Hugh Everett, the originator of the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum physics, was a strange fellow. He left physics when Neils Bohr refused to take his ideas seriously and went into defense work where he made millions. His son Mark Everett is lead singer for the Eels. A BBC documentary, Parallel Worlds, Parellel Lives looks at father and son:
They lived in the same house for nearly 20 years and barely spoke. The first
time Mark touched his father was when he found his stiffening corpse, still in
bed and still in the suit he always wore. Mark himself, unusually for a rock
star, wears a suit on stage. A devout atheist, Hugh told his wife to throw his
ashes out with the trash, which, after keeping them for a bit in a filing
cabinet, she duly did.
Hat tip to MetaFilter.
Addendum: Here’s an interview with Mark Everett about his father.
Fascinating interview! This quote was interesting, “It makes it easier to let him off the hook for any shortcomings he had as a father, because we’re dealing with someone that’s way above in terms of how his mind works. Einstein wasn’t a great family man, either. These guys, I don’t think they should be held to subscribe to normal rules. I think that about rock stars, too.”
Do we let people off the hook for behaving irresponsibly and unethically just because they have other attributes that we subjectively find valuable? Sounds awfully arbitrary and ad hoc to me. I also thought this point was interesting for an atheist.
“Music saved my life. Without it, I’d have probably done what my sister did – gone off to meet our father in a parallel universe. The added bonus of getting patted on the back is something that I wish could have happened for my father. It only happened a little bit towards the end of his life.”
An afterlife?
It’s arbitrary since anyone can be found that values some attributes over others.
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