Testing the Many-Worlds Interpretation

[spudtater]

(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.)

Comments

[gominokouhai]

I once read a theory that, every time you're about to die, your consciousness shifts into another universe in which you don't die. So if you have a 50/50 chance of getting hit by a bus, you'll logically end up in the reality where you don't get hit---because, logically, you don't exist in the other one. Ergo: immortality.

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.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

But was this universe always in existence? If so, where was your consciousness? Was your mind and body operating independently of it? If so, ewwww, philosophical zombie nonsense. Or was it suddenly born of this one in response to your impending demise? If so, how many universes is Evil Knievel responsible for?   8^)

And yes, everybody would end up as the only being in their own personal universe, presumably.

[calcinations.livejournal.com]

Obviously you are in my universe. How do I prove this to you?
After all, I am convinced that I am a real person thinking and doing the usual things.

[gominokouhai]

If you shoot yourself and I continue to exist, then I will know that you're wrong. You won't know, but that's okay because it's my universe.

(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.

[gominokouhai]

I believe that the usual Everettian interpretation is that universes are spontaneously created every time a choice is made. Wyndham had a nice short on the subject in which he used the analogy of a fan, with fronds branching out.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

But if universes are created on every choice, but consciousness only transfers when you're about to die, then there are a significantly greater number of universes without any consciousness than there are with. So, zombies, zombies, everywhere.

(Obviously, as a hard-core materialist, I say "pish tosh to all of this").

[gominokouhai]

Maybe it doesn't? Only transfer when you're about to die, I mean. That was the bit of the theory that didn't make sense to me, either. There was no adequately explained reason for the transfer.

Take it from the other angle: by observation, this universe is such that you haven't died yet. Extrapolate.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

The whole problem with the theory is the word "transfer", which suggests a consciousness separate from body (and mind?), and thus inherits all the problems inherent in dualism.

> 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*

[gominokouhai]

That's because ``transfer'' was my word, and not in the original (which I think was a webcomic).

> 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.

[xenophanean.livejournal.com]

Been thinking about this actually, one thing this example does do is put into stark relief some of the internal/external universe problems.

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.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this subject tends to get pretty mind-breaking pretty fast.

Does the universe dream?   8^)

[xenophanean.livejournal.com]

No :p

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Spoilsport.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Did I say 'prove'? No, I said 'conclude'.

Give me back my biscuit.

[gominokouhai]

Proof is a prerequisite for any kind of meaningful conclusion. You're now into negative biscuits.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

http://www.brandonbeltz.com/scimeth/conclusion1.htm

You lose claim to all my biscuits, plus one (1) of your own.

kthxbye.

[gominokouhai]

Damn.