61–70 of 71 posts
One thing that others me about the MWI: Is the so-called "set of all possibilities" a well-defined set?
>What can you do with this power to generate worlds and selves? You could become a billionaire by playing quantum Russian roulette. Quantum suicide isn't exploitable, for reasons I went over in a thread on reddit: >One thing about these quantum immortality (or modal realism, dust theory, etc.) arguments is they imply one should expect to end up in those proportion of worlds that have the highest measure in which "you…
I agree. I think quantum immortality is real, but even if I was 100% confident, I don't see a clear way to take advantage of it beyond having a long-term outlook. If you did want to build a suicide machine, it better be perfect. If you are trying to win the lottery with say 1:10^9 odds, your machine better have less than a 1:10^18 chance of seriously injuring you but not killing you. If you are capable of building su…
The fact is, we're all already exploiting it all the time. By existing in the reality where you decide not to try quantum immortality, you open your future life up to tons of possibilities. The moment you pick up the gun to kill yourself, you already are on a path limited to "puts the gun down" "shoots self, injured but survives" and "dead". Once pulling the trigger, quantum immortality will 'save' you, with a few worlds spawned where you survive just fine, but the overwhelming chance is you'll wake up in a hospital bed with whatever's left of you.
I actually know of someone who committed suicide to explore quantum immortality. They aren't hated for it since really, you don't commit suicide because of an interesting theory, you commit suicide because you're depressed. An interesting theory may be given as the reason, but it was depression and people are really sad the person is gone. (As am I)
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I think there is a still more straightforward and robust argument against quantum immortality: The same reasoning predicts you can never fall asleep. If futures where you are not conscious are inaccessible by the anthropic principle, then dreamless sleep cannot be in your future. Most sleep is dreamless. At 4:00am this morning I will almost certainly be in this state. But being unconscious is not an experience I can…
I don't think that's accurate. The many worlds interpretation is fundamentally an interpretation of something unobservable; if there were a way for you to observe it (by noticing you haven't been able to sleep) and 'report back' to all/most universes, it wouldn't be an interpretation anymore. (If you did a quantum suicide experiment, you might be able to 'report back' to the subset of universes where you still exist,…
- If the universe splits with each measurement (or interaction), then every possible outcome does occur
- Therefore nothing could be predicted based on probabilities, and that proves MWI is wrong
This seems to have a few logical errors:
Just because everything that can happen does, in MWI, happen in at least one universe, that doesn't mean that the probability of each outcome is identical.
Probabilities still apply: higher probability outcomes mean that one is more likely to find one's self in a universe in which that outcome takes place.
In this way of describing things, it's still a very low (but non-zero!) probability that all the air in your room will move to the corner, leaving you to suffocate in a vacuum. But the way we state it would be, "it's a very low probability that you will find yourself in one of the universes in which this happens".
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>One consciousness is simply extinguished forever. The other continues. If there is one instance of a widely-distributed program installed on a particular computer, and the instance of the program on that particular computer is deleted, but the program continues to exist in identical form on many other computers, then the program continues to exist in spite of the fact that one of its instances has been deleted. If c…
For any of this to have meaning, you need to define what "consciousness" even is. I'm not aware of any definition that is not hopelessly metaphysical.
The stuff itself is hopelessly metaphysical, the only good way I know to define is the above: since you have are consciousness, its easy enough to just say 'look around'. Its difficult to think of any material definition when there's not much of an understanding of how it relates to anything material. Obviously the images you see are dictated by physical rods and cones in the eyes, but what the hell are colors?
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I agree. I think quantum immortality is real, but even if I was 100% confident, I don't see a clear way to take advantage of it beyond having a long-term outlook. If you did want to build a suicide machine, it better be perfect. If you are trying to win the lottery with say 1:10^9 odds, your machine better have less than a 1:10^18 chance of seriously injuring you but not killing you. If you are capable of building su…
This so much! The fact is, we're all already exploiting it all the time. By existing in the reality where you decide not to try quantum immortality, you open your future life up to tons of possibilities. The moment you pick up the gun to kill yourself, you already are on a path limited to "puts the gun down" "shoots self, injured but survives" and "dead". Once pulling the trigger, quantum immortality will 'save' you,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's accurate. The many worlds interpretation is fundamentally an interpretation of something unobservable; if there were a way for you to observe it (by noticing you haven't been able to sleep) and 'report back' to all/most universes, it wouldn't be an interpretation anymore. (If you did a quantum suicide experiment, you might be able to 'report back' to the subset of universes where you still exist,…
One day when we're able to use quantum technology to clone ourselves, we'll be able to test the theory. You split your consciousness into 1000 clones of yourself and kill 999 of them, do "you" always seem to end up in the one that survived?
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For any of this to have meaning, you need to define what "consciousness" even is. I'm not aware of any definition that is not hopelessly metaphysical.
The continued experience that you exist. You literally have never known anything else, only the representations which consciousness allows. The stuff itself is hopelessly metaphysical, the only good way I know to define is the above: since you have are consciousness, its easy enough to just say 'look around'. Its difficult to think of any material definition when there's not much of an understanding of how it relates…
Right, but that's what makes it so meaningless. We generally define things by specifying how they're different from other things. But you can't do it with consciousness, because you can't really know what the absence of consciousness is like. And if you can't do that, the definition of consciousness becomes null - and nothing meaningful can be derived from it.
With colors, at least, you can define different ones in terms of different sensations - red is not-green etc. And because they're derived from observation of phenomena, you can compare notes with other people to make sure that what you consider red is also what they consider red etc - it's not a perfect system, but it's "good enough". I don't think we have anything even remotely resembling such a "good enough" definition of consciousness, though.
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One day when we're able to use quantum technology to clone ourselves, we'll be able to test the theory. You split your consciousness into 1000 clones of yourself and kill 999 of them, do "you" always seem to end up in the one that survived?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem