Monday, December 10, 2012

Multiverse paradox, and late payments



I’ve been having some problems with my bank and this morning I called to try to finally resolve the ongoing issues.  The automated operator was very kind and listened much more attentively than I expected, even giving me multiple option to choose from prior to placing me on hold and supplying me with some generic music that did a great job in raising my frustration and killing me softly with its tunes.

The entire robotic process has increased exponentially with each passing year, with only a few businesses plying for increased customer service through true human interaction.  I like the mechanical tones and the clipped speech as the phone call is routed from one department to another allowing me to repeat the same information over and over again, making sure I understand why I called, they are so considerate in that way.

As I was dreaming, with phone cradled between neck and shoulder, I was envisioning an alternate universe, a dream land for sure, where every phone call was promptly answered by a helpful human voice, a place where not only was I being helped with compassion but the helper had the authority to make decisions instead of practicing the verbal responses so common these days, “sorry, that’s not our policy… or sorry I’m not authorized to assist you in that manner…”

This other universe has to exist somewhere; I even took the time to research multiple universes with the delusion that somewhere, in some alternate rift of time and place there existed a perfect harmony between caller and callee (yes it’s a real word).  To my surprise there is a theory on the books called the theory of the multiverses postulating an infinite number of dimensions that embrace every possible outcome imaginable, which by the way would include unadulterated synchronization between caller and callee, where every call would end in total tranquility and satisfaction.  

Expansive multiverse theory has to include exact tonality of all things, shades of color, blades of grass, the variety of grains of sand and all their variations in size, position, color and effect with the understanding that with each molecule present and the possibility of an altered state in its infinitum, including every scenario, no matter how obscure or outlandish must exist.

Erwin Schrodinger theorized that thoughts could provide insight into the multiverse with his now famous cat experiment (they were never ever tried as far as I know; this is good news for cat lovers).  The essence of the experiment in very simplistic terms created the scenario that presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event.  Schrödinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?  In other words depending on the random event the cat could be viewed as alive or dead or both, giving some credence to the idea of a multiverse containing every possible outcome to any random or practiced action, including the perfect call to callee world.

The problem is I’m not living in a theoretical world and I still have to deal with the automated, non-responsive, techno voice, shuttling me from one department to another.  I think the reality we have here is the reality and there are no other realities to contend with nor hope for, so were stuck with the computer generated phone calls, the impersonal customer service robots and the real human jerks that fall back on predetermined protocols that provide little or no service or help,  Were basically screwed.

I would like to delve deeper into the multiverse theories and share why I do not believe but I need to make another call, the power company just sent me a final notice and I doubt very much if I can convince the interactive personal response bot that I paid the bill in another time and place….

7 comments:

  1. My blood pressure just rose a few notches by reading this. Those of us who actually remember the days of human customer service have great difficulty dealing with having to listen to a minimum of 6 choices in order to get to 6 more -- none of which address the reason we've called!

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  2. It was not my intention to cause you vascular distress, but I agree that our mental health and possibly our physical well being is effected by the attempts to lower costs at the expense of old fashioned customer service.

    Thanks for reading, i appreciate the comments

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  3. Nice blog post. What it seems to me you are talking about is fundamentally the "path integral formulation" of quantum mechanics. In order to arrive at the probability of an event happening you must consider the contributions of all possible events ...

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  4. The problem as I see it is not in the stated or expected outcome but within multi-dementional paradox of unlimited possibilities, even those that are improbable and impossible leaving no other conclusion than to discount the entire theory. If every scenario must exist than the scenario of non existence must also be true nullifying the entire theory....

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  5. It's embarrassingly obvious that I don't deserve to comment along with you Taylors....hahaha! I've missed your brains.

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  6. There is a flaw in your logic (or in your understanding of the theory). The path integral adds up contributions from all possible scenarios weighted by a factor. The weight in front of "no event" is zero, and thus, something always happens, and we are not annihilated.

    Just to point out: the path integral formulation is an alternate BUT EQUIVALENT formulation of quantum mechanics, which incidentally, is one of the most accurate theories ever developed.

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  7. The flaw in my logic may be due in part because of the faulty premise of the theory. I admit I don’t understand the depths of the multiverse theory but what ails my mind is the “no event” scenario. How can we have a non-event with no value and an equally important event with a higher score? Wouldn’t all event possibilities have an equal value and should not each event scenario be given an equal weight? If there is indeed an inequality then the randomness of those events are no longer random and the multiverse theory is then confined to the static scores of the limited minds who created them….

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