The problem with Quantum Immortality is that it is a pretty horrible scenario. That’s not an argument against it being true of course, but it’s an argument for hoping it’s not true.
Let’s assume QI is true. If I walk under a bus tomorrow, I won’t experience universes where I die, so I’ll only experience miraculously surviving the accident. That sounds good.
But here’s where the nightmare starts. Dying is not a binary process. There’ll be many more universes where I survive with serious injuries then universes where I survive without injury. Eventually I’ll grow old. There’ll be some universes where by random quantum fluctuations that miraculously never happens, but in the overwhelming majority of them I’ll grow old and weak. And then I won’t die. In fact I wouldn’t even be able to die if I wanted to. I could decide to commit suicide, but I’ll only ever experience those universes where for some reason I chose not to go through with it (or something prevented me from going through with it).
It’s the ultimate horror scenario. Forced immortality, but without youth or health.
If QI is true having kids would be the ultimate crime. If QI is true the only ethical course of action would be to pour all humanity’s resources into developing an ASI and program it to sterilize the universe. That won’t end the nightmare, there’ll always be universes where we fail to build such an ASI, but at least it will reduce the measure of suffering.
We believe we may have found a solution to degenerate QI, via simulationism under acausal trade. The basic gist of it is that continuations of the mind-pattern after naturally lethal events could be overwhelminly more frequent under benevolent simulationism than continuations arising from improbable quantum physical outcomes, and, if many of the agents in the multiverse operate under an introspective decision theory, pact-simulist continuations already are overwhelmingly more frequent.
In its natural form QI is bad, but if we add cryonics, they will help each other.
If you go under the bus you now have three outcomes: you die, you are cryopreserved and lately resurrected and you are badly injured for eternity. QI prevent first one.
So you will be or cryopreserved or badly injured and survive for eternity. While both things have very small probability, cryopreservation may overweight longterm injury. And it certainly overweight a chance that you will live until 120 years old.
So if you do not want to suffer for eternity , you need to sign up for cryonics ))))
If we go deeper, we maybe surprised to find our selves in the world that prevent us from very improbable life of no dying old man, because we live in a very short time of human history where cryonics is known.
It may be explained (speculatively) that if you are randomly chosen from all possible immortals, you will find yourself in the class with highest measure.
It means that that you should expect no degradation, but ascending, may be by merging with Strong AI. It may sound wild, but I was surprised that I was not only one who came to the same conclusion, as when I was in MIRI last fall one guy had the same ideas (I forget his name).
In short it may be explained in following way: from all humans who will be immortal the biggest part will be the ones who merge with AI and the smallest one will be those who survive as very old man thanks to random fluctuation.
Sure, cryonics would help. But it wouldn’t be more than a drop in the ocean. If QI is true, and cryonics is theoretically possible, then 500 years from now there’ll be 3 kinds of universes: 1) Universes where I’m dead, either because cryonics didn’t pan out (perhaps society collapsed), or because for some reason I wasn’t revived. 2) Universes where I’m alive thanks to cryonics and 3) Universes where I’m alive due to quantum fluctuations ‘miraculously’ keeping me alive.
Clearly the measure of the 3rd kind of universe will be very very small compared to the other two. And since I don’t experience the first, that means that subjectively I’m overwhelmingly likely to experience being alive thanks to cryonics. And in most of those universes I’m probably healthy and happy. So that sounds good.
But quantum immortality implies forced immortality forever. No way to escape, no way to permanently shut yourself down once you get bored with life. No way to die even after the heath death of the universe.
No matter how good the few trillion years before that will be, the end result will be floating around as an isolated mind in an empty universe, kept alive by random quantum fluctuations in an increasingly small measure of all universes that will nevertheless always have subjective measure of 1, for literally ever.
Now personally I don’t think QI is very likely. In fact I consider it extremely unlikely. All I’m saying is that if it were true, that’d be a nightmare.
While I understand your concerns, I think that during next trillion years you will be able to find the ways to solve the problem, and I even able to suggest some of the solutions now.
A trillion years from now you will be very powerful AI which also knows for sure that QI works.
The simplest solution is circle time. In in you are immortal, but your experience are repeatings. If they are pleasant, there will be no sufferings. More complex forms of time are also possible, so the “linear time trap” is just a result of our lack of imagination. Circular time probably result naturally from QI, because any human has non zero probability to transform in any other human, so you will circle in random patterns the space of all possible minds. (It also solves identity problem by the way—everybody are identical, but with different time for transformation.)
You could edit your brain in the way that it would enjoy empty eternity, so no sufferings. Anyway you may lost part of your long-term memory, so you may don’t know your real age. And in most QI branches it will happen naturally.
Even if suffering (not very strong and painful) is real after trillion years from now, it may be good deal to agree on QI now, because of discounting effect. I prefer to live trillion years than to die in strong suffering in next 20.
Maybe the strong AI will prove that it is able to create fun quicker than use this fun, so it will always has something to do, no matter how much linear time has gone. It also may create many levels avatar worlds (simulations) where avatars will not remember their real age (and we are probably inside such simulation).
I spent 25 years to come to these ideas (from the summer 1990 than I get the idea of QI) so in next trillion years I will be able to get better ideas I hope.
A trillion years from now you will be very powerful AI which also knows for sure that QI works.
So if in the next few months a planet-sized rock comes out of deep space at high velocity and slams into Earth, in which Everett branch will you survive? Which quantum fluctuation will save you?
Given a big world, we live in a simulation and we don’t; we’re simply unable to self-locate ourselves in the set of all identical copies. That’s one of the main points of of the post about modal realism that turchin linked to in the original post. Failure to see how this leads to survival in every scenario is due to not thinking enough about it.
A big world was presented here as one of the premises of the whole argument, so if you think that the conclusions drawn here are ridiculous, you should probably attack that premise. I actually think physicists and philosophers would be rather more reluctant to bite all the bullets shot at them and think of alternatives if they realized what implications theories like MWI and inflation have, and care more about valid criticisms such that we have no accepted solution to the measure problem (although it seems that most physicists think that it can be solved without giving up the multiverse).
The one where events happened exactly the same—and then you wake up.
Uncertainty doesn’t happen in the universe, after all. The universe isn’t uncertain about what it is; the observer is uncertain about what universe it is in.
Now personally I don’t think QI is very likely. In fact I consider it extremely unlikely. All I’m saying is that if it were true, that’d be a nightmare.
If QI is true having kids would be the ultimate crime. If QI is true the only ethical course of action would be to pour all humanity’s resources into developing an ASI and program it to sterilize the universe. That won’t end the nightmare, there’ll always be universes where we fail to build such an ASI, but at least it will reduce the measure of suffering.
This is something I’ve thought about too, although I’ve been a bit reluctant to write about it publicly. But on the other hand QI seems quite likely to be true, so I guess we should make up our minds about it.
The problem with Quantum Immortality is that it is a pretty horrible scenario. That’s not an argument against it being true of course, but it’s an argument for hoping it’s not true.
Let’s assume QI is true. If I walk under a bus tomorrow, I won’t experience universes where I die, so I’ll only experience miraculously surviving the accident. That sounds good.
But here’s where the nightmare starts. Dying is not a binary process. There’ll be many more universes where I survive with serious injuries then universes where I survive without injury. Eventually I’ll grow old. There’ll be some universes where by random quantum fluctuations that miraculously never happens, but in the overwhelming majority of them I’ll grow old and weak. And then I won’t die. In fact I wouldn’t even be able to die if I wanted to. I could decide to commit suicide, but I’ll only ever experience those universes where for some reason I chose not to go through with it (or something prevented me from going through with it).
It’s the ultimate horror scenario. Forced immortality, but without youth or health.
If QI is true having kids would be the ultimate crime. If QI is true the only ethical course of action would be to pour all humanity’s resources into developing an ASI and program it to sterilize the universe. That won’t end the nightmare, there’ll always be universes where we fail to build such an ASI, but at least it will reduce the measure of suffering.
We believe we may have found a solution to degenerate QI, via simulationism under acausal trade. The basic gist of it is that continuations of the mind-pattern after naturally lethal events could be overwhelminly more frequent under benevolent simulationism than continuations arising from improbable quantum physical outcomes, and, if many of the agents in the multiverse operate under an introspective decision theory, pact-simulist continuations already are overwhelmingly more frequent.
In its natural form QI is bad, but if we add cryonics, they will help each other.
If you go under the bus you now have three outcomes: you die, you are cryopreserved and lately resurrected and you are badly injured for eternity. QI prevent first one.
So you will be or cryopreserved or badly injured and survive for eternity. While both things have very small probability, cryopreservation may overweight longterm injury. And it certainly overweight a chance that you will live until 120 years old.
So if you do not want to suffer for eternity , you need to sign up for cryonics ))))
If we go deeper, we maybe surprised to find our selves in the world that prevent us from very improbable life of no dying old man, because we live in a very short time of human history where cryonics is known.
It may be explained (speculatively) that if you are randomly chosen from all possible immortals, you will find yourself in the class with highest measure.
It means that that you should expect no degradation, but ascending, may be by merging with Strong AI. It may sound wild, but I was surprised that I was not only one who came to the same conclusion, as when I was in MIRI last fall one guy had the same ideas (I forget his name).
In short it may be explained in following way: from all humans who will be immortal the biggest part will be the ones who merge with AI and the smallest one will be those who survive as very old man thanks to random fluctuation.
Sure, cryonics would help. But it wouldn’t be more than a drop in the ocean. If QI is true, and cryonics is theoretically possible, then 500 years from now there’ll be 3 kinds of universes: 1) Universes where I’m dead, either because cryonics didn’t pan out (perhaps society collapsed), or because for some reason I wasn’t revived. 2) Universes where I’m alive thanks to cryonics and 3) Universes where I’m alive due to quantum fluctuations ‘miraculously’ keeping me alive.
Clearly the measure of the 3rd kind of universe will be very very small compared to the other two. And since I don’t experience the first, that means that subjectively I’m overwhelmingly likely to experience being alive thanks to cryonics. And in most of those universes I’m probably healthy and happy. So that sounds good.
But quantum immortality implies forced immortality forever. No way to escape, no way to permanently shut yourself down once you get bored with life. No way to die even after the heath death of the universe.
No matter how good the few trillion years before that will be, the end result will be floating around as an isolated mind in an empty universe, kept alive by random quantum fluctuations in an increasingly small measure of all universes that will nevertheless always have subjective measure of 1, for literally ever.
Now personally I don’t think QI is very likely. In fact I consider it extremely unlikely. All I’m saying is that if it were true, that’d be a nightmare.
While I understand your concerns, I think that during next trillion years you will be able to find the ways to solve the problem, and I even able to suggest some of the solutions now.
A trillion years from now you will be very powerful AI which also knows for sure that QI works.
The simplest solution is circle time. In in you are immortal, but your experience are repeatings. If they are pleasant, there will be no sufferings. More complex forms of time are also possible, so the “linear time trap” is just a result of our lack of imagination. Circular time probably result naturally from QI, because any human has non zero probability to transform in any other human, so you will circle in random patterns the space of all possible minds. (It also solves identity problem by the way—everybody are identical, but with different time for transformation.)
You could edit your brain in the way that it would enjoy empty eternity, so no sufferings. Anyway you may lost part of your long-term memory, so you may don’t know your real age. And in most QI branches it will happen naturally.
Even if suffering (not very strong and painful) is real after trillion years from now, it may be good deal to agree on QI now, because of discounting effect. I prefer to live trillion years than to die in strong suffering in next 20.
Maybe the strong AI will prove that it is able to create fun quicker than use this fun, so it will always has something to do, no matter how much linear time has gone. It also may create many levels avatar worlds (simulations) where avatars will not remember their real age (and we are probably inside such simulation).
I spent 25 years to come to these ideas (from the summer 1990 than I get the idea of QI) so in next trillion years I will be able to get better ideas I hope.
So if in the next few months a planet-sized rock comes out of deep space at high velocity and slams into Earth, in which Everett branch will you survive? Which quantum fluctuation will save you?
Yes, in all branches where i am in simulation and wake up. The same “me” may be in different worlds.
Or in the universe where aliens will save me just a second before the impact.
Or I will be resurrected by another aliens based on my footprint in radiowaves.
There is no possible issue that cannot be resolved by an answer “you are in a simulation and the simulation just changed its rules”.
Given a big world, we live in a simulation and we don’t; we’re simply unable to self-locate ourselves in the set of all identical copies. That’s one of the main points of of the post about modal realism that turchin linked to in the original post. Failure to see how this leads to survival in every scenario is due to not thinking enough about it.
A big world was presented here as one of the premises of the whole argument, so if you think that the conclusions drawn here are ridiculous, you should probably attack that premise. I actually think physicists and philosophers would be rather more reluctant to bite all the bullets shot at them and think of alternatives if they realized what implications theories like MWI and inflation have, and care more about valid criticisms such that we have no accepted solution to the measure problem (although it seems that most physicists think that it can be solved without giving up the multiverse).
The one where events happened exactly the same—and then you wake up.
Uncertainty doesn’t happen in the universe, after all. The universe isn’t uncertain about what it is; the observer is uncertain about what universe it is in.
That’s a bit too deep for me.
Why do you think that it’s unlikely?
Update: There are many ways how we could survive the end of the universe (see my map), so the endless emptiness is not necessary option. http://lesswrong.com/lw/mfa/a_roadmap_how_to_survive_the_end_of_the_universe/
This is something I’ve thought about too, although I’ve been a bit reluctant to write about it publicly. But on the other hand QI seems quite likely to be true, so I guess we should make up our minds about it.