Re: Many worlds theory of immortality

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 16:10:51 +0200

I agree with Stathis' answer to Jeanne. Another one which looks a
little bit incompatible with the one by Stathis would be: if QM is
correct no information can travel from one universe to another. So such
an hallucination can only be such a coincidence or a triviality
(whatever I think, there is a universe where ... but that lead to the
measure problem, and the fact that we cannot really *stay* in a "Harry
Potter" universe).
But what if QM is almost correct but *slightly* incorrect? Then, as
Weinberg has shown in the case where the SWE (Schroedinger Wave
Equation) is changed to be slightly non linear, it becomes possible to
travel or communicate between universes.
It is quite speculative because it makes also the second principle of
thermodynamic wrong in a large part of the multiverse, but it is not
inconsistent. I vaguely remember having read that some cosmologist
believes that they have some case for the slight non linearity of the
SWE. So ...
And what happens with comp? I would just say: open problem. Better
staying agnostic until more information and results are provided.
Of course the real problem of Jeanne's question is that we cannot give
much 3-person weight to "rare" first person narration. We can give
1-weight, but it's probably better to stay mute on this in a 3-list.

Bruno


Le 12-mai-05, à 15:25, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

> The obvious and sensible-sounding response to Jeanne's question
> whether it may be possible to access other universes through dreams or
> hallucinations is that it is not really any more credible than
> speculation that people can contact the dead, or have been kidnapped
> by aliens, or any other of the millions of weird things that so many
> seem to believe despite the total lack of supporting evidence.
> However, this response is completely wrong if MWI is correct. If I
> dream tonight that a big green monster has eaten the Sydney Opera
> House, then definitely, in some branch of the MW, a big green monster
> will eat the Sydney Opera House. Of course, this unfortunate event
> will occur even if I *don't* dream it, but I'm not saying that my
> dream caused it, only that I saw it happening. It might also be argued
> that I didn't really "receive" this information from another branch,
> but that it was just a coincidence that my dream matched the reality
> in the other branch. But seers don't see things by putting two and two
> together; they just, well, *see* them. And if I really could, godlike,
> enter at random another branch of the MW and return to this branch to
> report what I saw, how would the information provided be any different
> from my dream? The only difference I can think of is that with the
> direct method I would be more likely to visit a branch with greater
> measure, but I can probably achieve the same thing by trying not to
> think about green monsters when I go to sleep tonight.
>
> --Stathis Papaioannou
>
>> I once read an article in, I believe, Time Magazine, about the
>> relatively
>> new field of "neurotheology" which investigates what goes on in the
>> brain
>> during ecstatic states, etc. One suggestion that intrigued me was
>> that it
>> may be possible that in such a state, and I believe that
>> schizophrenics were
>> also mentioned, that the brain is malfunctioning in such a way as to
>> allow
>> it to perceive states of reality other than that which the normal
>> brain
>> would perceive. In other words, the "antenna" (brain) is picking-up
>> signals
>> that are usually beyond the scope of the normal brain. I wondered if
>> anyone
>> could comment on this, and if there was any reason to even entertain
>> the
>> thought that perhaps some people have passed through a crack in the
>> division
>> between our universe or dimension, into perhaps another? I read this
>> several years ago and wish that I could recall the details of the
>> article,
>> but I don't have it anymore.
>>
>> Jeanne
>
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Received on Thu May 12 2005 - 10:27:36 PDT

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