Totalitarian principle

In quantum mechanics, the totalitarian principle states: "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." Physicists including Murray Gell-Mann borrowed this expression, and its satirical reference to totalitarianism, from the popular culture of the early twentieth century.

The statement is in reference to a surprising feature of particle interactions: that any interaction that is not forbidden by a small number of simple conservation laws is not only allowed, but must be included in the sum over all "paths" that contribute to the outcome of the interaction. Hence if it is not forbidden, there is some probability amplitude for it to happen.

In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the principle has a more literal meaning: that every possibility at every interaction that is not forbidden by such a conservation law will actually happen (in some branch of the wave function).


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