Christopher said:
LightningStorm said:
You started arbitrarily at the Big Bang, and yes from that point on there are a finite amount of occurrences that could have spawned from that point forward. However, that does not mean there are a finite amount of timelines. Are we saying that time started at that point?
It's not arbitrary at all. We're talking about timelines that could contain the planet Earth, the human race, the starship
Enterprise. The very premise of the discussion limits the parameters to timelines within our own universe, and timelines that diverged after the formation of the Earth and the evolution of the human race. Timelines belonging to other universes are totally irrelevant to the discussion, just as the geography of Betazed is irrelevant to a discussion of where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. They're just not included in the set of entities that are applicable to the subject. Even if they are infinite in number and quantity,
they just don't count.
Also when talking about the sheer number of timelines (even if finite) even if only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of them had an Earth with a revolution with a Vulcan and a Romulus and warp drive and everything else that makes the Mirror Universe what it is that seemingly small percentage is still quite a LARGE actual number.
Which is irrelevant. As I've already explained, the mere existence of a large number of chances does not guarantee that any given postulate will occur. That is simply not how probability works. Something like this, like whether the English language evolves the same way or whether the same two gametes combine to produce a given individual -- that's not a purely random thing like a flip of a coin. It's part of a chain of cause and effect. If an earlier stage in that chain of causality happens differently, then
nothing that follows it will occur at all.
You're saying that in an infinite number of "universes" (a term you're using in a way that conflates unrelated concepts, but never mind that), with matter and events combining in an infinite number of ways, every conceivable permutation is bound to happen. That's just not true, because
events in the universe are shaped by causality as well as by random probability. If it were purely a matter of stochastic happenstance, you might have an argument. But it isn't. Cause and effect matter too. If something is the result of a specific cause, it will
only happen in those realities that branch from that point of causation. Therefore, citing large numbers doesn't matter, because the total number of realities is irrelevant -- only the number of realities that descend from the point of causation will matter.
And the more specific you get with the details, the smaller the number of timelines becomes. Postulating a future history where humanity forms an empire is fine -- but it shouldn't logically have a Jonathan Archer and a Spock and a Ben Sisko. Because their ancestors would've led different lives, been in different places at different times, maybe not lived as long. The MU is contradictory, as I've already explained, because it's trying to postulate a profoundly similar chain of causation and a profoundly different chain of causation
at the same time. That's not something that's going to happen simply by the natural operation of statistical mechanics across the entirety of the multiverse. It's too self-contradictory. There would have to be some other factor in play, something that acts on the system to make things occur in contrast to the natural laws of probability, such as a higher intelligence artificially shaping the course of events in that universe.
