The Mind & Multiverse in Everything Everywhere All at Once
The possible quantum nature of the mind
Quantum Physics & Neuroscience in Everything Everywhere All at Once
In a universe that has reached peak multiverse content (if we’re being completely honest), 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is nevertheless a multidimensional masterpiece within the multiverse genre. A humorous and touching family drama with a twist on the oh-so-popular trope of parallel realities — that is, the idea of tapping into the minds of different versions of yourself across infinite universes.
If the movie’s verse-jumping plot line didn’t make your head spin, then some semi-related neuroscience research suggesting that the mind could be quantum probably will. I mean, according to quantum physics, your head is already technically spinning all the time, in the sense that the particles that make up your brain are kind of spinning… you know, like, in that weird, quantum-ish sort of way. But more on this later.
Everything Everywhere All at Once Plot Recap
If you haven’t already seen “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” then consider this a spoiler warning. Come back after you’ve watched the movie and read this. And if you’re more of a passive information consumer than an active one (no judgment here), check out my in-depth video analysis of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” on my YouTube channel.
But before we dive into the intersection of quantum physics and neuroscience — quantum brain theory — let’s recap the plot (yes, quantum brain theory is an actual real theory… I couldn’t make up this stuff even if I tried).
The plot of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” centers around Evelyn, the main character, who is intercepted by an alternate version of her husband from a parallel universe. He explains verse-jumping to her, which is a very fun way to say “jumping between universes” and involves tapping into the consciousness of an alternate version of yourself in the multiverse.
By tapping into the consciousness of their alternate selves, characters can temporarily take control of their multiverse counterpart, gaining access to all their memories and experiences. It’s also a pretty nifty way to instantly acquire any special skills they may have, like kung fu (which seems like an obvious nod to another iconic mind-bending sci-fi movie).
Characters verse-jump to neighboring universes via a Bluetooth headset device and by taking “statistically improbable actions”. These actions involve engaging in a series of wonderfully bizarre behaviors, resulting in some slapstick and very absurd comedic scenes.
Evelyn discovers this multiverse madness because she is tasked with stopping a very nihilistic version of her daughter from a parallel universe, the Alphaverse. Turns out, this version of Evelyn’s daughter from the Alphaverse was somewhat of a verse-jumping prodigy but fractured her mind across infinite universes. As a result, she experiences everything everywhere all at once.
Unsurprisingly this triggers a pretty bad case of ennui and she becomes hellbent on destroying the entire multiverse. Nevertheless, the movie has a happy ending, and eventually, everything is sorted out through the power of love. Which, yes, is a bit cliché, but overall “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is also a refreshing departure from the one-note plot lines depicted in most sci-fi films.
Quantum Physics & The Many Worlds Theory
Despite the seemingly impossible plot, the multiverse depicted in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is scientifically justified in some ways. For example, Evelyn’s parallel universe husband explains how all this is possible, saying that for every decision they make in their universe, it creates a new branching parallel universe.
Now, this idea is kind of based on the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which was developed to address the “quantum weirdness” observed in many physics experiments. Take Schrödinger’s cat, for example, a famous thought experiment you’ve probably already heard of that involves a hypothetical cat in a box that randomly administers a lethal poison.
This thought experiment is meant to demonstrate the principle of superposition, which is the idea that things can exist in multiple states at once until measured — in this case, imagine the cat is simultaneously dead AND alive until we look in the box.
As absurd as this sounds, real quantum physics experiments, such as the double-slit experiment, demonstrate similar superpositions. For instance, the double-slit experiment shows that light and matter can exist as both a wave and a particle at the same time.
But it gets even weirder still.
Subatomic particles can even become inextricably linked with each other with no causal connection, yet they can kind of “communicate” with each other instantaneously over great distances. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement, an idea that won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
The Many-Worlds theory tries to make sense of all this weirdness by suggesting that reality is one big crazy superposition and that all possible outcomes exist at the same time, each realized in its own branching parallel universe. This makes the quantum weirdness a little less weird, at least in terms of physics and math, though not necessarily less weird to our human minds.
Quantum Neuroscience
While it’s entertaining to contemplate the existence of many worlds, theoretically infinite worlds, let’s bring our discussion back to the real world — our bodies, and more importantly, our brains.
Could quantum effects also be at play here?
Like everything else in the known universe, your brain is made of atoms, which include subatomic particles subject to quantum effects. Some scientists argue that any quantum weirdness present at the subatomic level quickly dissipates at the macroscopic level due to a process called decoherence. Essentially, they claim that something as big, warm, and wet as the brain can’t possibly be a quantum system. However, quantum brain theory claims that classical physics can’t fully explain how the brain works and suggests that quantum phenomena could be at play. And there’s been some interesting research to back this up.
In an intriguing 2022 study, scientists claimed that quantum effects may be involved in brain functioning and could even help explain consciousness. Other research also hints that quantum mechanisms may be at work elsewhere in our bodies, including our sense of smell and taste. Yes, that’s right, you may have quantum taste buds. How cool is that?!
But back to the 2022 study — using a specialized MRI approach tuned to pick up protons (which are subatomic particles) in the test subjects’ brains, researchers also detected signals from the subjects’ heartbeat, which this type of MRI usually doesn’t detect. Even stranger, the correlation between the subjects’ brain activity and the heartbeat signal depended on their level of wakefulness. See, when some subjects fell asleep during the experiment, the entanglement signal seemed to decrease. The researchers believe this suggests that quantum entanglement may play some sort of role in our consciousness.
Researchers don’t fully understand why the brain and heart would be entangled, but personally, I like to think it’s because the way to someone’s heart is actually through the protons in their brain… but I digress ;)
Wild Speculation: Part I
Quantum Entanglement & Wormholes
Everything I’ve written up until now has been based on real scientific research. But in full disclosure, the rest of this post straddles the line between real science and pseudoscience, presenting wild and mostly unsubstantiated ideas about how it could actually be possible to tap into the consciousness of one’s multiverse counterpart.
So buckle up because we’re going deep into a crazy wormhole :)
Okay, we know that the Many-Worlds theory suggests the existence of the multiverse, and research shows that our brains may be entangled with our hearts. Well, what if our brains are also entangled with the brains of our multiverse counterparts?!
In my, albeit elementary, understanding of quantum entanglement, according to Big Bang cosmology (words I never thought I’d write), everything in the universe is kind of entangled. So we might assume that things are also entangled across parallel universes, even across the entire multiverse, in fact.
Alright, now we’ve established a link between our brains and our multiverse brains. But how could we send our consciousness to our multiverse counterpart to experience their life?
Well, this is where things get super kooky…
In January 2022, a team of researchers claimed they created a digital wormhole on a quantum computer and were able to send information through it. This actually aligns with the research of some well-known contemporary physicists who theorize that quantum entanglement and wormholes are essentially the same thing, just a remapping of the same phenomenon.
Still with me? Great! I’m so glad none of this sounds like crazy, convoluted nonsense yet ;)
In “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, the process of tapping into your multiverse counterpart’s consciousness involves a mysterious Bluetooth headset. Now, imagine if this headset device works by pinging the quantum entanglement linking our brains to our multiverse brains and then rejiggering the entanglement into a wormhole, thereby allowing us to shoot our consciousness through it right into the mind of our multiverse counterpart. Sounds totally plausible, right?!
Wild Speculation: Part II
Chaos Theory & Stochastic Algorithms
So, how do “statistically improbable actions,” such as the weird actions the characters take in the movie like eating ChapStick and sticking trophies where the sun don’t shine (which seems to be the secret sauce to verse jumping), play into all of this? Glad you asked.
Two words: Chaos theory.
Chaos theory proposes that even the slightest change to a complex system can result in the system becoming highly divergent from the original state. You know, like the butterfly effect. This also explains how the main character Evelyn can be an unremarkable laundromat owner in one universe and a kung fu master in a parallel universe, all due to her life decisions.
Evelyn’s multiverse husband explains that a “stochastic path algorithm” calculates which statistically improbable action to take to catapult her closer to her target universe. Stochastic algorithms are a real thing often used in computational problems to randomly search through all possible solutions for the best solution.
So, really, it’s only a small leap in logic to think that such an algorithm could also figure out which statistically improbable action to take to slingshot your consciousness to another universe. Okay, fine, I said that very facetiously, but doesn’t it kind of make intuitive sense that if your life choices created a highly divergent universe, you’ll probably have to act in a way that’s highly divergent from your norm to get closer to the target parallel universe? Like, think of it as a course correction of sorts—taking the statistically improbable action probably rearranges all the neurons and particles in your brain closer to how they’re arranged in your highly divergent multiverse brain. This, in turn, allows the “quantum entanglement wormhole remapper headset” thing to zap your consciousness right into the target universe.
Concluding Remarks
Well, that pretty much sums up my scientifically grounded but highly speculative discussion on the plausibility of tapping into your multiverse counterpart’s consciousness. I’ll spare you my philosophical waxing on some of the existential plot holes in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, namely what exactly happens to your multiverse counterpart’s consciousness while your consciousness from your original universe temporarily takes over theirs?
Surely, your head is really spinning now :)
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