William Vandenberghe writes:
> I have been reading up on this subject a little bit and about the
> quantum immortality, I believe it is a common misconception that this
> means you will never die; if all future branches involve your death,
> then you will die ... Quantum immortality does not imply that you can
> dodge every bullet and that the "you of today" will still live
> tomorrow, although the "you of yesterday" could still live tomorrow
> whilst the "you of today" does not.
The key is "if all future branches involve your death". The idea of multiverse
theories (MWI of QM and others of which this is a subset) is that there will
always be a branch in which you survive.
Also, what do you mean by "you of today/yesterday/tomorow"? Of course
the you of today will die, in a single world cosmology as wel as in a multiverse.
You-today are a collection of matter in a specific spacetime configuration.
All that survival as commonly understood entails is that tomorow there be a
collection of matter in a similar enough configuration to give its owner the
impression of continuity of identity. It doesn't have to be the "same" matter
any more than your reading of this email has to be the "same" electrons that
are leaving my computer as I write this. In fact, almost all the matter in your
body (including your brain) today will be replaced within a few months.
> Also I personally do not believe ASSA favours a MWI interpretation of
> quantum mechanics over a deterministic one because a "single MWI
> universe" will be less probable than a "single deterministic universe".
> But it might favour MWI over Copenhagen interpretation.
What do you mean? The MWI is perfectly deterministic from a 3rd person
perspective, although it is probabilistic the same as CI for anyone embedded
in a single world.
> If the universe splits into 2 universes each second; I do not
> necissarily see an issue as explained by Stathis Papaioannou in his
> post. And it is even a fact that you are more probable to live in the
> year 2000 than in the year 1000 because the human population has grown;
> but once we go to infinities, the same approach might not work anymore
> (although I am still debating about this myself) ...
>
> Anyway, I do not believe that MWI favours later moments in time over
> earlier moments in time. Although the number of universes increases,
> their individual probability decreases, keeping the total probability
> equal (although relativity might complicate a more rigorous approach).
> A simple way of picturing this, would be that at the big bang; the
> universe is 1 piece of paper, and from then on, every second, the
> piece(s) of paper is cut in half; giving 1, 2, 4, 8, ... universes. The
> total area of paper remains the same and all the pieces get smaller all
> the time, this means that the chance of being in a particular universe
> as the universe splitting progresses, even decreases :).
That is actually a more common criticism of the QTI: although there may be
"more" copies of you in future due to the splitting, these copies have lower
measurewithin their time period. However, even if your next conscious moment
is contained in a single copy in the continuum, I see no reason why you should
not experience that copy, because I see no reason why I should suddenly lose
consciousness should God suddenly decide to amplify the not-me universe
aleph-whatever times reducing my measure to zero. I can't be certain about this,
but no-one has ben able to convince me that I would experience anything strange
if my measure were to increase or decrease.
Stathis Papaioanou
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Received on Sat Jan 20 2007 - 22:42:13 PST