How does the MWI of Quantum Mechanics affect your views on abortion?

Discussion in 'Abortion' started by MAYTAG, Sep 18, 2013.

  1. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    Multiple Worlds Interpretation.

    One need not accept this interpretation as reality to recognize that some of the ideas are relevant to the abortion debate.

    There need only be one world and to me, it is mind blowing to think of how the universe turns out if just one little thing goes a different direction. Personally, it was the presentation of MWI that caused me to rethink my stance on abortion. Where I was once torn between two less than ideal scenarios, I became convinced that robbing a person of his or her potential future by force was unequivocally morally wrong.

    Furthermore, I determined that the loss of future experiences is the main reason murder itself is morally wrong and that it has nothing to do with the cognitive abilities or previous experiences of the victim. Truly, the murderer only takes away his victim's potential future. And this is why the act is so detestable. Aborting a pregnancy is exactly the same as murder under this perspective.

    Remember that I am not endorsing MWI as a correct interpretation. In fact, I find it to be pure fantasy and baseless speculation. But MWI institutes many concepts that are known to be fact and it is these which I have used to explain my stance on abortion and murder in the previous paragraph. MWI is one of the most basic things you will ever learn about in physics, especially if you never receive any formal education, so very little knowledge of physics is required for this. Look it up if you are lost. I suspect most Liberals here are familiar with it, since they like to pretend they know science.
     
  2. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Is this a little like Schrödinger's cat? :smile:

    only it's not a cat... and the container is not a box...

    Imagine, the fetus could potentially be in a superposition of states!
     
  3. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    Well, MWI is a proposed solution to Schrodinger's Cat Paradox, which would solve it by positing that two separate realities were created at the instant the cat might have died. One of those would be our reality, and the other inaccessible to us, a separate universe. By opening the box, we merely determine which universe is our own. There is no superposition of states in MWI.
     
  4. Fugazi

    Fugazi New Member Past Donor

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    All well and good .. however we live in this reality which is quite enough for me.
     
  5. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Yes, but the presence of the other reality still affects our reality indirectly, or rather there exists a probabilistic correlation.

    The correlary of this, in terms of abortion, would be that the fetus did not have to be aborted, there was a potentiality, and this affects how the woman deals with things after getting the abortion.


    And the woman determines which reality will be her own. There is no going back.

    I beg to differ. The state in each world is very much intertwined with the other possible worlds. Reality is correlated to the other possible realities. There are interference effects on the phases and direction of all particles, though normally these effects are not really perceptible except in close temporal proximity to the probabilistic bifurcation being examined.

    What the woman could do, abort or not abort, both possibilities are very much dependent and related to each other. What she does if she goes down road A is very much determined by what she could have done going down road B.

    Some women who have gotten abortions purportedly can still feel the presence of their child, there child as it could have been. And similarly, some women who came close to getting an abortion, but chose the higher road instead, are still haunted at what could have been. How close they came to aborting their beloved child.
     
  6. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    Superposition of states is the proposal that two contradictory conditions may literally exist at the same place at the same time absent an observer. This concept is unrelated to the psychological phenomena you described.
     
  7. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you vehemently oppose contraceptives and birth control, right? Contraceptives prevent far more births than abortions by far - each of which incidence alters the future and all the universe. If not, you're just rationalizing a conclusion you want to reach about abortion and are entirely intellectually hypocritical.

    Of course, a birth that otherwise would not occur equally has residual effects, so your message all adds up to a big nothing at all. It's like arguing over the outcome of flipping a coin as the outcome is equally unknown.
     
  8. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It is amazing how many rationalizations that make no sense or that are inherently self contradicts that prolifers will make. More often than not they are actually making their case for outlawing birth control and contraceptives like this message does.

    Besides, the OP shouldn't have posted his message as doing so altered the fate of the universe. :smile:
     
  9. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    I would only consider a joined sperm and egg as the theoretical entity with a potential future protectable under this model.

    I don't think altering the universe is wrong. I think choosing to discard an entity's potential future is.

    - - - Updated - - -

    I am not pro-life. I support death in many instances. For revenge, for example.
     
  10. FoxHastings

    FoxHastings Well-Known Member

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    """"" I became convinced that robbing a person of his or her potential future by force was unequivocally morally wrong. """"


    So you are against FORCING women to spend 9 months pregnant ?
     
  11. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You have reduced the value of your message to absolutely nothing. You have fully discounted it and instead are just claiming you came up with new wording for ancient prolife sloganism.

    Of course, since you are just a typical prolifer, next you would explain that you REALLY don't mean "entity," you mean "human." So you also are into species prejudice, which is a contradiction as all species - indeed any event or avoidance of events - alters the future.

    So, to summary what your topic has been evolved by you to saying that your personal ideological/religious belief is that "new life begins at conception deserving protection by the government, which justifies forcing pregnant girls to have babies whether she wants to or not." When you abandoned the topic of contraceptives and birth control you betrayed your own rationalization.

    You have reduced your OP to exactly nothing as your subsequent messages recant your OP. Your logic would earn a D grade even in a high school philosophy class - and that D only because your grammar and spelling is acceptable.
     
  12. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    Certainly. But you are probably mixing up "forcing her" and "not allowing her to kill her fetus".

    To suit your characterization, and to allow for deeper discussion, I support the type of force that results from not allowing someone to kill a fetus.
     
  13. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Nicely put. The OP, like many prolife rationalizations to the conclusion they want, is inherently a self contradiction.
     
  14. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's because you believe in slavery in relation to females. Claiming this is justified by quantum mechanics is an new level of bizarre even for a prolifer.
     
  15. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You mean human fetus, right?

    Actually, to the contrary the overallness of the theory would be that it is literally impossible to prevent someone coming into existence that is supposed to. Thus an abortion is inevitable and preventing it is impossible. The future can no more be altered than the past as the future has already occurred.

    At least try to understand theories before arguing your personal ideological/religious beliefs in relation to them.
     
  16. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    I don't even accept MWI as anything but nonsense. It is merely the concept I wanted to share that heralded a change in my position.

    Quantum mechanics is far too simplistic and crude to even begin to resolve the exponentially more complex abortion debate for us! I would never boast such a thing!
     
  17. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    Your assertions do not seem to indicate the framework of the MWI. Please review the interpretation.
     
  18. FoxHastings

    FoxHastings Well-Known Member

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    Uh, not allowing her to kill the fetus IS forcing her to go through 9 months of pregnancy and then give birth.

    There is NO way around that.
     
  19. OKgrannie

    OKgrannie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Forced gestation and birth robs a young woman of her potential future. Nearly always the stress and burden of a pregnancy will cause a young woman to drop out of school, lose a scholarship, lose a job. Follow that with the stress and burden of child care, very frequently a young woman will not be able to work a job she would prefer, will not be able to continue education. Her potential future is robbed from her by force when abortion is not an option.

    Murder causes chaos in society when it is not stopped in a timely fashion. People react with fear and sometimes believe they are acting in self-defense when there is no threat. Laws in a secular society are only for the purpose of maintaining order in society, and while murder threatens disorder, abortion does not.
     
  20. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Once again, who is trying to manipulate and alter the future - including future lives - is you, with you asserting this can be done. Furthermore, preventing an abortion may then also prevent a different future life as nearly all women regulate how many children she will have.

    Thus, you are claiming you have some metaphysical insight that who you want the future forcibly altered will product a good result, when it just as equally likely to product a bad outcome. While you claim you are protecting future lives, in fact you may be more preventing future lives.

    Who wants to manipulate and alter fate or the future is you, claiming this is the right thing to do for your own personal ideology that you want forced upon others, for which you yourself are conveniently exempted from all burdens, duties and even life risk.

    As for how you explain your theory, existence and time is a 2 dimensional straight line always moving forward at a consistent rate of travel - a remarkably simplistic view of reality. Quantum mechanics has many meanings. The most common is that everything that possibly could happen regardless of time, motion and dimensionality may happen. Thus at any moment you could just fall halfway thru the floor and get stuck there or if you hit a set of pool balls 100,000 pool balls will go in every direction including thru the pool table and ceiling.

    Another application theory is that existence exists in its entirety. The past, present and future all already exist and therefore can not be altered. You may think you altered the future, but you did not. It is in an analogous sense that all of existence is like a movie on a reel. You are seemingly moving thru time as you watch the movie, but in fact the movie already exists in it's entirety and therefore the future of the movie already exists.

    Trying to make ANY decisions on theories of quantum mechanics is as provably correct as claiming person's views are based upon religion. Pointless other than what you want it to be as a belief system. Accordingly it has no value whatsoever to anyone else.

    Because you limit your application to prolife slogans, while otherwise ignoring all other applications of new life (ie contraceptives/birth control), you don't even believe your own theory. Rather, you contradict it in many ways.
     
  21. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    True. That is why there is little to no concern of murder in other countries as it does not affect us.

    A fetus has never entered our society and is entirely within the venue and jurisdiction of the woman. It is only harmful to society to the extent other people try to thrust themselves into controlling her life and intrusively out of ideological or religious zealotry.

    As for society making regulations on what it perceives is the future, ie a baby born? On that theory, society could look at low IQ people of failed lives urging forced sterilization predicting future children harmful to society. Making laws upon predicting the future is absurd and basically could be used to justify any and all controls, restraints, intrusions and even torture on anyone.
     
  22. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    One is simply not the other. It is not so. To make such an assertion is mental gymnastics a creationist would envy.
     
  23. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What a bizarre comparison.

    You just keep on pretending you're messages are anything but prolife zealotry trying to pretend you're something you're not. Keep posting messages pretending they aren't being posted by a religious rightwing prolifer if you enjoy doing so. It isn't rare for prolifers to pretend their mind isn't made up, quickly talked into being prolife, pretending they are an atheist, pretending they are a liberal etc. Since they aren't what they claim, their attempts are just goofy, make absolutely no sense, and are fundamental self contradictions.
     
  24. FoxHastings

    FoxHastings Well-Known Member

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    Would you care to tell what other option a woman has?

    Seems once a woman is pregnant there is either abortion or 9 months of pregnancy.

    What is your idea of an alternative??
     
  25. MAYTAG

    MAYTAG Active Member

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    No, there are 9 months of pregnancy. This occurs according to the laws of physics concerning embryomic development. No one is forcing it.
     

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