Creating Infinite Suffering: Lab Universes

Abstract. There is a non-trivial probability that humans or their descendants will create infinitely many new universes in a laboratory. Under weak assumptions, this would entail the creation of infinitely many sentient organisms. Many of those organisms would be small and short-lived, and their lives in the wild would often involve far more pain than happiness. Given the seriousness of suffering, I conclude that creating infinitely many universes would be infinitely bad.

Background

Some physical theories predict that it may be possible to create new, "baby" universes out of a small amount of matter. Recent technical reviews of the topic can be found in Stefano Ansoldi and Eduardo I. Guendelman, "Child Universes in the Laboratory," and Gordon McCabe, "How to Create a Universe." Popular-level introductions include the following:

• Jim Hold, "The Big Lab Experiment," Slate, 2004
• Zeeya Merali, "Create Your Own Universe," New Scientist, 2006
• Robert Krulwich, "Build Your Own Universe," NPR, 2006.

McCabe explained the concept clearly (p. 6):

Now, one of the most intriguing possibilities opened up by inflation, is the possible creation of a universe ‘in a laboratory’. Creation in a laboratory is taken to mean the creation of a physical universe, by design, using the ‘artificial’ means available to an intelligent species. It is the ability of inflation to maintain a constant energy density, in combination with a period of exponential expansion, which is the key to these laboratory creation scenarios. The idea is to use a small amount of matter in the laboratory, and induce it to undergo inflation until its volume is comparable to that of our own observable universe. The energy density of the inflating region remains constant, and because it becomes the energy density of a huge region, the inflating region acquires a huge total (non-gravitational) energy.

Indeed, one may need to have only a milligram of matter in a vacuum-like exponentially expanding state, and then the process of self-reproduction will create from this matter not one universe but infinitely many!

Another pioneer of inflation is Alan Guth, the subject of a 1987 New York Times article:

PHYSICISTS often probe the workings of nature on a cosmic scale, but Prof. Alan H. Guth and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have set themselves the ultimate research goal. They are seeking a mechanism by which humans might create a new universe from scratch.

Outrageous though such a notion may be, Dr. Guth and his collaborators are perfectly serious about their investigation. ''Ten years ago, we couldn't even have posed the question of whether a man-made universe would be possible,'' he said. ''But physics has progressed a long way since then, and today we can ask this and related questions in the real hope of finding scientifically testable answers. We are working in a new and exciting environment.''

In his 1997 book, The Inflationary Universe (pp. 268-69), Guth wrote:

To put the story in perspective, one should remember that the process of eternal inflation [postulated by the theory of the self-reproducing inflationary universe ...] leads to an exponential increase in the number of pocket universes on time scales as short as 10^-37 seconds. Since the time needed for the development of a super-advanced civilization is measured in billions of years or more, there appears to be no chance that laboratory production of universes could compete with the "natural" process of eternal inflation.

On the other hand, a child universe created in a laboratory by a super-advanced civilization would set into motion its own progression of eternal inflation. Could the super-advanced civilization find a way to enhance its efficiency? We may have to wait a few billion years to find out.

Infinite Suffering

Starting a chain of eternal inflation in the laboratory would produce infinitely many new universes. But what types of universes would emerge? Suppose we assume--as do Jaume Garriga and Alex Vilenkin in their 2001 article "Many worlds in one"--that there are only finitely many possible universe histories of a particular duration (say, 13.7 billion years, the age of our universe); call these "histories" for short. The existence of infinitely many universes needn't, in general, imply the existence of all possible histories. As Alex Vilenkin notes in his 2006 book Many Worlds in One, the sequence 1, 3, 5, 7, ... contains infinitely many integers but doesn't contain all possible integers, and one might imagine an analogous situation for universe histories (p. 114). However, because "the initial conditions at the big bang are set by random quantum processes during inflation" (p. 114), the theory of inflation does imply that lab universes would instantiate all possible histories infinitely many times.^[1] This would, of course, include infinitely many replications of the Holocaust, infinitely many acts of torture, and so on. Indeed, there would be infinitely many universes in which Hitler won World War II, as well as infinitely many universes that would be as close as physically possible to "hell on earth" (or on any other planet).

The assumption of finitely many possible histories is not really important. As long as we assume that the probability is greater than zero that suffering will emerge in a random universe, creating infinitely many universes would create infinite amounts of suffering.^[1] For negative utilitarians, this consequence is automatically infinitely terrible. For classical utilitarians, the question arises as to what the relative amounts of suffering vs. happiness would be in the new universes. Of course, the total amount of both suffering and happiness would be infinite, but one might hope still to find some meaningful way to compare their relative proportions.^[2] I'll point out some reasons for thinking that pain would significantly preponderate over pleasure.

For one thing, I think suffering far outweighs happiness right now on earth.^[3] While it's unclear whether this is true for humans, it probably is the case for the tremendous numbers of animals that live in the wild (including large numbers of small organisms that die at a very young age, since most species produce far more offspring than reach adulthood). If insects are sentient, the evidence for net suffering over happiness becomes even stronger.

Furthermore, we should be cautious of taking our own observable universe as "typical" because of anthropic considerations. We necessarily find ourselves in a world containing intelligent life (where our intelligence has allowed us partially to overcome some of the pains of ordinary existence), but there are likely many more worlds on which only low-level sentient organisms (perhaps similar to insects, other invertebrates, fish, etc.) have emerged. For what it's worth, Frank Drake estimated the fraction of planets containing life that would go on to develop intelligent life at 0.01, and modern estimates put the figure at 0.0000001 (source). And given the Fermi Paradox, this fraction is plausibly much smaller. (Of course, not all life is sentient--many planets would probably just contain unicellular microorganisms like bacteria--so the fraction of planets with intelligent life out of all those containing sentient life is considerably bigger than the fraction of planets with intelligent life out of all those merely containing life.)

Finally, it's worth considering that some of the organisms that would emerge in the new universes might endure infinite amounts of suffering, say in hell. (Even if only humans could go to hell, the new universes would contain infinitely many humans.^[1]) Thus, creating lab universes would, in that case, cause infinitely many new instances of eternal torment.

What are some non-utilitarian moral responses to lab universes? This is a good question; I invite readers to email me with their thoughts. The fact that lab universes would cause, e.g., infinitely many replications of the Holocaust (so much for "never again") would, I think, give many people pause. There's a general intuition that it's wrong to deliberately bring into existence an organism that will suffer, but it's not obligatory to create organisms that will be happy. Even if the creation of happy lives is seen as a good thing, many people believe that the ends do not justify the means. Finally, there may be religious objections to "playing God."

Nonetheless, I am afraid that potential creators of lab universes would fail to consider these concerns. They would probably view their project as "cool" or "groundbreaking" without thinking hard about the consequences that playing around with physics would have on real organisms. (In a similar way, few people reflect upon the massive amounts of expected suffering in the universe when they learn about cosmology.) I fear that, because potential universe creators would have lived generally happy lives--never having been brutally tortured, eaten alive, or slaughtered while conscious--they would be less sensitive to how bad pain can really be. In general, the lives of humans are far better than the lives of almost all other animals, so even if the would-be universe creators deferred the decision as to whether to create lab universes to the volition of humanity as a whole, that the decision might be biased against giving weight to suffering. Perhaps a friendly artificial general intelligence following the coherent extrapolated volition (CEV) of humanity would be better able to recognize this bias, but it would be very important to make sure the CEV was designed correctly in order for this to be the case. (See "Thoughts on Friendly AI.")

How Likely?

Humans or their descendants will create infinitely many laboratory universes if and only if (A) it's physically possible to do so, (B) they survive long enough to do so, and (C) some of them are motivated to carry it out. Thus, the probability that our descendants create lab universes is P(A) * P(B | A) * P(C | A and B). I assume that P(B | A) = P(B).

Here are some subjective estimates for these values. I welcome readers to send me comments on why they would choose different values. Using these estimates, I compute a probability of 0.03 that our descendants will create infinitely many new universes.

• P(A) = 0.1

  As McCabe notes in his review (p. 6), Edward Farhi and Alan Guth initially proposed universe creation using false-vacuum "bubbles." However, as they noted in their 1987 "An obstacle to creating a universe in the laboratory," creating a child universe would, under plausible assumptions, require an initial singularity. Still, they suggested, this obstacle might be overcome by quantum tunneling into an inflationary state.

  As this article explains:

  Recasting the problem to include quantum effects makes the [initial] singularity unnecessary, unfortunately, it also causes the bubble to vanish before it can expand.

  What must be realized is that including quantum mechanics in such circumstances is never straightforward. It turns out that if a different version of inflation is used, the instability vanishes. The theory of inflation used by the theoreticians is one that is based around monopoles, which are theoretical magnets with a north or a south pole but never both. Monopoles were thought to exist very early in the universe and are used to explain why our universe is not finely tuned. They are extremely heavy particles, which would, with a small extra kick, contain sufficient energy to create a vacuum bubble that is stable and large enough to experience inflation. The new universe will disconnect from our own and continue on its merry way. From our point of view, the child universe will look like a microscopic black hole that emits a bit of Hawking radiation and then vanishes.

  The magnetic-monopole approach was suggested by Nobuyuki Sakai et al. in their 2006 paper, "Is it possible to create a universe out of a monopole in the laboratory?" McCabe notes (p. 12):

  Magnetic monopoles are predicted to exist by certain unified field theories, and whilst a magnetic monopole has yet to be discovered, a collision between an electron and a positron could, in principle, create a monopole–anti-monopole pair. Monopoles have masses much greater than those of electrons and positrons, however, and the kinetic energies required to create them by such a collision are beyond the capabilities of contemporary particle accelerators. Universe creation in a laboratory therefore remains beyond current technology, but theoretically possible.

  According to New Scientist:

  Ironically, one of inflation theory's greatest successes was to explain why we have had such difficulty finding these elusive monopoles, despite theoretical predictions that they should exist all around us. Inflation argues that our visible universe grew from a quantum fluctuation so small it contained only one monopole. That particle is out there somewhere, but the odds are against our bumping into it.

  So if we aren't likely to run into a natural monopole any time soon, just how will we get our hands on one? Maybe we could make one in the lab, [Willy] Fischler concedes. Colliding an electron with a positron in a particle accelerator could, in principle, create a monopole-antimonopole pair. And, according to Sakai, we could then trigger inflation by crashing other particles onto our new monopole, adding more and more mass to it. [...]

  "I think our model is one of the most realistic for creating a universe in the lab because it uses materials that may well already be out there," Sakai says. [Eduardo] Guendelman agrees. "Ours was just a theoretical idea, but they get a similar effect using something that is predicted to exist by well-known theories," he says.

  This article includes some current opinions on the overall likelihood of the lab-universe scenario:

  Linde calls that idea [of creating lab universes] “extremely speculative” but has been known to ask, not entirely in jest, how we can be sure our universe isn’t the tinkering of a physicist from some other universe. [...]

  A paradoxical feature of inflationary theory is that a mere hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter would suffice to create an eternal, self-reproducing universe. [...]

  We have a lot of matter around. Does that mean we can create a new universe in a lab? Physicists remain divided on such bold speculations. “It is possible in principle,” says Vilenkin at Tufts. “It’s all up in the air,” says Guth at MIT. “It seems a little less likely now than it did 10 years ago. Even if it is possible, though, it’s still far from practical.” [...]

  Just because it might be theoretically possible doesn’t make it easy. Researchers would be unable to verify their experiment’s success because of the rapid separation of the new universe from our own universe.

  Still, creating a universe is not purely an academic question. The closer physicists get to figuring out how to make a universe, the more they understand our own. “It’s natural to be passive when dealing with cosmological problems,” says Linde. “The universe is a big place, existing on an utterly inhuman scale. But nevertheless we want to be active, not mere observers. If we can create a new universe, however improbable this might seem, then we should know more about it and think about its possible implications.”

  The technology to set up this ultimate experiment is still generations away. [... However,]

  The day may be approaching when physicists start debating not how our universe was created, but how to create a new one to test their predictions.

• P(B) = 0.6

  If humans don't try to create new universes anytime soon, P(B) should approximately be the probability that humans survive the next few centuries. (If humans or their descendants colonize space, their risk of extinction should fall to near zero.) Here are some estimates for the probability that humans survive the next few centuries:

  • 0.5 (Martin J. Rees, Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning. New York: Basic Books, 2003.)
  • < 0.75
  • 0.7 (John Leslie. The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction. London: Routledge, 1996.)

  Of course, there may be "publication bias" in these estimates, since presumably those authors who reach more startling conclusions will be the ones to publish books, so the actual figure might be slightly higher.

• P(C | A and B) = 0.5

  Our descendants would probably not create lab universes because of their direct usefulness. As Linde notes (p. 23):

  Leaving aside the possibility to use the universe as a universal trash compactor, we were hardly able to find any good reason to spend our time and energy for its creation. Indeed, one cannot "pump" energy from the new universe to ours, since this would contradict the energy conservation law. One cannot jump into the new universe, since at the moment of its creation it is microscopically small and extremely dense, and later it decouples from our universe. One even cannot send any information about himself to those people who will live in the new universe. If one tries, so to say, to write down something "on the surface of the universe", then, for the billions of billions years to come, the inhabitants of the new universe will live in a corner of one letter. This is a consequence of a general rule: All local properties of the universe after inflation do not depend on initial conditions at the moment of its formation. Very soon it becomes absolutely flat, homogeneous and isotropic, and any original message "imprinted" on the universe becomes unreadable.

  The only way to communicate with the inhabitants of a new universe would be to encode a message into its physical constants (p. 24).

  Despite this, I imagine that many people would have a certain fascination with the idea of creating universes. Linde remarked somewhat sarcastically, "So, what's to stop us from creating a universe in a lab? We would be like gods!" Brian Greene said in his interview with NPR, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility [of creating a universe]. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us." This author said, "I am suitably impressed that the Japanese may be willing to try this and eagerly await the results," and one of the (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) comments on that page reads, "Once they've got the Device working, I'll start up my company that sells universes to people. All the people willing to pay to have a star named after them should be willing to pay at least three times as much for full ownership of a universe!" And from the comment on the New Scientist piece: "I wanna be a god though!"

Questions for Others

I am not an expert in this subject, so I encourage others to email me with comments and corrections: <webmaster ["at"] utilitarian-essays.com>. In particular, I would like to learn more about the following.

1. Would the number of universes created in a laboratory be literally infinite within a finite amount of time? Or would the number of universes merely increase exponentially and without bound as time went on? In "Creation and structure of baby universes in monopole collisions," Arvind Borde, Mark Trodden, and Tanmay Vachaspati describe a scenario in which a baby universe pinches off its north and south poles to create two new universes, which then pinch off their own poles, etc., leading to an "eternally reproducing universe" (p. 6). Based on this, it would seem that the number of universes after the nth division would be only 2^n - 1. Perhaps the relativity of temporal order for spacelike-separated events intrudes here?

2. If the number of new universes would be strictly infinite, what would be the cardinality? Would it just be countable?

3. According to Linde (p. 9):

if chaotic inflation starts at a sufficiently large energy density, then it goes forever, creating new and new inflationary domains. These domains contain matter in all possible “phase states” (or vacuum states), corresponding to all possible minima of the effective potential and all possible types of laws of physics compatible with inflation. However, if inflation starts at a sufficiently low energy density, as is often the case with the universes produced in a laboratory, then no such diversification occurs; inflation at a relatively small energy density does not change the symmetry breaking pattern of the theory and the way of compactification of space-time. [...] Hopefully, one may [set the laws of physics in the new universes] by choosing a proper combination of temperature, pressure and external fields, which would lead to creation of the universe in a desirable phase state.

How feasible is Linde's scenario for manipulating the physical constants of the new universes? Would this be possible under other scenarios of lab-universe creation, e.g., that proposed by Sakai et al.? How much control would the creators have over the specific constants that developed? What is a plausible probability distribution for the types of universes that would emerge conditional on the creators setting constants to particular values? In regard to the last question, existing literature on probabilities of various inflationary universe histories (e.g., Gibbons and Turok, "The Measure Problem in Cosmology") may be relevant.

Pages That Link Here

"Infinite Suffering" at McCabism.

"St Andrews physicists create an artificial black-hole" at Joost Maria Vandeputte.

Footnotes

[2] One way to think about the situation is as follows. To each universe, associate its total amount of happiness minus suffering, which is some real number (or perhaps hyperreal number, if the total suffering and/or happiness of one of the universes is infinite). Take these (infinitely many) real numbers, construct a histogram, and normalize it to make it a probability density function. Classical utilitarians are interested in whether the expected value of this distribution is positive or negative.

A friend of mine raised the concern that the probability density function that we construct might depend on our ordering of the universes, similar to the way that a conditionally convergent series can be made to sum to any number depending on how we permute its terms. Alex Vilenkin brought up what (I think) is the same point as regards the frequency distribution of physical constants in various universes:

In an infinite universe, the volume factor can be defined as the fraction of volume occupied by regions of a given type. This definition, however, can lead to ambiguities. To illustrate the nature of the problem, consider the question, What fraction of all integers are odd? Even and odd integers alternate in the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ..., so you might think the answer is obviously "half." The integers, however, can be ordered in a different way. For example, we could write 1, 2, 4, 3, 6, 8, .... This sequence still includes all integers, but now each odd integer is followed by two even ones; it appears that only a third of all integers are odd. The same sort of ambiguity arises in calculations of the volume factor in models of eternal inflation. Some interesting ideas have been proposed on how to deal with this difficulty, but at present the problem is still unresolved. (Many Worlds in One, p. 216, footnote ch. 14, no. 2)

[3] It may be unclear why the amount of happiness minus suffering in our universe is relevant, since we are but one of infinitely many universes out there. The answer is that if we consider our universe a random draw from the probability density function over happiness-minus-suffering values discussed in footnote [2], then we have one data point with which to do statistical inference. For example, suppose we assume that the distribution of happiness-minus-suffering values is normal with some unknown mean and variance. Then the happiness-minus-suffering value in our universe is actually the maximum-likelihood estimate for the mean of this normal distribution (and hence for the mean happiness-minus-suffering value over all of the newly created universes--precisely the number whose sign classical utilitarians care about). A Bayesian approach would be to assume some prior distribution over the mean and update based on our data point. The shift toward the happiness-minus-suffering value of our universe would be less extreme than in the maximum-likelihood case.

As the next paragraph of the main essay points out, our universe should in fact not be considered a random draw from the set of all universes because of anthropic selection. We might instead consider ourselves a random draw from the set of all universes that contain intelligent observers, perhaps weighted based on the number of such observers in each universe.