The “Wigner’s Friend” experiment has some interesting examples that physicists already thought about.
whether this is a “correct” way to describe reality
I’ll find out in about 100 years.
Algernoq
Karma: 547
Estimate the Cost of Immortality
I don’t know if anyone else is conscious, but if they are, and they die in my branch of reality, then in my theory they experience a branch of reality in which they continue living.
seems indistinguishable from any other regligious belief in infinite life
I agree it’s pretty similar. I have to accept the consciousness-causes-collapse interpretation, and it’s a short hop from that to full-on theism.
It’s a flawed argument but if for some reason there was a high complexity penalty to being born in an older Universe then it could be more likely to be born in a younger Universe where immortality technology has not quite been invented yet.
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.
In that case, it seems like Quantum Immortality doesn’t work.
And here I thought I was safe. Dammit.
Thank you again for the thoughtful reply.
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.
I don’t know how to test this.
I love this forum.
If I understand the experiment, your theory is that quantum weirdness makes it more likely to see four heads in a row because you resolved to flip many more coins if you don’t.
Sounds fun. I’ll flip four coins (actually use a string of 0′s and 1′s that’s 4 bits long). If I don’t get four heads, I’ll generate a 10-digit sequence and memorize it. Let’s explore this frontier!
I did it. It didn’t work. My new favorite number is 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.
Reality hack failed.
Let’s try again. If I don’t get 4 heads, I’ll memorize a 20-digit number.
It didn’t work. My other new favorite number is 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.
I wonder if there’s a better way to test this theory.
Counterexample: I go to sleep (lose consciousness) and wake up again. QI seems to predict that I would never fall asleep, because I stop observing when I’m asleep and so QI would force me into universes in which I don’t fall asleep. Timeless QI has no problem with me falling asleep and then observing I’m alive and awake hours later.
Thanks for the criticism.
summary: If, hypothetically, I tried to catch a terminal-velocity bowling ball with my face, your theory says I would experience the bowling ball doing nonfatal damage and then stopping just before killing me, and my theory says I would experience changing my mind and getting out of the way of the bowling ball. It looks like our key disagreement is whether Quantum Immortality only operates over short timescales. You say it only acts in an instant, and I say it acts over long time intervals as well.
longer argument: I’m not convinced by your argument yet. Specifically:
1) I agree that two worlds may be very similar or very different or many places in between. However, my consciousness observes exactly one world at once. Do we have a disagreement about reality, or only about word definitions?
2) I agree that splitting events produce massive numbers of worlds (I have no idea how many, but I’m guessing no more than the volume of the Universe divided by the cube of the Planck length). Does this invalidate my argument (that I’ll live forever without appearing to get lucky)?
3) I agree that the likelihoods are a sum over various paths whose magnitude ranges from approximately 1 to approximately 0. I also agree with your intuition that if I ended up in a situation with a high-velocity bowling ball partially inside my head then my survival paths are much much less likely than my death paths. However, my argument is that Quantum Immortality works backward in time, if that makes sense. For example, consider all the ways I can walk through a bowling alley—a 10-minute-long time interval. Quantum Immortality means I will not experience death during that 10 minutes. Looking at all of the different worlds in which I don’t die in the bowling alley, it’s most probable I’ll find myself in one where I walk safely and nothing weird happens, and really really improbable that I’ll throw a bowling ball straight up in the air and then try to catch it with my face and then have the bowling ball spontaneously lose its momentum right before impact. This looks like where we disagree. This is clearer in your next point...
4) I’m kept off of those doomed states by Quantum Immortality. I disagree with you here, and I’ll make two arguments why...
4a) My conscious experience already averages over large lengths of time relative to quantum processes. The brain runs at about 10Hz. In the time it takes for one neuron to fire, many many quantum processes have time to happen. Since my consciousness only collapses the universal wavefunction once every 1/10th second, I see no problem with looking at the problem as if my consciousness only collapses the universal wavefunction once every 10 minutes, or once every lifetime.
4b) When I look at the real world, it looks like I’m kept away from doomed states. Why was I so ridiculously lucky as to be born in the current era, where human immortality is a possibility for the first time in history? Timeless Quantum Immortality provides an answer: because it’s more probable that I’ll live forever from the World I experience now, than it would be for me to live forever from most other worlds. Being born an ancient Sumerian or a dolphin would require many more improbable events to get me to immortality. Being born in a post-Singularity culture where immortality already exists would require a more complicated Universe. My existence looks like it’s one of the most likely ones of the set of all possible Universes in which I don’t die.
4c) I go to sleep (lose consciousness) and wake up again. QI seems to predict that I would never fall asleep, because I stop observing when I’m asleep and so I couldn’t observe that instant. Timeless QI has no problem with me falling asleep and then observing I’m alive and awake hours later.
5) QI is all about the timeless perspective because it requires looking at worlds splitting into other worlds from a perspective outside of time. I’m just doing what regular QI is already doing, just on a longer timescale.
This distinction is irrelevant to the main point: I expect to experience living forever without experiencing unusual luck. This is true regardless of whether MWi-QI or Tegmark’s MU theory is more accurate.
timeless quantum immortality
The computer could just halve our clock speed every time we launch a new simulation. No matter how many simulations we launch, our clock speed never reaches zero, so everything continues as normal inside our simulation. Problem solved! Suggested reading: “Hotel Infinity” followed by “Permutation City”.
If you wanted to launch a higher order of infinity number of ssimulation from inside our simulation, that would be another story...
A timeless interpretation of Quantum Immortality means that my choices are guaranteed to lead to immortality, and I’ll probably get there through a series of totally normal-seeming events. Like orbital corrections, early and slow changes require less effort than late and fast changes. I’m more likely a not-too-unlikely immortal consciousness, and the not-too-unlikely path I experience is a world where I live forever without getting improbably lucky.
Furthermore, generalizing timeless Quantum Immortality across multiple Universes, I was probably created by an entity that creates immortal consciousnesses at a rate that’s increasing nearly as rapidly as possible. Thus, there’s a good chance that I too will spawn huge numbers of conscious immortal beings during my infinitely-long life, if I haven’t already.
Got an engineering job not in the defense industry.
You sound unhappy. Do you still hold these conclusions when you are very happy?
Computing power per dollar has doubled every ~2 years for the past 40 years, per Moore’s Law.
Can biology keep up? The next generation of humans would reach adulthood in 20 years, at which time computers would have ~1024x today’s processing power. That’s a pretty high bar for selective breeding or genetic modification to keep up.
HPMOR and the Power of Consciousness
The “Normies REEEEEEE” meme is how I feel about average people.
Can I recruit followers? Starting a cult is a useful exercise for ambitious rationalists.