31–40 of 67 posts
It all hinges on #2, "Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest" which is a straight-up mistaken understanding of quantum immortality. I feel embarrassed for the author. With QI, you have to actually die, there's no other way around it.
First, obligatory short story (free open access on the site below) for this entire concept. It takes things to their extreme conclusion and I liked it very much with the way it experiments with QI: https://www.tor.com/2010/08/05/divided-by-infinity/ This brings me to my second point: in relation to the death of a close family member a couple years ago from cancer. The end lasted a month and largely consisted in its l…
This is a really nice argument and I hope that Kevin and others continue to pursue it. However, I think there is a subtle flaw in the presented argument that is parallel to issues illuminated by Goedel's incompleteness theorem. The problem, I believe, is with the assertion: > 1. The many-worlds interpretation is true. > 2. Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest. > If all the previous assu…
If quantum immortality is true, and I, knowing that, step in front of a car, how is it going to prevent my bones from breaking? I remember a haunting fantasy short story about a boy in a small town who accidentally meets and becomes friends with the man who digs all of the graves. Eventually he notices that somehow, the gravedigger knows when a grave is needed before a person dies, but won't say how or who. Often it…
Your body quantum-tunnels [1]through the car and emerges un scathered on the other side. IANAP, but I believe it is technically possible although the probability is astronomically close to zero. Butif QI is true, you would experience it. It is an example of the apparently logical impossilities that the parent is referring to if I understand correctly.
[1] or fails to interact, or whatever. Again, IANAP.
First, obligatory short story (free open access on the site below) for this entire concept. It takes things to their extreme conclusion and I liked it very much with the way it experiments with QI: https://www.tor.com/2010/08/05/divided-by-infinity/ This brings me to my second point: in relation to the death of a close family member a couple years ago from cancer. The end lasted a month and largely consisted in its l…
I agree. Under QI it's possible we end up as some disembodied conscious matter in a state of eternal agony; QI only says consciousness will persist, it says nothing about quality of life.
'j/.uG}mzgP8zs_4=q|_nN'{C@EpQ}=lzSt9+'l~SmqVyusft8BGgt)K"XKcly24N1cmZg_iz\z$/pt.`P".W-CwP>w4#2%axJHATmA}xg?d%(87`wQCe3jIl^kPHQI#dp.
I think it would be just as likely for the message to say "Do the following to extend your life" as it is for the supposedly random characters above being interpreted a certain way. In this case, the characters that jump out at me immediately are JHAT, 4 consecutive uppercase ASCII letters. Googling that shows "'jhat' is a heap analysis tool that parses a Java heap dump and enables web-browsing a parsed heap dump..." which leads me to think that by switching over to being a Java programmer (I mostly code in Python/Go) that I can extend my life. So that's something worth considering.
I've been obsessed with QI ever since I first heard about it. Every time I have a small glimpse of inattention, I always like to think that my consciousness just got transposed to another reality. Sometimes it's while I'm driving my car, and it makes it all the more trippy. However, I'm not sure I understand the logic behind their reasoning. > Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest. > you…
>Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest. That formulation doesn't make sense to me. I would say it as "Consciousness can only experience realities in which it exists." Therefore you won't move into futures in which you don't exist.
See, what that statement is really trying to do is assert uniqueness of consciousness within a many-worlds quantum interpretation.
Let's set up your standard quantum deathtrap: radioactive decay triggers the release of a deadly poison. And let's make it a really nasty poison, that is incurable but is going to inflict a good solid day or two of suffering as your organs fully liquify, so we have a nice, meaty, juicy thought experiment.
So many worlds, bam, there are now two (sets of) worlds, one where the particle decayed in the specified time period and your organs are now slowly liquifying and one where you are let out of the death trap, footloose and fancy free, to live a long and happy life, or at least, longer than the you slowly stewing in their own juices.
So what happens to your consciousness?
Well, in a boring materialistic interpretation of the world and consciousness, "you" forked at the same time as the worlds divided, being an aggregate property of the atoms involved, and one of you is blissfully unaware that the other is in horrible agony, perhaps philosophically reassured that there is a version of them not suffering in another quantum universe.
Under the proposition "Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest.", the you that is slowly liquifying doesn't live the longest, so it isn't conscious. It's a p-zombie, it acts like a conscious person without the underlying "experiencing" of it.
Now, let's carry that on through some more steps.
TV shows and movies like to make it seem like the many-worlds of quantum mechanics are caused by human decisions and the ups and downs of human life. The universe where you chose to go left instead of right, the universe where Hitler's painting career took off, etc etc. But they're caused by quantum events, and there are an uncountably large number of quantum events happening every microsecond as different particles of thorium in the Earth's radioactive core "choose" to decay, let alone what's happening in Betelgeuse.
"Many" in "many-worlds" is an unbelievably large number, and you are only going to live the "longest" in one of them, which means you are a p-zombie in every other one, because your consciousness only experiences the one in which you live the longest.
Now, what are the chances anyone else lives the longest in the same quantum world as you?
Zero. Less than zero. Zero followed by so many zeros it's meaningless.
Under this assumption, everyone you have ever known, everyone you have ever talked to -- me, even -- everyone you have ever loved was a p-zombie the entire time you knew them. Your parents? P-zombies. Your mee-maw? P-zombie. Your children? P-zombies.
Which is ultimately a good thing, I suppose, because then you don't have to feel bad if they die before you, because they're just p-zombies, and you don't have to feel bad about all those times they saw you die in other quantum worlds, because it was mostly just p-zombies watching other p-zombies die.
This is a really nice argument and I hope that Kevin and others continue to pursue it. However, I think there is a subtle flaw in the presented argument that is parallel to issues illuminated by Goedel's incompleteness theorem. The problem, I believe, is with the assertion: > 1. The many-worlds interpretation is true. > 2. Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest. > If all the previous assu…
If quantum immortality is true, and I, knowing that, step in front of a car, how is it going to prevent my bones from breaking? I remember a haunting fantasy short story about a boy in a small town who accidentally meets and becomes friends with the man who digs all of the graves. Eventually he notices that somehow, the gravedigger knows when a grave is needed before a person dies, but won't say how or who. Often it…
Quantum immortality doesn't promise health. It promises consciousness.
It is in fact a horrible idea and you better damned well hope it is false, because it looks a lot less like "I'm going to live forever in at least some fraction of the multiverse and be healthy and happy!" and rather a lot more like SCP-2718 [1]. Probably without the pain in question, but certainly with your consciousness stuck in a body that is literally minimally capable of being conscious and nothing else, past the heat-death of the universe, until the point where even quantum randomness isn't enough to keep you conscious, assuming that such a point can even arrive. QI doesn't protect your mobility, your senses, your health or happiness... just your consciousness. On the plus side, "minimal consciousness" doesn't necessarily entail a great deal of awareness of time passing.
[1]: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2718 , for those not familiar with the format of the site, be sure to click the "► Play" on the bottom for the text I'm referring to. On the topic of SCP, the "End of Death" canon rather resembles your story, albeit moreso: http://www.scp-wiki.net/end-of-death-hub
I like the idea that we're all immortal from our own perspective. I don't think this article contradicts it. >Consciousness experiences the reality in which it lives the longest: Under this assumption we can change the circumstances from a punishment to a reward. Instead of a gun, imagine a doctor has information about your health. If he tells you about it and you act on the information, you will certainly live a lon…
I think of this everytime I'm in a situation where I just almost died. I don't really think it's the case but everytime it happens I update my my credences and add 0.00000000000000001% to the chances that it could be true :-)
Also, there is a way to test quantum immortality for everyone, not just yourself. Build a world-spanning doomsday machine. Give it to highly unstable, paranoid people, and distribute the ability to trigger it widely. Perhaps add in some geopolitical tensions, technical failures, ego, and military-industrial collusion. Make it really unlikely that it will remain untriggered. The longer we experience a world with such a device armed and ready, the more likely quantum immortality is true. There would be all sorts of bizarre close calls, and the world history would get more deranged by the year as timelines trigger the device and drop out, leaving progressively weirder timelines to survive.
But that would be crazy, nobody would ever build such a thing.