Everything Everywhere All at Once or the absurdity of the existence of multiverses

We find ourselves in a time when movies are stretching our imagination, exploring the implications if our universe were not the only one but part of other universes; that is if we lived in a multiverse. We have seen this with the Marvel movies and recently with the Oscar winner for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAO). In this article, I seek to briefly explain the hypotheses (because it has not yet been proven that it actually exists) that science and philosophy have about the multiverse, as well as to reflect on two issues that EEAO proposes for human existence if we were to discover that this concept is valid: immortality and that everything is allowed.  

The concept of the multiverse: the multiple types of universes.

What makes a universe are the following elements.

A. Initial conditions (in which state it began). Ex: number of initial particles or antiparticles or degree of disorder.

B. Physical laws

C. Physical constants (or physical magnitude that remains constant). E.g., speed of light, the mass of the electron.

D. Fundamental components (elementary constituents of matter). E.g., photons and quarks.

E. Chain of occurrences or events. It depends on everything else and how they develop in space-time.

The concept of a multiverse assumes that there are different universes and possible variations in their elements. According to mathematical physicist Max Tegmark (2014), there could be up to four types of multiverses according to which elements vary.

Type 1: The part of our universe that is not visible. Physicists believe the universe expanded rapidly after the Big Bang (inflation). The expansion is faster than the speed of light, but it is possible because it expands space-time itself, which does not violate the speed limit of light (hard to explain here how this works). Our limit to travel is the speed of light, so the universe itself expands faster than we could ever reach by traveling. These other unseen parts could have had other initial conditions (change element (a), e.g., more antiparticles than particles), giving way to a universe different from ours (but with the same elements (b),(c),(d)).

Type 2: There are specific theories, such as String Theory, that point out that there are other universes that have different particles, or the constants of nature vary or dimensions of space-time (change elements (c) or (d)). This leads to universes totally different from ours.

Type 3: Many quantum worlds (changes (e), the chain of events). In quantum mechanics, objects can be in different states simultaneously. But when we see large objects, we only see that they occupy one position or state. One interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett's many-worlds interpretation, points out that, in that passage from small to large, it is not that quantum states disappear but that two or more distinct universes are created where each possible state exists itself. Thus, you have a universe where the famous Schrödinger's cat is alive and, in another, dead.

Type 4: Different mathematical laws (change (b)). Tegmark believes there are universes with different fundamental mathematical laws (e.g., other gravity laws). Everything mathematically possible exists in some other universe. For him, multiverse types 1, 2, and 3 would only be one form of infinite mathematical possibilities.

But, to make things more complex, we must add that the philosopher David Lewis (1986) postulates the existence of possible worlds. A possible world is one with spatially and temporally related objects that evolve in one way. For Lewis, there are as many possible worlds as are logically possible. Thus, there are universes identical to ours where only my hair color varies or where I live. But there are other universes where things are crazier but logically possible. These universes do not arise from type 3, where the options of an event bifurcate in other universes, but they coexist since always or when they were created.

I put these different types of universes because they are often confused in the cinema. The important thing is to note that there are different possibilities, which means there can be an even more significant number of universes.

What would the existence of the multiverse mean for human beings?

EEAO uses the ideas of type 2, and 3 multiverses and Lewis' possible worlds. If the multiverse is proven to exist (although we don't yet know what type(s) of the multiverse(s) it would be), it would totally change our very sense of existence. In my opinion, Everything Everywhere All at Once explores two implications of this (Spoiler Alert):

First, if there are different universes with different events, laws, or constants, everything we think we know about how things work becomes relative: if we believed that pigs could not fly, then in one universe they do fly. But not only do physical facts become relative, but also our moral laws. For a universe can be found where nobody respects the moral law of not killing (it is logically possible). Then, we enter a kind of maximum relativism, where nothing is constant, nothing is inevitable, and all is chaos. Everything we believe to be important is not: it exists in different universes (not something special) and, at the same time not in others (discovering that we can live without it).

The second explores the moral consequences of what is called quantum immortality or what, using the multiverse concept, I would call multiversal immortality. Quantum immortality points out that in an event where we are shot, the bullet kills us in one universe, but in another, we are saved. And so on and so forth. So, we could not die. With multiversal immortality, it would be similar: we could always find a universe where we continue to exist. Crazy. Jobu Tupaki explores this sensation, adding that nothing matters, so she builds the bagel to end her existence.

These two implications are the development of existentialism's multiversal version: existentialism was a current that wondered about the meaning of existing if we will die or if the world has no inherent meaning. This film explores the absurdity not only of the world like Albert Camus but the meaninglessness of if everything possibly existed; furthermore, it explores not the meaninglessness of death, where everything ends, but the meaninglessness of never ceasing to exist. And what is the answer? Waymond Wang seems to have a solution: even in that multitude of possibilities, we can find love or beauty, even in simple things. Yes, the world is meaningless, but we can experience love and beauty among the infinite possibilities, and they become our beacons in the chaos. They "bind" us not to infinity but to small finite, concrete things. Therefore, be kind; this is our strategy for survival.