Fraser was nice enough to send me this link :
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.html
has some things that help me understand what he was saying.... however I'm still Skeptical.
This may be based on a bad understanding of probability when applied to anything beyond the realm of chance we deal with in every day life, but consider.
There is a small but existent probability that the location of a particle when its wave function collapses could be in the Andromeda galaxy rather then in our lab where we expect it. Correct?
Now, does this mean that at some point now or in the future a particle will defy the odds and show up there? or that if enough humans start walking at walls for a long enough time we will eventually pass through it? I think if we started either experiment and let it run for an infinite amount of time it still would never happen. We think it would because of an understanding of statistics, "well, its possible, so it will eventually happen". But in reality the system is biased against those outcomes.
Complex systems have a similar situation.. There may be an infinite number of complex systems out there, each with a almost infinitely high improbability of occurring EXACTLY as we would define it. Human life as it stands now would have a very high improbability of occurring, where the situation on Mars would have a higher probability. If Evolution had a direction rather than the function of dealing with environmental issues, then perhaps our probability would be higher, but its the conditions over 13 billion years that lead up to us since if the metal content of our solar system were different the environment would be different (if it was even open to life).
More simple situation, our definition of statistics says that if I flip a coin, overall I should be around the same number of times heads as tails after a sufficiently high number of flips. I could work out the statistical probability of flipping 2000 heads in a row, and it exists. But if I do it for all eternity all we are saying is there is a chance it could happen, not that if we wait long enough it WILL happen.
Final example is all the gas in the room moving to the left side and me suffocating.. Statistically possible? Sure.. Will it happen? Nope.. the system is biased against that.. I would think its unlikely that anywhere in the universe there is a vacuum created for any large size just based on random molecular movement . Its not impossible, but its also possible that it will simply never happen.. statistics be damn..
Ok.. my brain dump is done.. please point out the holes if you see it and help me understand this thing..