Have you ever wondered how different your life might have been if it were not for that "one seminal moment"? That one moment in your life that determined what some may call destiny. It's happened to all of us. The challenge is to recognize it for what it was.

Mine occurred way back in 1956. One evening in August I was happily wandering through the carnival area at the local county fair. Not a care in the world. As I walked by the Ferris wheel a girl approached me and asked me if I'd like to ride the wheel with her. She said she'd come to the fair with her girlfriend and after she had purchased two tickets her girlfriend didn't want to go. As she was a good-looking babe in tight capris I said "sure". She was 12 years old and I was 14. Now we've been married for 55 years.

I've often wondered what life would have been like had I not gone to the fair that Wednesday night. And walked by the Ferris wheel.

8 minutes ago, W2DR said:

I've often wondered what life would have been like had I not gone to the fair that Wednesday night. And walked by the Ferris wheel.

You would have met someone else, and your life would have been different 🙂

I believe Rousseau said:  "Most men are destined to live in their wives' houses" 

My wife actually designed the house we live in, so I can attest to the truth of that saying..

Edited December 28, 20205 yr by Bert Pieke

Indeed, and there isn't just "one" moment. In reality there are an almost infinite number or moments. As Burt said, if circumstances had been different you wouldn't have met your lovely wife, and you would be saying the same of another (hopefully) wonderful wife. In fact there are a countless number of events in our lives that take us on a particular path. In fact every minute of every day sends us on a particular path. 

Simply choosing to read the Times instead of the Mail, or go to Tesco instead of Waitrose, or pick a blue jumper instead of brown, or take a short cut or not, or even minor seemingly unimportant daily actions send us in a whole new direction. 

The above is why time travel paradox's are theorised. Just treading on a blade of grass in the past would in theory cause a cascade of events that would radically impact the future.

In fact if the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics is correct, then every minute action we take creates an another universe. 

Sorry, I got carried away. 🙂 

Edited December 28, 20205 yr by martin-w

3 minutes ago, martin-w said:

In fact if the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics is correct, then every minute action we take creates an another universe. 

Over the course of time, then there must be vastly more than a googolplex x googolplex of universes. Maybe even more than "Graham's  number". I suspect though that the correct number would be "TREE(3)" or in ordinal form:  2↑↑1000

There's also something that can be called a "defining moment" in your life.  It changes everything, and one wonders what your life would be like without that moment. 

 Mine occurred when I was first married, and we had very little money.  Checking out at a grocery store, we found that we were about $2.00 short to pay our bill.  My new wife picked up a can of hairspray and took it off the counter.  She decided she didn't need it that bad. I felt very bad for being unable to provide enough for the bill.   Well, THAT was my defining moment... and I was determined to never let something like that ever happen again.  

Well, that never did ever happen again. I went on from my teaching job (English teacher) and moved into sales.  Eventually, I owned the company, and after 32 years, sold the company at a marvelous profit, retired, and we will be celebrating 52 years of marriage this August.  I have been very fortunate in my career and that one moment (that still brings a tear to my eye) was so "defining" that it changed my thinking back then and became the greatest catalyst to a very happy and satisfying life.

Who knows what would have happened if that moment didn't hit me so very hard!  

Stan

There are many forks in the road of life and we wonder how our life would have been changed had we taken the other road.  Some of them are vague.  Others not so.  And some you remember for life.

Mine was when I was a young airman stationed at Selfridge AFB in Michigan.  I had just joined the Air Force after a year of civilian life after I had served four years in the Marine Corps.

I had taken and passed the test for Officer Candidate School (OCS) and was waiting for a class date.

One of the people in my squadron had just received orders to go to Japan.  He was about to be married and didn't want to go.  I had such a good time in Japan when I was in the Marines I volunteered to go in his place.  We went to personnel and I signed  letter withdrawing my application for OCS and I was on my way to Japan again.

I often thing what would have happened if I had become an officer.  Who would I have married?  Where would I have gone?  What kind of job(s) would I have had?

As my life turned out I had no regrets.  And as any commissioned officer can tell you senior and chief master sergeants have some powers and authorities they can only dream of having; especially those where the colonel says, "Do what you have to do sergeant, just don't tell me about it."

Noel

Defining moment.... attending the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Brunel University (April 1970).

That changed my life 😉

2 hours ago, n4gix said:

Over the course of time, then there must be vastly more than a googolplex x googolplex of universes. Maybe even more than "Graham's  number". I suspect though that the correct number would be "TREE(3)" or in ordinal form:  2↑↑1000

 

In Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation there would be perhaps an infinite number of universes.

 

Quote

  The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are very many universes, perhaps infinitely many.^[11] It is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy. MWI views time as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised. This is intended to resolve some paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox^{[5]:462[2]:118} and Schrödinger's cat,^[1] since every possible outcome of a quantum event exists in its own universe.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III

Many Worlds is what happens when you take quantum theory on face value and don't invent  wavefunction collapse to explain away the stuff that weirds us out. In Many Worlds, there is just one wavefunction, the wavefunction for the entire universe, that doesn't collapse. One gigantic universe wide wavefunction. That wavefunction contains within it all possible realities. 

 

I tried to take a Great Courses course in quantum mechanics a few years back.  When they got to the part where a single object can exists in two separate places at the same time I took the disk out of the computer and put it on a shelf where it resides to this day.

Noel

There' a Great Courses channel on Amazon Prime. Usually about 24 half hour lectures. The historical King Arthur. History of Rome I and II. And about 100 other courses, arts and sciences. About $7 per month to use as many courses as you want for a month.

The Great Courses are truly great.  I've taken well over a dozen over the years, all ancient history; from the land between the rivers to the fall of the Roman Empire.  I highly recommend them.

Noel

Hang in there Noel. Dig a little deeper and it gets even stranger. This morning, you probably chose which shirt to wear and what to eat for breakfast. But according to the many worlds idea, there is another world where you made different choices. A particle can also exist in many places at the same time, not just two. Perhaps an infinite number. So, given an infinite number of universes, I hope you own a lot of different shirts and don't mind eating the same thing for breakfast occasionally.  🙂

BTW: You're a documentary-loving  guy. Do you know about CuriosityStream? It's $20/year (first year is $12) and there's a lot of good stuff to stream there.   https://curiositystream.com/

PS: To see what they have to offer go all the way to the bottom of the webpage. There is a link there which will show you everything on the site by category.

 

Edited December 29, 20205 yr by W2DR
kant spel

Actually I wear the same shirt for three or four days.  I don't go anywhere or do anything strenuous anymore so why change?  I have seven breakfast menus for myself ranging from scrambled eggs and bacon to a waffle and sausage patty to a poached egg on toast to an egg McMuffin.  I'm pretty predictable anymore.

I don't really buy into that millions of universes stuff.  I have a hard enough time coping with the one I'm in to bother about all the others.  They aren't interactive are they?  If Noel picks a red shirt in the universe he's in do the millions of other Noel's also pick out a red shirt?  And what about wives?  If there are a million Noel's in a million universes is he married to the same Betty in all the others?  Can Noel die in a dozen universes and remain alive in a hundred more?

If I am going to crank up P3Dv5 and fly from Ogden Utah to Jackson Wyoming in one universe and am I going to fly from Edinburgh Scotland to Paris France in another?

It can boggle the mind.

Noel

What a wonderful thread. I never really thought about my life in terms of "defining moments", but this thread encouraged me to do so. The one that jumps out is the meeting with my guidance counselor in high school my junior year. I was thinking in terms of the local college to study mathematics, with no real goal in mind for a profession, simply due to the fact that I was completely clueless on fields of endeavor, or professions. He strongly encouraged me to consider aiming higher to a renowned university and a specific professional concentration. I did as he advised, and the rest is the story of my life and career. My life was changed and shaped in a one hour meeting with my guidance counselor. There should be a special reward for people in that profession.

Rick

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

A particle can also exist in many places at the same time, not just two. Perhaps an infinite number. So, given an infinite number of universes, I hope you own a lot of different shirts and don't mind eating the same thing for breakfast occasionally.  🙂

 

 

The particles that exist in another universe though (as described by MWI) are causally disconnected from our universe. Completely separate from our universe. So not the same particle. we can never interact with them. So not the same as two particles being in the same place In OUR universe.

And in fact, the statement that two particles can be in the same place is misleading. Misleading because a particle can only ever be detected in ONE place. However, particles can behave as waves and point like particles. So essentially, while the particle is behaving like a wave, its everywhere simultaneously, so spread out, like ripples in a pond. However, if you attempt to measure it, you disrupt its wave like nature and it takes on a definite point in space. 

The other point of course, is that particles aren't really little round balls like you see in the text books. In reality they are excitations, or wobbles,  in a field. The photon is an excitation in the electromagnetic field, and an electron is a excitation in the electric field, and a quark in an excitation in the quark field. Then we have the famous Higgs Boson which is an excitation in the Higgs field. Quantum Field Theory!