Bran As Tool Of Extrapolation, Wiki Of Westeros

[Cron]

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

Simpler, just sit there. Even ignoring the fact that everything is already traveling into the future at one second per second: Where you're sitting is on a planet, in the middle of a gravity well, which means you're accelerating, which means you're doing the exact same thing as that guy in the rocket. It may only have a tiny effect when compared to his whizzy rocke, but it's a measurable nonzero effect—in fact, big enough that our GPS satellites have to deal with it. We're all time traveling into the future right now, at very slightly different rates depending on where we are on the planet.

LOTS of stuff in your post, some I agree with (we are basically saying the same thing in places), some I disagree with, and at some points we are talking past each other as, I think, you have assumed I said some things I didn't say or imply.

But hey, here we go.

Regarding your first paragraph, above: Um, yeah I basically said that.  In fact, in addition to the gravity well we are sitting in, our planet is moving around the Sun, our solar system is moving within our galaxy, and our galaxy is moving through the universe  Also, the whole universe is expanding, or stretching, at an increasing rate..  So, yeah, there's a lot of movement already going on.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

That's not really true. General relativity inherently allows for time travel, and that was discovered very early on. The only thing recent is that the generation of physicists who grew up on Doctor Who and Star Trek have tried to work out technological ways to create time travel and then try to prove them impossible, which nobody bothered to do before them.\\

My understanding is that it is Einstein's theory of special relativity that allows time travel into the future.  Now, I'm not saying general relativity can play no role in these issues (FAR from it, in fact, since it involves space, time, and gravity, all of which are fundamental to every theory of time travel I've heard about recently), but my understanding is that special relativity is what makes time travel into the future possible.

I'm kind of surprised by your next sentence, though.  You say "the only thing recent" is a generation of scientists who grew up on Dr. Who and Star Trek???  Uh, that's not my understanding of it atl.    While I do not claim to be an expert on this stuff, the things I am talking about are not founded in science fiction (although plenty of sci-fi discusses these issues), they are based on information I have largely obtained by reading serious science articles, and by watching programs which discuss cutting edge cosmology, astrophysics, and theoretical physics such as "Through the Wormhole," "Beyond the Wormhole," "The Universe," "How the Universe Works," and "Cosmos."  The information on these shows is based in science.  They have very serious scientists on, discussing serious issues, although a lot of it is theoretical, granted. (Which I have never denied in this thread, falcotron.  I get the feeling you are trying to "prove me wrong," but my friend, all I'm doing on a lot of this stuff is talking about theories.. Take a look at my posts above.  I have made it clear numerous times that the stuff I am talking about is largely theoretical, and not proven as absolute truth, although many scientists DO believe it, which I know for a fact cuz I've heard them talk about it).

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

Not the way (I think) you're thinking, because that requires traveling faster than light (or going through an infinite gravity well), and the same theory that tells us that doing so would let you travel back in time also tells us that you can't do so in the first place.

I guarantee you there are very serious scientists working on these issues of theoretical physics who DO currently believe time travel into the past is possible (in fact, in some instances it seems to be an observable phenomenon in quantum physics already), and even claim to know ways it could be done, in theory.

Once again, though, as above, please note that I have been careful to use the words "theory" and "theoretical" many times in this discussion.  I do not claim to know absolute truth here, and I admit I am not capable of testing the theories I've heard discussed b/c (a) I don't have the background in math and physics to even fully understand it all (as I've already admitted above), and (b) even our world gov'ts don't have the resources to make practical tests of these theories, so I certainly don't claim to have the resources to test and prove them myself.   And they ARE as yet unproven, which is why, again, I've been careful to say "theory" and "theoretical" over and over, here and in prior posts above.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

That's why you need things like closed timelike curves—regions of space where the curvature is finite everywhere, and you can travel without locally ever exceeding the speed of light, but from a distant vantage point your total trip is faster than light anyway.

Your second explanation is basically the same just a sounder version of your first—if many worlds makes sense, it makes more sense with many worlds always existing than many worlds where time travel physically causes them to split.

No, my second explanation is NOT the same as the first.  In the first theory, the time traveler CREATES an alternate timeline.  In the second, it already existed.

By the way, i agree with you that the many worlds theory (as you and others call it, although I prefer "infinite multiverse") for some purposes, makes more sense than the notion that I would be creating an entire alternate reality merely by travelling back in time, but nevertheless, some theories i've seen DO claim that to be true.  For myself, however, as I've already noted, the "many worlds" theory (as you and other call it, or the "infinite multiverse," as I prefer to call it) does seem more plausible, even though it, too, has mind-bending implications (not least of which is the idea that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING we can possibly imagine (and even things we CANNOT imagine) not only CAN exist, but actually already DOES exist, somewhere, out there, in space-time)

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

There are alternate explanations that have nothing to do with many worlds, however

Sure.  I allowed for that possibility. See my prior posts above.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

The simplest one is predestination. If you take GR seriously, the entire universe is predetermined. Hodor isn't a paradox because Bran reaching back from the future always happened. Lots of time-travel stories are written this way; usually the hook is that the characters think they're changing the past only to discover their actions are actually creating exactly the events they wanted to change.

i think this idea has inherent paradoxes that cannot be resolved, most notably the all time classic 'grandfather paradox" (which I'm sure you're famiiar with, as you seem very conversant with these ideas.   For others who might be reading, though, it goes like this:  Say a man creates a time machine and goes back into the past and crosses off his own grandfather before his father was even born. Well, okay, then his father was never born, and the inventor of the time machine was never born, so how could he have built the time machine and crossed off his own grandfather in the first place?)  The sort of theory of a singular, predetermined universe does not resolve this paradox (other than, I GUESS, by basically just saying "Well, that won't happen, b/c we say it won't happen.  It's predetermined, and it just won't happen.  Trust us."), but the infinite multiverse theory DOES resolve this apparent paradox (in fact, in an infinite multiverse, it's not a paradox at all).

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

A more subtle idea is what's sometimes called the Novikov self-consistency principle. Oversimplifying a bit, even if the universe isn't predetermined, time travel only works in predestined loops. This is how a lot of Larry Niven's stories work. And this may be what GRRM intended with Hodor.

Larry Niven is fantastic, I've read some of his books (I've read hundreds of science fiction books, in fact).  But I don't like that theory, for reasons I already described above.  A complete lack of free will is not consistent with my observations of how the universe works around me, or how I interact with it.  We could get into a LONG discussion on this subject alone, but I am going to refrain.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

No, this doesn't relate to 11-dimensional theories at all. M-theory doesn't have any additional dimensions of time. And the alternate realities (if you take many worlds seriously) aren't arrayed along any of those dimensions; each one is its own 11-dimensional universe. The extra dimensions are basically just more normal space dimensions, except that they're curled up into a tiny circle. Which is cool, but hard to explain, and probably not relevant here, so I won't try unless someone asks.

Mmmm...I have admitted several times here that I am a layperson in these areas.  Having said that, reading articles about stuff like this, and watching serious videos and shows about it are sort of hobbies of mine.  I don't claim to be able to follow the math or hard core physics, but I do claim to have my ear somewhat to the ground, trying to pay attention to mainstream discussion of the issues

And my understanding is that there are a number of theories out there, and  there, and some describe an 11-dimensional multiverse which consists of ALL conceivable and inconceivable possibilities.  For example, the theory holds that every possible universe that could result from the initial starting conditions of our universe (that is, the Big Bang) exist.  Those are what I would call "conceivable" universes, cuz we are at least nominally capable of comprehending them.  And the theory also holds that there are other universes out there as well, that had different starting conditions from ours, and thus are capable of having other possibilities, many of which would literally be beyond our ability to currently comprehend, cuz many literally have different laws of nature and physics (these are what I'm calling the inconceivable universes, or possibilities)

Now, you might disagree with this, but I have seen serious videos and television programs which describe this theory, and even go through the 11 theorized dimensions one by one, describing them and describing how they interact with, and relate to, one another.

Again, this is theory, falcotron.   I have admitted that several times, and I have NO desire to get into an exchange of numerous extremely lengthy posts with you challenging me to accept your view of "reality" and/or reject any other view of "reality" which I have heard and find interesting to discuss.  This is theory.   I am not capable of convincing you that I know the ultimate nature of the infinite multiverse, I'm sure, and I'm confident you are not capable of convincing me that you are "right" and the many serious scientists I have heard speaking about this stuff are all crackpots.

So, I'm going to move on to the rest of your post here, but please know that, as far as I'm concerned, this is fun to discuss, but I can tell you right now there is going to be a limit to my participation in this.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

Of course you can actually try to treat the "pseudo-dimension" of many worlds as an actual dimension, but the simplest way to do that doesn't work at all. Of course that hasn't stopped some sci-fi from doing it (such as some Doctor Who spinoff novels and audios). But anyway, there is a cool way that might really work:

Please see my comments above.   The stuff I'm talking about goes way beyond Dr. Who and Star Trek, and is being discussed by people a lot more serious than the writers of those shows (although they are both great shows.  Personally, I tend to favor Star Trek, though.  Dr. Who CAN be excellent, and seems to have occasional runs of fantastic stuff, but then...blech, several episodes or even entire seasons that bore me.  Also, of course, some of the doctors and companions are really cool and interesting to me and others...not so much.)

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

You can reformulate general relativity with no time in it at all. There's just 4 dimensions of space, and time emerges as an approximation from the fact that there are more things that can be taken as accurate records of things that can become if you slice the universe in some directions than in others. Sorry if that's hard to understand; it's hard to explain, but if you're interested, look up Julian Barbour. Anyway, if you expand that to a 5-dimensional universe, it seems to work just as well, but that leaves you 2 dimensions that approximate time instead of 1. And there's no reason there couldn't be more records along one of those directions than the other. In which case you get a universe where you, if can travel into the "past", you can also travel into the "meta-past" to see what the universe was like before you time-traveled into the "past" and changed stuff. (Although this is one of those models that takes GR seriously, so the universe is predetermined and you're not actually changing anything, it has room in it for what looks like changing history to any reasonable observer, which is good enough.)

Well, I read all that with interest, but frankly, to my knowledge, that is not a leading theory.  But hey, once again, I am a layperson, and I admit it.  To my knowledge, the major debate in recent times is between a 10-dimensional multiverse and an 11-dimensional multiverse.  I'm not saying no other theoretical possibilities exist, but when I look into these matters, that's where the discussion seems to be.

Still though, i read what you wrote with interest (cuz these issues do interest me), and I will try to keep an open mind about that, too.  Having said that, I don't like theories based on predetermination and frankly I'm not sure why we would want to "reformulate" General Relativity.  Here is a sincere question:  Do we have some reason to believe that maybe it's flawed?  If not, why would we want to reformulate it?

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

You need general relativity, not just special relativity, to think about time travel in any interesting way.

Okay.  Not sure why you're apparently interested in ideas that "reformulate" General Relativity, then.

But yes, of course, I hear what you are saying.  As I mentioned, the elements of space, time and gravity which are so critical to theories of time travel are also incredibly critical to General Relativity too, and I have seen theories that postulate that super intense gravity can be used to travel through time, as I mentioned several posts above.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

But if you're going with many worlds, that has nothing to do with relativity; it's from quantum physics. I think Max Tegmark does a great job explaining how all the different kinds of multiverses, including this one, fit up with each other.

Also, if your "how to think in 10 dimensions" recommendation is the YouTube video and book that I think it is, it's complete nonsense. If it helps you visualize the basic idea of higher dimensions, great—use it as a scaffolding to get that visualization, and then throw away everything you think you learned along the way, because it's all misleadingly wrong. And honestly, I think Flatland and its various quasi-sequels (even if they only go up to 4 or 5 dimensions) do a better job of getting you that visualization without misleading you into thinking the rest is anything but fantasy.

Okay, cool  I respect your opinion, but like I said, I am not going to reject extensive discussion I've listened to, watched, and read about just on your say so that it's all nonsense (or as I said above, some claim that the people I've heard discuss it are all crackpots).

Frankly, falcotron, I'm not even sure how you can claim to KNOW such a thing, unless you actually do KNOW the ultimate nature of the entire universe or multiverse.  Do you claim to know such things?  Cuz as far as I'm concerned, what we are talking about is theory (as I've said many, many times in this thread, and even in this post), and they are things that many scientists on this planet are researching and debating right now.

As such, I found everything you had to say interesting, but I do not expect to convince you that I know the ultimate nature of the multiverse in this thread (indeed, I do not even claim to know that myself, much less be able to convince you), and  by the same measure, I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to convince me in this thread that you know the ultimate nature of the universe or multiverse, either.

[Zapho]

10 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

So they took a plot point out of the Harry Potter series? Well that's easily solved. Just get someone who isn't Snape to teach Bran some occlumency and we're good.

Back to the thread general, I don't think Bran is "dead." I think he's in shock and temporarily numb. Who wouldn't be after getting all of history dumped into your brain at once? There's no way he can deal with and process all of that and continue to learn and improve his powers enough to beat NK and have time for emotions too. Besides which, we must all remember that if he can't feel any emotions that means he can't feel fear and fear is the path to the ice side...er, dark side.

I think the weirwood ex machina, at least in the case of 7ep7 was a necessary result of them monkeying with the story. They took a really great anti-LF witness out of play to give Sansa a better screen story. So they have to get damning info about him from somewhere else. They've made Bran into a living encyclopedia with instant replay of all of history's major events, so why not use him to fill in the massive plot holes? I'm just annoyed that they didn't have him mention LF talking Joff into executing Ned. Of course if he had, Arya might not have let LF die so quickly.

I'm not sure that is what happened. Bran has access to all history, but he has to look it up. And then he has to make sense of it. He can still draw the wrong conclusions, as was evidenced when he thought Jon's name was Sand. Sam had to tell him that Jon's parents were married. That enabled him to look for the relevant bits there. 

8 hours ago, LucyMormont said:

This is my take too. Wyllis mental connection with the moment of his future death is what caused the damage and turns him in "Hodor". So, the ink is certainly dy, in the sense that nothing that Bran does or sees can change the past and lead to a different present.

That's my take too. It's also evidence that Bran isn't in complete control of his visions at that point. They were running from the NK and his zombies and Bran got sent into a vision when Meera said "Hold the door". He should have been more focused on the present maybe.

[Megorova]

20 hours ago, Cron said:

By the way, I've seen you around here, and I've been meaning to say I like your name. Is it Eastern European by any chance?  (I assume it's not your real name, but perhaps influenced by that geographic region, which I think is pretty cool.)  If you'd rather not say then that's fine, too, I understand.

It's not a name at all. Though in Eastern Europe there are female surnames Egorova, and male first names Egor. Both has nothing to do with my web alias. Though I already don't remember what 'Megorova' supposed to be, but it had something to do with japanese manga/comics.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

14 hours ago, Zapho said:

I'm not sure that is what happened. Bran has access to all history, but he has to look it up. And then he has to make sense of it. He can still draw the wrong conclusions, as was evidenced when he thought Jon's name was Sand. Sam had to tell him that Jon's parents were married. That enabled him to look for the relevant bits there. 

It's exactly what happened. He's got an audio-visual encyclopedia of thousands of years of history downloaded into his mind. He still has to know what to look up but the fact that files that large have been added to his brain should be enough to make him power down all unnecessary systems. Emotions 2.3 will have to wait until he's learned how to more quickly access and correctly process the information he needs. Might have to play around with search terms for example to come up with the exact solution for beating the Long Night. It's a shame the weirnet has no FAQ or Helpdesk (well it kind of did but then NK pulled the plug on Tech Support).

[Hoo]

I think he is in a coma.  The show is his dreams in a deep state.

He does not fit the storyline of the show.  He is a part of that world physically, but removed from it.

In one of the early scenes, he is warging Summer, and before he comes to a pond he hears voices of Robb, Measter Luwin, Catelyn.  I've seen you climb a thousand times, in the rain, in the wind, a thousand times, and you never fall.  The boy was always sure footed before.  Bran did not fall from that tower, he was pushed.  He hears those voices while unconscious.  And that was shown early in the show, S1 EP2 or something..  

In that dream a comet with a red tail passes over the blue skies and he sees it, signaling the return of dragons.  And Bran proclaims he is not a cripple.  He has not come to terms with it.  He does not want to live as a cripple.

While Bran is recovering, a nanny sits by his side and feeds him stories, legends, and myths of Westeros and the winter.  Those are stories he likes to hear.

Bran's story is disconnected from the rest of the show.  He lives in a separate world.  He told Sansa, I am sorry for the things that happened to you, like he feels it is his fault.  And he is coming to terms with those things.  He told Arya, a knife is wasted on a cripple.  And he is not Bran any more, he is a three-eyed raven.  Final thing is that he will not walk, but will fly away.

The previous 3ER told him, if you stay too long in those visions you will drown, you will die.  He knows he should wake up, but he does not want to.

It feels like all this should be taking place while he is in a deep coma, he is unconsciously  coming to terms with the fact he will never walk, he wants to stay in a deep coma and fly away because it is a better place.  This storyline has nothing to do with the GoT, with nanny's stories and legends.  But, Bran can see everything now, because it's all his story.

And who are we to judge him, or ask him to wake up for our selfish interests, because of our expectations of life and death, and what is good and bad.  He likes it there,  That's all that matters, and he is having a grand ole time.

[falcotron]

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

My understanding is that it is Einstein's theory of special relativity that allows time travel into the future.  Now, I'm not saying general relativity can play no role in these issues (FAR from it, in fact, since it involves space, time, and gravity, all of which are fundamental to every theory of time travel I've heard about recently), but my understanding is that special relativity is what makes time travel into the future possible.

Special relativity allows a form of time travel into the future. General relativity makes that irrelevant, because it tells us that we're all time-traveling into the future in the first place. GR also allows for time travel into the past, while SR does not.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

I'm kind of surprised by your next sentence, though.  You say "the only thing recent" is a generation of scientists who grew up on Dr. Who and Star Trek???  Uh, that's not my understanding of it atl.

Kip Thorne, for example, talks about it quite a bit. He's probably the most important person in getting other physicists to think more about time travel and other "crazy" stuff. His generation of physicists weren't interested, but the next generation were primed to think about it by Doctor Who and Star Trek. The kids who grew up watching those shows, and then started demanding harder (more realistic) science fiction as they got older, are the ones who look for theoretical technological solutions to time travel, warp drive, etc. that could actually work.

I don't know why you think the fact that you don't get ideas from sci-fi is relevant to that.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

I guarantee you there are very serious scientists working on these issues of theoretical physics who DO currently believe time travel into the past is possible (in fact, in some instances it seems to be an observable phenomenon in quantum physics already), and even claim to know ways it could be done, in theory.

Of course there are. As I said, "General relativity inherently allows for time travel, and that was discovered very early on." Physicists know that it's possible. The only thing that's changed is in recent years is that some physicists have been thinking of serious ways a truly advanced species could practically do it. You just quoted that from me above.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

No, my second explanation is NOT the same as the first.  In the first theory, the time traveler CREATES an alternate timeline.  In the second, it already existed.

I didn't say they're the same, I said the second one is a sounder version of the first. The only difference is that the first one includes an extra physical mechanism with no explanation for it and no reason to believe that it exists. Maybe it sounds like it's "less work" or something to split less often, but that misses the point—many worlds works in the first place because it's no work at all for two states to be in superposition because that's how things naturally work. If that's not how things naturally work, then you're adding some mechanism to actually duplicate the entire universe. So, the second version works for free; the first version requires a universe's worth of energy for every time travel. And I don't believe you've seen actual scientific theories that claim any such thing happens.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

The sort of theory of a singular, predetermined universe does not resolve this paradox (other than, I GUESS, by basically just saying "Well, that won't happen, b/c we say it won't happen.  It's predetermined, and it just won't happen.  Trust us.")

Yes, that's exactly what it says. It's not a matter of "trust us". If the entire universe is predestined, and there's no instances of the grandfather paradox in it, then there is no grandfather paradox. If you say "But what if I…?" the answer is "You didn't. You couldn't have." If you ask "But what about free will?" then there's the rub: there is no free will in a predestined universe.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

A complete lack of free will is not consistent with my observations of how the universe works around me

Go read Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves, which are pretty close to my own ideas, but I can't explain them nearly as well as him. There is something we observe that we call free will that definitely exists, but it works just fine in a deterministic universe. Then there's a bunch of things we attribute to free will that have nothing to do with what we observe, and the resulting concept is incoherent, and just as incompatible with an indeterministic universe as a deterministic one.

At any rate, what you think is true of the real world is not relevant to a piece of fiction. If you read a story where the author was using predestination to explain his time travel, you can't say "No, that's not how time travel works, he must have been creating a new universe each time through the loop." Well, you can, but then you're missing the point of the story. You mentioned Back to the Future—Robert Zemeckis still gets letters to this day by crazy fans insisting that BttF isn't how time travel works. Of course they're wrong. BttF is how time travel works in the BttF universe. As long as that universe is consistent enough for fiction, that's that.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

Now, you might disagree with this, but I have seen serious videos and television programs which describe this theory, and even go through the 11 theorized dimensions one by one, describing them and describing how they interact with, and relate to, one another.

No, you watched Rob Bryanton's video on imagining 10 dimensions and were misled into believing that it's actual science. It's not. Actual scientific theories about 10 or 11 dimensions are not anything like that; the only thing they have in common with Bryanton's nonsense is the number.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

Well, I read all that with interest, but frankly, to my knowledge, that is not a leading theory.  But hey, once again, I am a layperson, and I admit it.  To my knowledge, the major debate in recent times is between a 10-dimensional multiverse and an 11-dimensional multiverse.  I'm not saying no other theoretical possibilities exist, but when I look into these matters, that's where the discussion seems to be.

No, there's no debate between 10 and 11 dimensions. Everyone on the superstring train (superstrings originally seemed to require 10 or 26 dimensions) is now behind M-theory, which is 11 dimensional. All of the other alternatives, like loop quantum gravity, are fine with 4 dimensions.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

Still though, i read what you wrote with interest (cuz these issues do interest me), and I will try to keep an open mind about that, too.  Having said that, I don't like theories based on predetermination and frankly I'm not sure why we would want to "reformulate" General Relativity.  Here is a sincere question:  Do we have some reason to believe that maybe it's flawed?  If not, why would we want to reformulate it?

Let me give a simpler example: A circle is the surface containing the points a + r cos t, b + r sin t for all values of t. I can reformulate that into a condition on each point instead of a parametric equation for each point: a circle is the surface containing all points such that (x-a)^2 + (y-b)^2 - r^2 = 0.

Neither one of those are flawed; they're just different mathematical descriptions of the exact same model, and they're both useful for different purposes. And there are other parameterizations or definitions that are useful in other cases. And I can translate any of them into polar coordinates (although I don't want to try that in ASCII).

Just as I reformulated the equation of the circle to remove the "for all values of t", you can reformulate GR to remove time. Of course GR is a lot more complicated than drawing circles. It's obvious how to recover t at any point on a circle defined without it, but it's less obvious how t recover time at any point on a GR spacetime defined without it. That's what Barbour shows how to do.

All that being said, though: of course GR is flawed, and so is QFT. We know this because they're incompatible with each other. Fortunately, they're both very, very close to valid for most things we want to look at, and they're both very good models for the range they cover, but they're definitely not "right" in an absolute sense. Which is why we have M-theory and LQG and other attempts to find a better model that will cover even more of the universe and/or explain it even better.

On 9/4/2017 at 8:34 PM, Cron said:

Frankly, falcotron, I'm not even sure how you can claim to KNOW such a thing, unless you actually do KNOW the ultimate nature of the entire universe or multiverse.  Do you claim to know such things?  Cuz as far as I'm concerned, what we are talking about is theory (as I've said many, many times in this thread, and even in this post), and they are things that many scientists on this planet are researching and debating right now.

How can I know that Bryanton's video is crackpot?

First, you could just ask any physicist whether they're researching and debating Bryanton's ideas, and they'll all laugh. Well, no, most would say "Who" until you showed them the video, and then they'd laugh and say, "Ugh, that guy." If you don't know any physicists, you could go look on the Physics StackExchange, where this question was the first one that come up in a quick search.

See, you don't need to actually know the ultimate nature of the entire universe or multiverse to know when someone is talking out of his ass. The same way I know that the Flat Earth Society conspiracy theorists once I see their arguments even though I can't tell you the exact shape of the oblate spheroid we're standing on, and I know the Quantum Healing charlatans are talking out of their ass as soon as they open their mouths even though there's a whole lot I don't even begin to understand about how the body heals itself, I know that a guy who doesn't understand the difference between a Hilbert space and spacetime has nothing useful to say about quantum physics.