![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(For those not entirely familiar with it, the "Many-worlds interpretation" is a view where every random event causes a new universe to split off — see the "parallel universes" so beloved by cheesy sci-fi.)
"One good example of this is the Quantum Suicide "experiment" that some proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation claim (I think jokingly) could actually be used to test the MWI. The way it works is, you basically run the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment on yourself– you set up an apparatus whereby an atom has a 50% chance of decaying each second, and there's a detector which waits for the atom to decay. When the detector goes off, it triggers a gun, which shoots you in the head and kills you. So all you have to do is set up this experiment, and sit in front of it for awhile. If after sixty seconds you find you are still alive, then the many-worlds interpretation is true, because there is only about a one in 1018 chance of surviving in front of the Quantum Suicide machine for a full minute, so the only plausible explanation for your survival is that the MWI is true and you just happen to be the one universe where the atom's 50% chance of decay turned up "no" sixty times in a row."
Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics, Mechanically Separated Meat, 3 Feb 2008
(The Super Mario World video is quite good, as well.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Where can I play it? :)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Presumably, this would end up with you as the oldest being in the universe, still alive at its heat death due to a series of increasingly bizarre coincidences. If this doesn't happen to you, then it's not your universe, it's someone else's.
From:
no subject
And yes, everybody would end up as the only being in their own personal universe, presumably.
From:
no subject
After all, I am convinced that I am a real person thinking and doing the usual things.
From:
no subject
(Disclaimer: don't actually shoot yourself, it's a gedankenexperiment.)
> I am convinced that I am a real person thinking and doing the usual things
That's exactly what you would say if you were a figment of my imagination.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(Obviously, as a hard-core materialist, I say "pish tosh to all of this").
From:
no subject
Take it from the other angle: by observation, this universe is such that you haven't died yet. Extrapolate.
From:
no subject
> Take it from the other angle: by observation, this universe is such that you haven't died yet. Extrapolate.
Yeah, that's more like the many-worlds interpretation that I was talking about. Assuming the aging process is akin to radioactive decay, with death increasingly more likely but not inevitable, then essentially we are already carrying out the described experiment. If either of us finds ourselves 300 years old (say) and still not dead, then we can conclude that the MWI is true.
So no need for pistols, radioactive substances or Geiger counters. *Phew*
From:
no subject
> then we can conclude that the MWI is true
*thwap* Bad scientist, no biscuit. Supporting evidence, not proof.
Here's one: assuming that there exists such a thing as consciousness, and that it's not mystical, spooky or Abrahamic in nature, then where else is there for it to go when you die?
...entropy. Oh well. That was quick.
From:
no subject
There are some interesting problems involving consciousness, (meaning, in this case, the perception which I know I have and assume you have). Bluntly, without us to percieve it, the universe's existence becomes trivial, it's no more there than any other conceivable mathematical pattern.
Does this mean that I/you am/are cosmologically important? Yes, but only because 'importance' is predicated and assigned by me/you. Our definition of 'reality' is assigned in a similar manner*. This universe is only 'real' to us due to our existence in it, and the style in which we percieve it.
There's still the question of why I'm in this perceiver and you in that, and who bothered to turn on the lights so that anything at all would perceive from an internal perspective. Like, it's obvious that self-awareness is useful for a variety of genetic functions, but do we really only see out of our eyes because we say we do? Does consciousness reduce to believing yourself to be conscious (in the external perspective)? If so, I still shouldn't be seeing out of me, I should be just saying that I do.
* I'm something of an anti-realist, I don't believe that there's anything special or fundamental about the matter of the universe, it's all just patterns, and mysteriously, mathematical concepts**
** Mysteriously, because where are the concepts processed? Internally? In another universe?***By some sort of vaguely God-like thing?***
*** "It's turtles all the way down"
**** Thinking about God-like things in this context does give religion (e.g. Christianity version 13c variant 5) to have any further credence than it had or didn't already. It still says nothing about the vaguely God-like thing, and certainly doesnt clarify whether he/she/it disapproves of coveting, onanism etc.
From:
no subject
Does the universe dream? 8^)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Give me back my biscuit.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
You lose claim to all my biscuits, plus one (1) of your own.
kthxbye.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I do (sort of) believe in personal identity, but I don't see anything inconsistent about lots of different very similar identites being spawned and killed left, right and centre in this many world model.
From:
no subject
That's the point of the experiment in the post — for each 260 yous that carry out the experiment, (260 − 1) of them die and thus reach no conclusion. But the lucky one comes through unscathed, and concludes that the odds of such a thing happening are so incredibly remote that the many-worlds interpretation can be the only reason he is still alive.
From:
no subject
That is, unless you specifically stipulate that you're assuming that the universe can only go forward to one where you're alive. Which is just solipsism and doesnt need a many worlds theory. If you assume that it's inconsistent that you can move forward into a universe where you're not alive, you've just stated "I cannot die" regardless of whether there are many future universes, or only one.
I think this weird problem arises purely from human inability to concieve of our own non-existence.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
This isn't sollipsism, but it is somewhat idealism-flavoured.
Of course, I will not deny that others have equally valid consciousnesses, which is why I would never actually conduct the experiment, even if I were 100% convinced that the MWI were correct. To the external observer I would almost certainly die, and I would not do that to (260 - 1)
(Addendum: that's the downside of this experiment — even if it produces a positive result, you can hardly consider this result to be communicable to other people. To some, that would disqualify it as a scientific experiment. YMMV.)
From:
no subject
Here's another example. Imagine the universe splits only once, when you decide whether to stay in Edinburgh or move to Glasgow. In both streams, you live in your respective city for 10 years, however, then, in the Glasgow stream, you are killed by a falling filing cabinet. What happens then? Does your consciousness never go down the Glasgow route, does it skip to Edinburgh? Or do you just die?
From:
no subject
Who the hell else would it be if it isn't me? 8^)
I'm saying all future branches of me are, themselves, me. "I" am not a single pre-determined thread of experience from birth to death, I am the space of all potential paths from now on.
In answer to your question, my consciousness goes down both the Edinburgh route and the Glasgow route. Both Edinburgh me and Glasgow me are me. (Though Edinburgh me is not Glasgow me, nor vice versa — intransitivity yay). So I might say that in five years' time, I will be in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, but in 15 years' time, I will merely be in Edinburgh — I won't be dead in Glasgow because I cannot possibly be in an observable state where I am dead.
(If you ask Glasgow me, then I will cease to exist in another five years… there's no way for Glasgow me to become Edinburgh me. In fact, in Glasgow me's universe, Edinburgh me arguably does not even exist.)
From:
no subject
Assuming that it takes nonzero effort to upload one's consciousness, and the net gain to oneself remains at zero, it would be a complete waste of time to upload. You don't get any of the benefits. Somebody else gets to have all the fun, and they also get to call themselves `you' while they're doing it.
I suspect that Charlie has probably already addressed this, but I could never finish Accelerando.
``Humdrum Meatspace World'' wbaenfarb.
From:
no subject
(I'll just have to accept the fact that one of the resultant mes will end up jealous and bitter).