I cooked up a little program that displays the relative measure of
observer-moments as a rather unfortunate person attempts to cross a couple
bridges. It avoids one problem in that the person suffers from short-term
memory loss and so convergent observer-moments cause increased measure where
they usually would not. It's a start nevertheless.
Information and images are available here:
http://www.kwinter.ca/d/mwi/
If anyone can point me to more well developed methodology, I'd appreciate
it.
Thanks
Below is the text from the demonstration:
June 10, 2005
The purpose of this demonstration is to evaluate every possible sequence of
observer moments (OMs) where a person survives a life or death situation.
This is very similar to the Quantum Suicide thought experiment, however
instead of considering 50/50 chances of being killed by gunshot, a bridge is
used to show the relative measure of observer-moments derived from sequences
of observer-moments which survived the bridge crossing. The computer model
provides visualization and insight into quantum nudging whereby at a given
time prior to a dangerous situation, the OMs with greatest measure are
poised to avoid that danger. A person experiencing the most common OM
sequence is therefore nudged away from danger. This demonstration cannot
prove whether we live such most-common OM sequences, it just provides a
visualization.
This demonstration assumes that the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics (MWI) is correct. IE: A person (like you and me) experiences 1
sequence of OMs throughout our lives. Between moments we branch into
parallel universes which continue to split/diverge moment to moment.
Consider a person walking across a bridge. The bridge is 200m above the
ground. The person is not capable of knowing whether their steps will cause
them to walk off the bridge and cannot avoid falling to their relatively
certain death. The person staggers as he moves, from one point to the next
he takes each step in one of three ways:
- straight ahead (S)
- ahead to the left (L)
- ahead to the right (R)
The cause of the direction of each step is random, with an equal 1/3
probability that at each step the person will go straight ahead, ahead to
the left or ahead to the right. In fact, he does all three, branching into
different universes.
Presented is the result of a computer simulation which computes every
possible sequence of steps that conclude in his successful (alive) crossing
of the bridge. Each possible sequence is tested once and only once.
In the following simulations each square represents a position or an
observer-moment if the person has no short term memory. The problem being
ignored in this demonstration is that typically for OMs to be identical they
require the observer to experience the same mind-state for that moment,
including completely identical memories. This is ignored by suggesting that
for our purposes the observer has no short-term memory. So arriving at the
same square via different squares constitutes a convergent OM which
increases the measure of such OM.
The person starts on the square 5,1 and every possible sequence thereafter
is computed. Once all the sequences which resulted in the person making it
to the other side of the bridge were obtained, the individual OM instances
were counted, that is the number of times a successful sequence involved a
step on a certain square (OM). The percentages for each represent the
measure of those OMs, that is the percentage of total surviving sequences
which involved a step on that square.
A sequence is not successful (does not survive) if the person walks off the
bridge. A sequence is successful if the person lands on a square in the top
row without falling off the bridge.
In this first example the bridge is straight:
There are 153,273 successful sequences, the left-most being
L-L-L-L-S-S-S-S-S-S-S and the right-most being R-R-R-R-S-S-S-S-S-S-S. The
sequence with the most measure, though it only occurred once in simulation
is of course S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S.
In the second example the bridge has a hole in it, step where a box is
absent and die. Observe how this affects measure prior to the hole.
There are 82,782 successful sequences, the left-most being
L-L-L-L-S-S-S-S-S-S-S and the right-most being R-R-S-L-L-S-R-R-R-R-S. The
sequence with the most measure, though it only occurred once in simulation
(each possible sequence is tested once) would be L-R-L-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S. I
find it interesting that this sequence does a zigzag at the beginning, due
to recombinant OMs "fleeing" the right side, causing the highest measure OM
to temporarily move right, taking them in (5,3).
The next step is of course to figure out how to represent measure with a
more realistic observer (having a functioning memory). Remember that almost
none of the concepts presented here have actually been proven, and so this
material should be taken simply as food for thought.
I hope you have enjoyed this demonstration,
David
dav-id-AT-kwinte-r.ca (remove the hyphens and replace "AT" with "-AT_SYMBOL-")
For more information:
- Theory of Everything mailing list (where these topics are discussed at
length)
- Wikipedia: (Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, Quantum
Immortality, Quantum Suicide)
Received on Sat Jun 11 2005 - 01:45:06 PDT