and chose the right path at the fork.

If we assume that in some way we still use quantum computing to get a predictive result in situations that are hopeless from the point of view of classical forecasting, and not to perform some kind of harmful action for us, or vice versa, to perform a useful one, then how can this be possible?

From the perspective of quantum computing, it is clear that one way or another we will have to simulate events, and for this, in any case, one of our invariants will have to go through all the paths to the end. To get a result from them means, in fact, to build a "time machine", or, more precisely, a machine for transmitting information through the Multiverse. So, we turn on a quantum randomness generator, programmed to give out 4 options for our actions. On the first signal, we go to the left, on the second – to the right, on the third signal – we go straight, and on the fourth – we stay in front of the stone, sit and wait. We have a device, let's call it a "quantum predictor" (KP), say, the same randomness generator, only with quantum particles entangled with each other inside. Having given us one of the four options, he also "divided" with us into 4, which we all kept to ourselves; when one of us finds the right path, he presses the button on his own, and the one who waited in front of the stone lights up the right light bulb, he gets up and goes this way (of course, the path will not be the same, and the twins will never be able to meet, because they are in different spacetimes, and the only connection between them is one quantum entangled qubit in their generators, but the chance that the second one will be able to avoid exactly the danger that caused them to separate, noticeably increases).

It is necessary to dwell in more detail on the physical structure of our KP, including in order to avoid confusion in terminology. It does not use the principle of "quantum teleportation", so familiar to anyone interested in quantum physics, with its famous "Alice" and "Bob", between which quantum/classical information is exchanged, and in which the theorems "On the impossibility of cloning" and "On the absence of communication", i.e. on the impossibility of instantaneous exchange of useful information (see, for example, § 5.17 ^[9]).

No, our KP should be similar to the device used in solving the Elitzur-Weidman problem "On testing bombs."

The Elitzur-Weidmann problem is well described in § 5.9 ^[9], and is applicable to any interpretation of quantum mechanics. So, you are locked in a room with two bombs. The fuses on them are extremely sensitive movable mirrors, triggered by a single photon hitting them. At the same time, one of the bombs has a faulty fuse, and the photon will simply reflect off the mirror, but the bomb will not explode. You need to determine which bomb is serviceable, and it is advisable not to die at the same time. At first glance, it is impossible to find out except at random – we can only determine the chance of staying alive as 1 to 2 by sending a photon to the fuse of one of the bombs, and either we will die or not. However, using the laws of quantum mechanics, we can increase our chances by building a device of the following type:

Fig.2 (Source: https://libcat.ru/knigi/dokumentalnye-knigi/publicistika/129390-3-yurij-lebedev-realno-li-mnogomirie.html )

We will not immediately direct the photon at the bomb detector, but first "split" it into two alternative photons using a translucent mirror (in fact, there will still be only one photon, and the law of conservation of energy will not be violated - we simply use a parallel universe in which there is a double of our photon, and its fundamental property is the ability to interfere with its counterpart from the "parallel world"). If we accidentally chose a faulty bomb for our installation, then the alter photon will reflect from its fuse as from an ordinary mirror, and will interfere "with itself" reflected from the mirror in the upper-left corner of the picture, hitting detector A and not hitting detector B, "extinguishing" itself with its alter double along the way. If we chose a serviceable bomb, then the alterphoton that left the mirror to the right will cause its explosion in one of the two universes in which our quantum action takes place, and the photon reflected to the left will have nothing to interfere with - it is equally likely to be able to get into both detector A and detector B. Therefore, if we are lucky and we find ourselves in a universe in which our bomb did not explode, but the photon was registered in detector B, we can conclude that this bomb is serviceable.

This installation based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer was built in 1994, and since then such devices have been used to visually prove the validity of the laws of quantum mechanics - naturally, no one is blown up in them, but simply photons are detected by cameras located at the site of the "bomb", the shutter of which is either opened by registering a photon, or they close it, reflecting it further ^[14].

In 2016, a solution based on electron spin manipulation was implemented, which may be more acceptable for physical use by biological systems ^[15].

So, in the example described above, not one of our two invariants who chose a bomb at random will survive in the Multiverse, but two of the three – the one who chose a non-working bomb and the one who registered the signal in the detector B. For evolution, there is a very significant gain in survival.

How can such an option be implemented, and is it implemented in nature?

Only two methods of direct use of quantum effects by living organisms are reliably known (see, for example, ^[16],[17]) – these are photosynthesis and orientation according to the Earth's magnetic field (for brevity, I will omit the description of possible quantum processes in the mechanisms of smell, etc., information about this can be found in ^[17]).

In the process of photosynthesis, a principle similar to the one discussed above is used – energy-transferring excitons using quantum branches find the shortest path to the desired molecules, and the efficiency of the photosynthetic system increases compared to if only the laws of classical physics were used.

Magnetoreception – the ability to perceive a magnetic field – involves the quantum destabilization of electrons in specialized photosensitive retinal proteins – cryptochromes – by the Earth's magnetic field: the quantum superposition of a particular electron in their molecular machines is destroyed depending on some direction of the field vector with a higher probability than with a different direction of the vector, and, for example, a pigeon sees areas The sky from one direction is illuminated with blue light brighter than the others.

The problem with the KP is that for its effective functioning, not microseconds of quantum entanglement are needed, as in the examples described above, but several full seconds, or better, minutes and even hours without decoherence of connected qubits. I suppose that this limitation can be circumvented with the help of something like a cascade of "chain reactions" in quantum molecular machines of alter-twins from neighboring universes, but what this mechanism may be, and whether it is feasible in principle, of course, I will not undertake to judge.

A simple experiment could confirm the version of the existence of a "quantum predictor" in animals.

Let's take a T-shaped maze and let 100 laboratory mice run through it one by one. The maze should be designed in such a way that the mice can in no way give preference to any of the turns based on a conscious decision - only by random choice. At one exit, the mouse would expect immediate death, at the other – encouragement (such a cruel outcome is necessary, since we assume that the mechanism of "quantum computing" is involved at the level of evolution, i.e. the more copies of the animal survive in the Multiverse and leave offspring, the better). As a result, instead of 1/2 of the probability of randomly choosing the desired output according to classical probability theory, we should ideally get 2/3 of the probability of a positive outcome if our mice use their "quantum predictor".

In the hope that I was not the first to come up with such an experiment, I went back to the Internet in search of the necessary information, but, unfortunately, it turned out that such research provides references to the field of parapsychology, and accordingly, there is very little trust in them ^[18].

Although the publications of Alvarez ^[19] and Mossbridge ^[20] on identifying reliable physiological reactions to stress a few seconds before the cause of its occurrence comply with the requirements for the methodology of scientific research, and Mossbridge even mentions possible quantum physical mechanisms of such phenomena, nevertheless criticism of their methods is also very legitimate ^[21].

A recent, most extensive and thorough study of the ability to precognition (foresight not based on any known "classical" principles) on representatives of the most evolutionarily successful species - that is, us humans - did not reveal significant deviations from the statistically random probability of simple guessing (Royal Society for Open Science: "Increasing the value of scientific research in psychological science by increasing the reliability of research reports: the transparent Psi project", 2023 ^[22]). This study, in turn, was undertaken in order to finally put an end to the controversy on the topic of another study conducted by Dr. Daryl Boehm (2011. A sense of the future: experimental evidence of abnormal retroactive effects on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality Psychology and Social Psychology ^[23]), in which he seemed to be able to record a statistically significant 53% probability of people guessing cards with basic significant images, for example, of a sexual nature, among others.

Our case is more or less answered by the same experiments with the orientation of animals by a magnetic field, for example, with a T-shaped maze and fruit flies ^[24] or classical experiments with migratory birds. In them, we are interested in control groups that, when the magnetic field was absent or suppressed, and there were no other external landmarks, became completely "blind", and their statistics did not differ from random selection – that is, they apparently did not have any additional mechanism that would allow them to make the right choice choosing a direction. Using the same examples, you can see how in practice it is not easy to carry out even such a seemingly simple experiment with mice, as I suggested – in the case of fruit flies, it turned out that they were flying not at all to a magnetic field, but to the heat generated by the windings of the coils of electromagnets used in the experiment.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that living beings, in principle, possess functioning quantum molecular machines capable of operating efficiently at room temperature and providing their owners with useful information.

Why is nature in no hurry to use KP with its seemingly significantly high efficiency? In addition to the possible complexity of physical realization, the point may be that evolution is primarily a competition between living beings (ecological competition), and in this case our version of the "quantum predictor" is not applicable.

Indeed, in our experiment, we will replace a soulless mousetrap with a live cat at one of the exits of the maze (let it be Schrodinger's cat, he is already half dead, so he doesn't care ...) If the mouse chooses this sleeve of the maze, the cat will eat it and survive, if not, he will starve to death. Now the mouse's "quantum predictor" works to choose an exit where there is no cat, and the cat, on the contrary, those universes in which the mouse chose his sleeve of the maze. As a result, we get our 1/2 probability for both, as if the "quantum predictor" was not used at all! But this is exactly what happens in real nature – a significant part of natural selection is based on the predator-prey relationship.

Theoretically, KP could have arisen in the course of evolution at about the same time when photosynthesis and magnetoreception were mastered by unicellular organisms – it could give a quick competitive advantage to its species, and all surrounding species had to either die or master it; then from now on it could remain an integral part of all multicellular organisms and be used for "predictions of "events of inanimate nature – orientation, weather forecasting and earthquakes (for another scientifically confirmed phenomenon, see, for example, "Ethology": "Potential short-term earthquake prediction using farm animal monitoring", 2020 ^[25]).

Penrose and Hameroff in ^[9] consider the possibility of functioning of a quantum biological mechanism based on the cytoskeleton of cells, inside one of its components – microtubules; the latest study of 2024 confirms the presence of high-temperature quantum effects inside these structures ^[26].

However, I repeat, I have not found direct and indisputable scientifically reliable research aimed at identifying the possible existence of an additional "sixth sense" in animals based on the mechanism of a "quantum predictor" based on the Elitzur-Weidman principle. Maybe one of the readers will help me with this.

The fact that casinos all over the world, in which people have been rolling dice or playing roulette since the beginning of history, have not yet gone bankrupt, also shows us that, at least, a person, to put it mildly, does not use his KP too effectively, if he has one. (On the other hand, lotteries and casinos exist for the money of the people playing them, and if one of them wins, then someone loses, that is, our principle of "predator-victim" is implemented, the additional advantages of all players are leveled by each other, and classical probability theory comes into play. Unfortunately, money also obeys the law of conservation of energy...)

The most effective version of an artificial "quantum predictor" implemented by scientists at the moment is described here: "Nature communications": "Interfering trajectories in experimental quantum-enhanced stochastic modeling", 2019 ^[27].

***

You might think, why did I even ask myself the question of searching for some kind of "quantum predictor", a metaphysical one that may never have existed in living nature? After all, our "universal predictor" – consciousness – perfectly copes with its duties both in our personal Universe and in the Multiverse. But whether we are able to exchange information with our invariants in the Multiverse would matter to us as self-aware beings.

If not, then all our alter variants are, in fact, monozygotic twins, connected only by a common memory up to a certain point and a common DNA. We can put an end to this, and look for ways of a purely scientific and technical way of interacting with the multiworld.

If so, then we can claim something more. In this case, our consciousness (or rather, the subconscious) becomes somewhat whiter separated from our personality, since it has to operate with information coming from many independent personalities in order to achieve the best possible winning result for as many of them as possible. If our consciousness does not become an interdimensional mind like the "quantum demon of Laplace", then at least it can use information from the most fundamental basis of existence. Following the above-mentioned Mensky, it would be nice for me as a person to be aware of such an opportunity. Imagination paints us in the Multiverse like a shoal of sardines in the sea: here one fish on the edge of the shoal noticed a shark; she pushes her neighbors aside, and the whole flock rushes away; or vice versa, someone notices the food, and the shoal rushes to her… At the same time, the fish in the center are not even aware of the reasons for their actions – they simply follow the pack instinct; we are meaningfully talking about Fate…

One could reflect on the topic of numerous religions, but they originate in the darkness of centuries, and are more connected with the so-called "cultural evolution" of human societies, which is very well described, for example, in Joseph Henrik's "The Strangest in the World. How Westerners gained psychological identity and became extremely successful" ^[28].

Gods and religions were constantly and very much changing after the patterns of the communities that gave rise to them changed each other – from the primitive communal to the post-industrial – so that some kind of permanent archetypal value could be identified in them.

However, when we talk about something that is aware, and at the same time has almost magical properties, like our hypothetical "multi-Self", we can use the terms that religions have developed in their attempts to explain the whole vast essence of the world in their own way.

With the advent of global monotheistic religions, potential immortality (souls in Christianity, Islam) and the attainment of freedom (liberation from the illusions of the wheel of samsara in Buddhism) become the priority of human aspirations.

In Christianity, the immortality of the soul means rather the immortality of the personality, and the question of which of the human personalities is worthy of immortality remains open. The identity of an innocent but unintelligent child? A reckless young man full of energy? A mature person at the age of Christ? A wise but feeble old man? If we take into account the potential myriad personalities of the average person of the Multiverse, and imagine that you have lived these lives not in parallel, but sequentially, then our "soul" can well be called virtually immortal. The only question is, would anyone in their right mind agree to such a thing?.. It rather resembles the endless wheel of samsara, the goal of which the Buddha set himself to get out of.

Is it possible for a person to realize his "multi-Self", to become a truly multidimensional being of the Multiverse? Isn't this what Christ, Buddha and other enlightened personalities meant by knowing God and the essence of things?

In the twentieth century, the religions of the "new wave" are based on such ideas, for example, the practices of Carlos Castaneda's Tansegrity. His don Juan undergoes fascinating changes from book to book following the development of scientific world cosmogony – perhaps Castaneda wrote it "from the opposite", thinking how the ideas of quantum physics could merge into the world of magic; how a person from that world could describe what he could observe through the Multiverse without knowing the language science. Castaneda and don Juan come up with their own magical language for this; their world is inhabited by otherworldly spirits, lost between the worlds of ancient magicians and modern magicians living among people, and all that is needed to become one of those for any person is to completely reject the habitual description of reality absorbed from childhood and look at the world without all its illusions. Quite reasonable advice in the spirit of Buddhism. Castaneda's ideas resonated in the souls of many readers, touched upon some archetypal basis, and therefore went beyond literary fiction and moved to the rank of religion (see, for example, ^[29]).

You can find articles on the topic "Quantum mysticism" in the Internet encyclopedia. Almost every scientist from among the founders of quantum mechanics thought about the extraordinary similarity of the new physics and some philosophical and religious teachings, and tried to build his own picture of the universe for himself.

The idea of a Multiverse could not fail to find its reflection in philosophy. As an introductory article here, I recommend the "Philosophical principle of completeness" by A. S. Karpenko ^[30].

Another work by David Deutsch – "The Beginning of infinity: explanations that change the world" ^[31] – is a good attempt to answer the question "Why?" all this is necessary for God, Nature or the Universe.

At the heart of everything is the desire of Nature to create and accumulate knowledge – new information; first, by blindly sorting through the variants of infinite universes, most of which simply self–destruct due to incompatible laws of physics in them; in "successful" universes, self-organized information arises – life in one form or another; there is a complication and replication of knowledge; evolution genes are replaced by the evolution of units of cultural knowledge – memes... A person acts only as one of the carriers of this knowledge, although the most "densely packed" one known to us at the moment. As I have already said, the Multiverse is a quantum computation of everything that has been and will be, mixed up in almost endless chaos, and for some reason the task of the universe is to extract useful information from it - knowledge.

But knowledge as a universal value is of decisive importance not only for Nature and humanity, but also for a specific person. The way a person chooses for himself in the multiplication of knowledge determines his place in this world – he can create, say, a General theory of Relativity, or simply continue his family in children – both will contribute to a single piggy bank of the Universe. It is precisely such actions that we define as good or good.

And of course, the idea of a Multiverse is vividly played out by modern media culture ^[32].