[FortunaMaximus]

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I must confess that I never really liked the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory -- it has always seemed very extravagant to me, seeming to introduce an infinity of parallel realities "just for the fun of it" (i.e. the math lets you interpret it that way if you want to, but it doesn't seem to care if you do it that way or not). There are quite a few physicists that typically take this point of view -- why invoke an infinite number of parallel universes if you don't have to?

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And I can see why this interpretation doesn't sit well. It's too open-ended, and a complete result would never occur. Perhaps a more defined version would occur when you realize there aren't an infinite number of worlds or universes...

But that each iteration opens new branches and casual loops which in turn become part of the overall fabric of a multiverse.

So in essence it would be a situation in where there is infinite potential for growth and branching and multi-level interactions between smaller sets of worlds.

So it isn't a question of: "Hey, we've got infinite worlds and they all connect at some point because it's infinite."

A deeper look into infinity reveals a structural complexity that seems to abide by its own physical and conceptual rules. Infinite potential is not infinity, just a bracketed finity that keeps expanding.

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The interesting thing, though, is that in my own research I ended up building a formalism (for generally covariant quantum theory) that, once complete, simultaneously has a realist interpretation and a branching structure. I certainly wasn't looking for this kind of thing -- I was mainly just trying to build something that was completely general and reproduced known physics in the known limit. But the most straightforward interpretation looks suspiciously many worldsish -- people have, in fact, commented to me that "you are saying there is physical meaning to all the branches ... you seem to get back to a many worlds version."

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Meaning is not potentiality. There aren't a infinite number of apples (yet, but there can be), but if Darwin sits under a tree long enough, he will get hit by apples quite frequently across a infinitely long span of time. It won't be the same apple, even if every data point in the scenario makes this the identical apple, removing the t factor from the scenario.

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So I'm now in a strange position of being forced to take this interpretation somewhat more seriously than I have in the past. I'd be perfectly happy if I could come up with an interpretation of my own formalism that gets rid of the parallel worlds, but I'm not sure that I can!

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It's not easy to do, is it? It's a slippery concept to try to pin down in formal logic, especially if you're trying to re-define how people think of the universe. Gave it a try above, if only because it fits in with what I've been thinking about with regards to temporal theory and infinite/finite relationships in logic. Hopefully someone can glean something out of it.