From what I’ve read, according to the Many Worlds theory, every time I make a choice, a new universe springs into being in which I make a different choice. But what constitutes a choice? Does it have to be a conscious, binary choice? For example, there are a large number (infinite?) of things I’m NOT doing right now, including running around my workplace naked except for clown makeup. Does that mean that there’s a universe in which I am doing that? And am I just getting lucky to keep ending up in the universe in which I’m behaving well? Or does the theory only apply when I have to actually consider what to do next? (Until now I’ve never considered running around naked at work with clown paint on).
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Many Worlds has nothing to do with choices or consciousness or willpower or anything human.
In order to get normal, classical mechanics out of quantum mechanics, you need something called wavefunction collapse – in effect, a particle whose state was uncertain has (some part of) its state become certain upon measurement, with the result of the measurement reflecting that certain state. This is weird, because why would a fuzzy smeared-out thing suddenly become sharp when measured?
Many Worlds just says that it doesn’t – that, in fact, the world we see with definite states is just one possible state of us along with the rest of the Universe and that, like a particle whose position is uncertain, the Universe is in fact a smeared out combination of every such possible timeline. There are many yous in the same way that an electron can be in a mixture of different orbitals in an atom.
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