Subject: Image of Branching
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2007 15:05
From: Christoph Lehner
To:
Conversation: Image of Branching
Dear Mike,
I sent off the postcard with an image of my field of study that you asked for. It is about Everett's formulation of quantum mechanics, also known as Many-Worlds Interpretation. A striking feature of this formulation is that it takes quantum mechanics to describe a "branching" of the state of the universe into countless different states. They stand for any possible outcome of a physical process. Often this branching or splitting is understood as physical process. I have argued in my dissertation that it isn't at all. Rather, it is our perception of the one quantum mechanical state that is "split" into many different causally disconnected perspectives. The diagram represents this splitting of perspectives as the transition between different possible states of our memory, which is determined by the underlying physical processes in our brain.
Hope that helps...
Best,
Christoph