(Rather than start with the main point I’ll follow your responses and conclude)
1 - word definitions. This was one of those that was not wrong, but unclear.
2 - another point that was kind of sketchy-looking. It wasn’t directly wrong, but it looked overly simplified. You’ll see why in a few points.
I’m guessing no more than the volume of the Universe divided by the cube of the Planck length
A better limit would be not more than 2 to the power of that. Hilbert space is very, very large.
3 - this seems to be going out of order.
Quantum Immortality means I will not experience death during that 10 minutes
Regular old Quantum Immortality takes as an axiom that you cannot experience death. If you could, then the whole thing falls to pieces.
As for the universe putting you in a safe place, well then, you are fortunate. How does this argument apply to people who die? Did they not have subjective experiences? What makes them different from you?
4 - the heart of the matter
Since my consciousness only collapses the universal wavefunction once every 1/10th second
This is seriously, majorly wrong, and the reason I complained about point 2. Your brain decoheres a zillion times per second. Your consciousness is far, far, far into the classical regime.
Observing does not cause collapse. Events which cause the wavefunction to split into dynamically separate parts do, and those happen at the same rate in a system regardless of how you cut it.
QI seems to predict that I would never fall asleep
Depends on how you formulate it, doesn’t it? Anyway, arguing against regular QI does not argue for your variant.
QI is all about the timeless perspective because it requires looking at worlds splitting into other worlds from a perspective outside of time
That doesn’t look like immortality to me. It looks like you dying eventually. You look at the history of your lifeline and it peters out, little by little, sometimes more at once than other times. Those decreases? Those are dying. The only way QI works is if you ignore the parts that died, and the only justification I’ve seen for doing that is by locking your viewpoint to your subjective experience. That’s what allows you to discard any cases where you don’t survive. If you’re looking from a distance, you see a whole lot of dead you-s out there.
As for the universe putting you in a safe place, well then, you are fortunate. How does this argument apply to people who die? Did they not have subjective experiences? What makes them different from you?
I believe the argument goes that they, too, are immortal… from their own perspective. Your consciousness traces its worldline, taking branches where you stay alive, and theirs does the same, but picking worlds where they stay alive. In other words, you can see them die, and they can see you die, but the consciousness, the qualia of the person who’s supposedly dying is not there; it’s gone down a different worldline.
I think that the theory is cute and quite seductive, but quite clearly wrong. The problem is, for example, brain damage: does quantum immortality allow you to experience Phineas Gage-type brain damage, or doesn’t it?
Also, I’ve been blackout drunk in college, and if quantum immortality is a thing, it’s not clear why my consciousness didn’t trace a path through the universes where I wasn’t blackout drunk. It was, after all, a loss of self, even if it was only temporary. The arguments QI uses for keeping you alive could be used equally easily to prove that you cannot become blackout drunk.
Your brain decoheres a zillion times per second. Your consciousness is far, far, far into the classical regime.
Observing does not cause collapse. Events which cause the wavefunction to split into dynamically separate parts do, and those happen at the same rate in a system regardless of how you cut it.
Eh? Observing is the only thing that causes collapse.
I agree that there are constant tiny thermodynamic events that, if observed, could cause decoherences a zillion times a second. But, usually these events are not observed.
Decoherence is me finding out which world I end up in, and this only happens as quickly as I think, once every ~1/10 seconds when I’m awake.
I’m guessing you would say that decoherence is my brain ending up in some world, and this happens every time any entropy-increasing chemical event happens.
How can I experimentally tell the difference between these? It’s not obvious because even a high-speed detector requires me to read the readout with my (slow) brain. From my perspective, the detector doesn’t collapse any wavefunctions until I look at it. I agree with you that if I looked at another brain I would see that brain decohering / doing thermodynamic stuff all the time. I also agree with you that if I looked at my own brain I would see my own brain doing a bunch of stuff really rapidly. You would say that my brain decoheres as quickly as a detector measures it. I would say that my brain decoheres only as quickly as I notice detector readouts. Until I look at the detector, my brain and the detector are in a superposition of states with different possible detector readouts.
That isn’t the relationship between decoherence and observation.
Decoherence events are when a quantum system splits into multiple parts that are no longer dynamically accessible to each other. At this point, they are in different worlds.
Observation events have to be decoherence events. Observation has no other role in quantum mechanics other than that in order to observe, you must decohere.
So, whether or not you observe things, you are in some world of dynamically mutually accessible states, and this will evolve into many dynamically inaccessible components with or without your observing it. By the time you’ve observed anything, it’s way too late to get from one to another.
I agree provided the many-worlds interpretation is correct, which seems likely.
If the consciousness-causes-collapse interpretation is correct (which seems less likely), then the special form I described might still work. But I can’t count on it.
(Rather than start with the main point I’ll follow your responses and conclude)
1 - word definitions. This was one of those that was not wrong, but unclear.
2 - another point that was kind of sketchy-looking. It wasn’t directly wrong, but it looked overly simplified. You’ll see why in a few points.
A better limit would be not more than 2 to the power of that. Hilbert space is very, very large.
3 - this seems to be going out of order.
Regular old Quantum Immortality takes as an axiom that you cannot experience death. If you could, then the whole thing falls to pieces.
As for the universe putting you in a safe place, well then, you are fortunate. How does this argument apply to people who die? Did they not have subjective experiences? What makes them different from you?
4 - the heart of the matter
This is seriously, majorly wrong, and the reason I complained about point 2. Your brain decoheres a zillion times per second. Your consciousness is far, far, far into the classical regime.
Observing does not cause collapse. Events which cause the wavefunction to split into dynamically separate parts do, and those happen at the same rate in a system regardless of how you cut it.
Depends on how you formulate it, doesn’t it? Anyway, arguing against regular QI does not argue for your variant.
That doesn’t look like immortality to me. It looks like you dying eventually. You look at the history of your lifeline and it peters out, little by little, sometimes more at once than other times. Those decreases? Those are dying. The only way QI works is if you ignore the parts that died, and the only justification I’ve seen for doing that is by locking your viewpoint to your subjective experience. That’s what allows you to discard any cases where you don’t survive. If you’re looking from a distance, you see a whole lot of dead you-s out there.
I believe the argument goes that they, too, are immortal… from their own perspective. Your consciousness traces its worldline, taking branches where you stay alive, and theirs does the same, but picking worlds where they stay alive. In other words, you can see them die, and they can see you die, but the consciousness, the qualia of the person who’s supposedly dying is not there; it’s gone down a different worldline.
I think that the theory is cute and quite seductive, but quite clearly wrong. The problem is, for example, brain damage: does quantum immortality allow you to experience Phineas Gage-type brain damage, or doesn’t it?
Also, I’ve been blackout drunk in college, and if quantum immortality is a thing, it’s not clear why my consciousness didn’t trace a path through the universes where I wasn’t blackout drunk. It was, after all, a loss of self, even if it was only temporary. The arguments QI uses for keeping you alive could be used equally easily to prove that you cannot become blackout drunk.
That was my point. The above QI argument broke that by going timeless and universal.
Thank you again for the thoughtful reply.
Eh? Observing is the only thing that causes collapse.
I agree that there are constant tiny thermodynamic events that, if observed, could cause decoherences a zillion times a second. But, usually these events are not observed.
Decoherence is me finding out which world I end up in, and this only happens as quickly as I think, once every ~1/10 seconds when I’m awake.
I’m guessing you would say that decoherence is my brain ending up in some world, and this happens every time any entropy-increasing chemical event happens.
How can I experimentally tell the difference between these? It’s not obvious because even a high-speed detector requires me to read the readout with my (slow) brain. From my perspective, the detector doesn’t collapse any wavefunctions until I look at it. I agree with you that if I looked at another brain I would see that brain decohering / doing thermodynamic stuff all the time. I also agree with you that if I looked at my own brain I would see my own brain doing a bunch of stuff really rapidly. You would say that my brain decoheres as quickly as a detector measures it. I would say that my brain decoheres only as quickly as I notice detector readouts. Until I look at the detector, my brain and the detector are in a superposition of states with different possible detector readouts.
I don’t know how to test this.
That isn’t the relationship between decoherence and observation.
Decoherence events are when a quantum system splits into multiple parts that are no longer dynamically accessible to each other. At this point, they are in different worlds.
Observation events have to be decoherence events. Observation has no other role in quantum mechanics other than that in order to observe, you must decohere.
So, whether or not you observe things, you are in some world of dynamically mutually accessible states, and this will evolve into many dynamically inaccessible components with or without your observing it. By the time you’ve observed anything, it’s way too late to get from one to another.
In that case, it seems like Quantum Immortality doesn’t work.
And here I thought I was safe. Dammit.
Well, the nice form you described here doesn’t work. The kind of lousy usual form does, with the usual caveats.
I agree provided the many-worlds interpretation is correct, which seems likely.
If the consciousness-causes-collapse interpretation is correct (which seems less likely), then the special form I described might still work. But I can’t count on it.