Comments on: Quantum Immortality Is Useless

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:23:43 +0000

I think people get confused by this when you regard yourself as some thread of consciousness living on, rather than some future state of yourself looking back. There is no thread connecting you to the past. There is only right now and your memories.

Given that your physical state can be duplicated at any point, in any simulation, or in the multiverse or an infinite universe or similar universe created after this one dies or in the past. All you need is a bit of common sense here and answer the following question:

How many universes are there? a) 0 b) 1 c) all of them, every one. Every possible mathematical state that can be described.

Well we can all agree on at least one, and I am of the opinion that everything existing is a much simpler model than one thing existing.

Regarding the teleportation machine:

a) You would look back on the memories of yourself successfully teleporting. That would be your experience.

b) Its impossible to experience being dead.

c) Can you experience being horribily maimed? Undoubtedly so – presuming your faculties are intact, but I suggest it doesnt seem very survivable for long. I suspect you would look back on that as a dream or a simulation.

When I finish building my doomsday machine we will all be able to put this to the test.

By: kurt

kurt — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:46:47 +0000

The main point is that, if there any subset of possible futures in which you are alive, your consciousness will live on, and that each of those will be the subjective self. It will be a continuous existence in which everyone around you dies, but you somehow manage to carry-on.

It would be similar to living a simulation in which you are the central star and you never die. Even if, among the multitude of possible futures for a person right now, there is only one in which that person survives over the next minute (gets nuked at home), there will be continuity from the current moment to that single future, and the person alive at the single future walking around the wreckage will remember precisely one history. The mapping is injective from the present to the future univeres. Several futures occur for each present. One of these futures is bound to feature you alive. If all possible futures from this instant feature you dead, then you’re dead. But given the virtually infinite number of possible futures, the chances are at least one features you alive.

That’s quantum immortality as I understand it.

By: Davide Pintus

Davide Pintus — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 21:20:31 +0000

No offense, but I’m fairly sure you missed the point.
The point is not that there is a 50% chance to survive, but that you are only conscious of universes where you are still alive

By: John Laurie

John Laurie — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 05:14:07 +0000

The way I see it, it all comes down to first person experience.

I have a first person perspective of being ‘me’. So any other versions of me will always have that ongoing continuing first person experience I am having now.

By default, ‘I’ can only have the first person experience of comtinuing to live and anyone having that first person experience of being me is ‘me’.

While I will see others die, I am only experiencing this in the third person.

By: Sam_Spade

Sam_Spade — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:11:32 +0000

But the probability of each branch occuring is 100%. Flip a coin – one version of you sees heads, one sees tails. Keep flipping, and the number of versions keeps multiplying. Each version invents this idea of “probabiltiy” to explain why his own history happens to be H-T-H-H-T-H, or whatever.

The real core of the weirdness — at time t+1 there are two replicas of you, each with an equally valid claim to being the real you. From an objective perspective, there’s no paradox — two people claim to be the same person. But if you’re talking about many-worlds, there is no objective perspective. And subjectively, it makes no sense at all. The best we can do is invent this idea of probability : 50% chance I’ll end up at location B, 50% at location C. It IS the best we can come up with, but it’s also wrong. The right answer is 100% B/100% C.

Arguments against quantum immortality rely on the flawed 50/50 idea. “I toss the coin, and if I end up as the version of me that dies, that’s my bad luck.” Trouble is, there’s no coin.

By: Hugh Everett

Hugh Everett — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:51:50 +0000

If B and C terminated, I mean.

By: Hugh Everett

Hugh Everett — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:50:21 +0000

That depends on probabilities. You’ll experience the teleportation branch if the probability of it succeeding is high. You would only experience the failure to transport branch if A and B terminated on re-materialisation, or somewhere in transmission.

Actually you’d experience all branches, but each branch in which you survived would have a likelihood of being experienced equal to the probability of that branch occuring.

By: Thomas Riker

Thomas Riker — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:32:46 +0000

From a quantum immortality standpoint, whenever you attempt to use a destructive teleportation machine, perhaps in an attempt to escape from the surface of a desolate planet; when the machine is engaged, you will only experience an Everett Branch where the machine somehow fails to dematerialize you. You might be horribly maimed, but the attempt will fail. An outside observer will probably observe you vanish from the surface of the planet and materialize successfully in the shiny space ship, which is why they will go ahead and leave and not bother looking for you. Better hope you packed some food, because it will be many years before they come back. In that time, the copy of you on the space ship will have screwed things up with your girlfriend. Yes, life sucks and then you can’t die.

By: Sam_Spade

Sam_Spade — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:26:59 +0000

If planet C promptly blows up upon your arrival, is that any different from the teleporter on planet C malfunctioning and not creating a copy of you? And is the teleporter malfunctioning any different from you teleporting yourself solely to planet B? Say the teleporter at A broadcasts a single signal which can be received by B and C. Whether you don’t instruct C to reconstruct a copy of you; or you do and the reconstruction process fails; or you do, the reconstruction process succeeds, and you immediately die, the result is the same — you transport a copy of yourself from A to B, which you’ve done many times in the past, and it’s always worked flawlessly.

By: Hugh Everett

Hugh Everett — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:52:56 +0000

In an MWI context, the 2 ‘yous’ are in fact composed of the same atoms. The ‘yous’ at B and C correspond to decohered copies of the ‘you’ now, which currently exists in a superposition of states. This is the foundation of MWI.

The teleportation thought experiment is a good one, and serves to put decoherence into a context which most people will understand to a greater degree than they would initially. What’s important to remember is that the ‘you’ at the starting point, A, is in a superposition of states. These superpositions of states evolve deterministically along different worldlines. Neither worldline cointains a more real ‘you’ than the ‘you’ at the starting point. There is no original version of ‘you’ to begin with. ‘You’ are a wavefunction the same as a photon, though obviously much more complex.

Again, the example of teleporting yourself to 2 different places and assuming theres a 50/50 chance of ending up at B is an excellent analogy. You end up deterministically at both B and C, but the ‘yous’ at both locations think they’ve ended up at their successive destinations quite randomly. The limitation of human consciousness is why we perceive the universe as being random when in fact it’s completely deterministic.

http://www.elea.org/Miracles/