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AFAIK it is incorrect to apply the unitarity principle of the QM wave function transition to the system consisting of a man and a gun. It is not and can never be an isolated system and the unitarity principle does not work on open systems. So this thought experiment is invalid.
-- Dc987 ( talk) 19:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC) We have always existed since our physical bodies are comprised of atoms and molecules that have been around since beginning of our universe. Likewise when our physical body dies the atoms and molecules eventually get rearranged. My thought on "dying" is that when loose all conciousness we probably revert back state of conciousness we were in before we were born, remember that? We don't know we died, we don't know we ever lived, maybe. If alt. universes pick up our conciousness, I don't know and the rest of us can never know. Based on probabilities as we know it none of us can ever "know" anything absolutely. 74.107.171.137 ( talk) 20:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)terry lyon 7-04-10
The thought experiment has the experimenter surviving a near-death experience in a box. But I'm surviving my very own near-death experience right now. I am alive, and that is always a near-death experience.
Let's say I have a heart attack and drop dead when I'm 80. But there's another one of me that won't have that experience and will keep on living. I keep living, and then I get hit by a truck when I'm 90. But another one of me won't. I get killed by my great grand kids at 100. Another one of me wont. The one me that keeps on living, will keep on living forever. I don't need a Schroedinger's cat box to show that this experiment is false - I won't go on living forever! And this would be true of everyone - that everyone keeps on living forever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jgroub ( talk • contribs) 05:47, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
You seem to be implying that there is always a branch to take at every moment in which you survive. Surely, by the time you get old enough, you will have died of old age in all possible futures. -- 118.90.74.223 ( talk) 10:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't know a lot about aging, or about quantum mechanics, but, on a cellular level... well, an atomic level, with the atoms making up the cells... (or something like that), there must be some non-zero probability that the atoms in the cell will not decay (that's what atoms do, right?), and the cell will not die. Expand this to cover all cells in the body, and there must be some non-zero probability that the person to whom those cells belong to will not age, and thus will not die of old age. Which, when combined with the non-zero probability that they will not die in any other way, gives you an infinitesimal probability that this person is immortal. Possibly. Am I right, people who know the slightest thing about this stuff? PopeJaimie ( talk) 13:26, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Probably not, but you will be the oldest person on Earth and so will I, except at different realities.
Yes you are right..In some universe you will not age..In the many worlds interpretation, every possible outcome will be played out, even whether you will age or not..everything will always be played out
So, I realize that everyone here thinks they are such good physicists that they need to argue their points forever, but allow me to point out how this is absolutely NOT in any kind of encyclopedia format. I mean seriously, it's like: Point Counter-Point Counter-Counter-Point. That is obvious on this discussion page, but the whole article needs to be re-edited to remove all the internal arguing, and made a lot more fluid. -----Tobias —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.93.65.19 ( talk) 20:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
The fairly obvious problem that seems missing from this discussion is this: Quantum suicide experiment only leads to a possible Quantum Immortality in the set of universes in which the only form of death is suicide. And presumably, if you're in such a universe, you know it, so you never conduct this experiment except in unverses as we know them. In any of these universes, the experimenter will eventually die anyway, just not always from suicide. In fact, if the subject simply sits in front of that gun indefinitely, splitting off at every branch still both shot and not shot, he'll starve on the not-shot branch, eventually. Or end the experiment.
But suicide isn't a cause of death. Death is always caused by destruction of the brain, stopping of the heart. Therefore suicide as used in the experiment is just a means to the end and irrelevant to the outcome. 67.160.174.24 ( talk) 12:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Is this Michael Tegmark or Max Tegmark?
I hope nobudy ever dus this experement, becuse it will be imposible to pruve... -- 24.207.69.51 04:52, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think it can be proven -- see "It IS possible to convince others of your findings" further down on this page. -- Parsiferon 05:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Nonetheless, if this view is admissible, then it settles the age-old controversy among Christians over the "free-will/predestination" debate, as the many-worlds conjecture allows God to know the state of the entire system of his creation -- what is happening in *ALL* of the "many-worlds". It is only when a measurement is taken, and a choice point is traversed, that the non-god observer "colapses the wave function" and travels along the trajectory to a down-stream sub-tree of the many-worlds heirarchy. The probability associated with each different choice at such a choice-point is similar to the "heuristic values" computed by the heuristic functions used to decide how to expand the search tree in classical artificial intelligence programming. Thus we as humans perceive it as an evolutionary narural selection process, but only because we have no knowledge of what is happening in other parallel worlds associated with what Robert Frost calls "The Road not Taken".
See my semi-rambling objections on the Talk:Quantum immortality. In particular, any suicide is a quantum suicide, so all you have to do for an experiment is try to kill yourself (NOT RECOMMENDED!); this is totally non-falsifiable because it cannot be observed, by definition; and it assumes that, at any wave-function collape point, the mind/consciousness/soul will usually choose the most likely point (at least I must conclude that from my subjective experience), except it will always choose one in which it continues to exist. And another thought I just had; the existence of Heaven (in which I do not believe), or any other mechanism by which the mind can outlive the body, would mean that "quantum suicide" would still be permanent, regardless of the soul's insitence on continuing to exist. So I'd recommend nobody who does believe in Heaven try this at home. (Note: I'd recommend that NOBODY try this at home. Just making a point.) Glenn Willen ( Talk) [[]] 21:36, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You don't even need to commit suicide, just flip a coin. If the many worlds theory is correct then there must exists a world where you can get 1000 consecutive heads in a row thus proving that the many worlds theory is correct. Pity you can't send the result to the other ((2^1000) - 1 ) other worlds. -- (Anon)
While I agree one cannot experience anything once one has ceased to exist, does it really make this experiment work? What if not experiencing anything is a null experience, which, while it isn't an experience in the normal sense, is still fundamentally a valid experience. Why would a mind magically evade the null experience? -- Lakefall 21:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is another flaw in this thought experiment. Whether there are multiple universes or not, this experiment cannot fail! If we assume a mind is a valid observer in quantum mechanical sense and the only observer in this case, it doesn't in any case measure a negative result even if there is only one universe. That is because the mind ceases to exist before it gets any result. It's like measuring something with a device, which can only return true or blow up. Either you get a positive result or a null result. Negative result is not possible. -- Lakefall 19:41, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I believe that questioning the individuality of consciousness is indeed the solution to this paradox. If you enforce individuality rigorously, no one is the same as they were a minute or an hour ago, let alone over the course of years as most of the atoms in their body are exchanged for new ones. So quantum immortality would dictate that each moment's "self" should verge into a parallel universe where nothing ever changes; our memories of a past are just an illusion. I'd say the opposite - in the suicide-universe consciousness continues, so does it matter "whose"? There is just a change in the conformation of matter and memory between moments, as usual.
A curious corollary concerns the fate of the universe as entropy increases. If the universe is torn apart to widely separated cold atoms, as many physicists predict, there is no material seat for conscious thought; yet the quantum immortality paradox dictates that the only relevant possibilities are those that can be experienced. This demands either that the second law of thermodynamics must fail in the future, or else that consciousness can continue to exist in an essentially "empty" universe. In this way the Universe can be perceived as a scientific experiment that is actually capable of proving the existence of God (or spirits, etc) ... though not, of course, to a non-supernatural conscious observer! Well, either that or you decide that if the universe tore apart and there was nobody there to see it, it never really happened.
(The problem with our comments, alas, is that they are somewhere past the far side of "original research", so some corroborating source has to be dug up before we can decorate the article with them) 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 19:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
80.14.70.148 wrote:
I removed this text foremost because the above-written assertion is demonstrably not the case, and also because it is not appropriately placed or phrased. For one thing, the experiment does not assume that the physicist's observing mind ends up in a world in which he is alive—in fact, the fact that this is not assumed is what makes the Quantum suicide experiment an experiment in the first place. Of course, the experimenter who attempts such an experiment at all is taking the risk that, indeed, his consciousness may well cease to exist in any world (or that in fact there is only one "stream" of reality, thus falsifying the Many-worlds interpretation). — Ryanaxp 17:16, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
I don't know much about QM or it's interpretations, but this description sounds a bit wrong to me. Whether the gun fires or not is not the direct cause of death/life. Even if the gun fires - you will still live untill the bullet reaches your brain and does whatever causes you to die. There is no reason you should be experiencing only what happened when the gun didn't fire (because not firing is not what REALLY makes you stay alive). This thought experiment should focus on the final and direct cause for completely loosing consciousness, and perhaps when the bullet reaches a certain stage (and the person is still not dead) there isn't any probability left that it won't kill him, meaning he will die anyway.
The original poster wrote:
This thought experiment should focus on the final and direct cause for completely loosing consciousness, and perhaps when the bullet reaches a certain stage (and the person is still not dead) there isn't any probability left that it won't kill him, meaning he will die anyway.
The portion I emphasized in your quote leads to the crux of the Quantum Suicide exercise: According to the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics, there is never a scenario in which something has exactly zero probability. A particular future event might have a vanishingly infinitesimal probability of occurring—say, odds of one in a googleplex, for example—but that probability still is non-zero. Therefore, if the many-worlds interpretation of QED is accurate, then there is always some universe in which even that incredibly unlikely event occurs. That is the powerful and sobering (not to mention seemingly absurd) implication of the many-worlds interpretation of QED.
So, for instance, while it is extraordinarily improbable that a bar of pure gold will materialize out of empty space and drop onto my desk—nonetheless if in fact MW is correct, then in some universe I'll be celebrating my newfound wealth. By the same token, while it's very unlikely that a bullet could liquify 99% of the Quantum Suicide experimenter's brain and yet he still survive (to make it even more far-fetched, let's say with full consciousness and no permanent effects), nevertheless this thought-experiment asserts that at least in some universe(s) the experimenter does in fact live, and that his "awareness of being" will of course continue only in those universes. — Ryanaxp 17:29, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
Replace the gun with an atomic bomb. The bomb is right next to the physicist and if one of the radioactive atoms decay, the physicist dies. But, in an alternate world(s) the physicist still lives and doesn't experience death. So the physicist never dies in one scenario or another, but the physcist also ends up dying in other scenarios. How many times he/she dies depends on the probability of the atom decaying. So if there is a 50-50 chance the scientist will die in half of the worlds and live in another half. In this case you cannot say that the physicist won't die because if an atoic bomb explodes let's say 2 feet from a person the chance of death is 99.999%.
Doesn't this idea assume that death is the end of conciousness?
I don't think that is relevant. The split will supposedly still occur and you will live on in one universe. In the universe that you die in you may end up in heaven watering pot plants and talking to God however. It does raise the interesting point as to weather Consciousness (or should I say: Sentience) is 'special' or purely just a bi-product of the brain.
The experiment does assume death is the end of consciousness. If your consciousness doesn't permanently end but you end up in Heaven, then you will with high probability find yourself in Heaven after a few rounds, whether Many Worlds is true or not. Spgrk 09:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
-Shouldn't it be "Quantum invincibility" rather than "immortality" to avoid confusion - the experiment described only makes the test-subject invulnerable to a gun bullet - they don't suddenly become a vampire that never dies as long as they are in the experiment (I suppose you could argue that in some universes events might come in to play that would somehow prevent a person's biological decay over time but I dont think thats the main argument of this article...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.192.248.235 ( talk) 16:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I do not see how this is a categorical proof of multiple universes.
Say, during the first round the observer survives. Now there are two possibilites:
1> He/she is dead in an alternate universe. 2> He/she survived, as the probability of survival was 1/2.
Now, after the second round the two above statements would still hold true except that the probability would change to 1/4. We can continue almost* ad infinitum. So, my question is, how does the survivor know which of the two cases it is? The notion that he/she will EVENTUALLY die is disturbing. After any given number of finite rounds, there exists a probability of >0 that the observer would survive(in a Copenhagen world). It does get highly improbable, but it is possible. So, in my opinion the observer can never say with surity whether he/she has survived by luck or is he/she living in an alternate universe and dead in several others. Hence, it is not a categorical proof.
Another question I have is how many universes is the original universe split into? if the chance is 1/2, is it split into 2 unvierses? or 4 with 2 universes having similar outcomes? Which raises the question that how does the alternate universe thing works for irrational probabilities?
L'Umais 14:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
You've touched on something i was looking for comment on. Does the universe have a concept of reduced fractions? If there was a 2/3 chance of the gun firing, are 2 universes created in which the gun fires and one where the gun does not? Is there one full universe created where the gun fires and another incomplete, half universe created that limps along through time? Just something I think could be worth touching on.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
There's 100% chance the gun will fire, and 100% chance that it will not. It actually happens in both worlds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.86.178 ( talk) 22:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The anthropic principle is necessary for this experiment.
I'm assuming that the MWI isn't a load of sh1t to start with.
But, the way I see it, this experiment isn't just 'proof' to the subject, but to an increasing number of Universes of observers to the experiment along the way.
To be brief, if the guy pulls the trigger 1000 times in a row and then stops, the observers in the Universe he ends up in will verify that he did indeed pull the trigger 1000 times in a row and not die. Naturally there will be all manner of Universes along the way (like the one just prior) where the observers saw him pull the trigger 999 times and then die on the 1000th. And such like. With each pull of the trigger there will be an increasing number of universes who are now very sure that MWI is correct.
Which then brings me back to 'proof'. Perhaps 10 pulls would be enough proof to the subject or the observer. Or maybe it would take a 100 or 1000 or a million or so to do it. etc etc.
Could someone provide cites for the Moravec and Machal articles? I can't find anything which fits the bill and am wondering if it's a bit of a stretch to say these people published something regarding this subject. Thanks, 68.147.56.203 05:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I've read some books related to the topic that develop it just as a possible scenario of the multiple interpretations of QM, and in one of them I find a reference of a Moravec's Essay about consciousness. Hope it helps.
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
There is currently a paragraph that reads
Even if the many-worlds interpretation is correct, the measure (given in MWI by the squared norm of the wavefunction) of the surviving copies of the physicist will decrease by 50% with each run of the experiment. This is equivalent to a single-world situation in which one starts off with many copies of the physicist, and the number of surviving copies is decreased by 50% with each run. Therefore, the quantum nature of the experiment provides no benefit to the physicist; in terms of his life expectancy or rational decision making, or even in terms of his trying to decide whether the many-worlds interpretation is correct, the many-worlds interpretation gives results that are the same as that of a single-world interpretation.
but I do not see how the sentences before the "Therefore" justify the sentences after it. For instance, if MWI were true wouldn't it be quite valuable for the physicist to buy an annuity that paid her an inflation-adjusted value for as long as she lived? Sure, in the average universe the life insurance company would not lose big time and, sure her heirs might be pissed about how much she is spending on an annuity of dubious value -- but wouldn't a selfish physicist win big time in the universes she cared about? Quantling 21:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I found the quantum suicide article extremely biased against the thought experiment. It was overly dismissive to the pro point of view and gave the impression the issue was settled when in fact this is far from the case. I have edited it to give a less biased and more accurate picture of the debate. Jared333 03:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
When physicists uses the word "observed", we don't mean, "seen with human eyes". The gun indicates the state of the system, therefore it is observed. In fact, if any kind of signal that can be seen outside the box is triggered by something inside the box, the system inside the box is being observed. Schrödinger's cat is a bit misleading because it attempts to describe the subatomic with a macroscopic system. I'm sorry, but this thought experiment is completely invalid, not because of anything remotely philosophical, but because one of it's basic assumptions is false. That being that the mechanics of the described system are statistical in nature. DarkEther 07:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
-there is a nobel prize waiting for you if you can prove QM is deterministic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.63.137.34 ( talk) 19:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
When physicists uses the word "observed", we don't mean, "seen with human eyes". The gun indicates the state of the system, therefore it is observed.
I think you are mixing observation with measurement.
Firstly, observation is a psychological function, a function of awareness. We observe what our measurment apparatus tell us. Indeed, measuring apparatus are sufficient to eradicate superpositions from our observations, but it takes an observation to see that the measurement has indeed done this.
Secondly, while this distinction makes almost no practical difference to the typical work of a quantum physicist, the Quantum Suicide experiment is designed precisely to highlight it.
Lastly, by saying we can simply see things from the point of view of the gun itself, you seem to have missed the point: We haven't asked what the gun sees, or what any surrounding human observers will see. That is given in the setup, there is a probability amplitude of -(square root of 2i) that other observers will see the you die, leading to a 50/50 chance if there is one world and a world with a live and world with a dead experimenter if the many worlds is true.
The point of the experiment is to ask what the experimenter sees, not what the gun or other observers see. That experimenter cannot possibly see themselves dead, therefore they always perceive themselves as alive. And without any negative ramifications either.
You seem to think the experiment is saying that everyone else will not see them die either. That is not what the experiement says.
Anyway, I got rid of your "This is false" statement since it lacked a neutral position, but I left in your argument, and presented a counter argument.
As others have pointed out, the crux is the lack of any instantaneous way of causing death. If you could cease to exist in the timespan of a quantum decision, then perhaps. But instead you're going to fire the gun and for an exceedingly brief time feel the bullet rip through your skull and brain until consciousness finally ceases
Two problems that arise from this:
Unlikely (though not impossible) things happen in our universe as well. You would be surprised by the number of people who fail to kill themselves with a gun. I agree with you that death is a process and not a single moment though and we aren't sure of how much it takes for someone to be dead. If there is indeed a specific moment when someone stops being alive and this experiment is correct, there will always be a universe where the subject survives by halting near the brink of the abyss. And yes, you would most likely end up in bad shape. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.63.137.34 ( talk) 19:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I have not read that Schrödinger nor any one else considers a random element within the closed box as a part of the equation. The cat has by now; (out of curiosity) opened the bottle, in all the many worlds. JohnTDanaPoint
Tegmark's original paper presenting the quantum suicide (QS) experiment concludes with this sentence:
Perhaps as a result, it is often written that the experimenter can only convince herself. But I disagree, with good cause:
(1) If I ever see you step out of one of my thousands of QS boxes (which now occupy the tunnels originally excavated for the Superconducting Supercollider, by the way), I will be very impressed. After you tell me your story, I will be even more impressed. Then I will watch and listen to the videotape from the tamper-proof recording device that was in there with you. I will hear click after click, with occasional bangs when you moved your head out of the way of the gun to test the device. By counting the clicks while your head was in place, I can convince myself of the validity of your claim.
(2) Even if you arrive in my world dead, the recording device will show us the sequence of events you experienced. If it is sufficiently long (a total of N events), then from a statistical viewpoint I will be just as impressed as if you stepped out of the box alive after N-1 events. Thus, the common assumption that only one world can get an answer is not at all correct.
(3) If you step out of a QS box after an hour, smiling and relaxed, all ready to collect your $10,000,000.00 prize, and I know you have no major psychological issues, I can ask you whether you'd be willing to step back in for another hour, to earn an extra $1000.00 bonus. If you agree and get back in, I am highly persuaded that you have become convinced that you will always remember surviving. Of course a moment later you will most likely be fatally wounded as far as my morticians can see, but that was to be expected and it doesn't reduce my belief that you are still alive elsewhere. In fact, I am then happier than ever because I know that not I, but another I, must pay you all that money. -- Parsiferon 05:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't any statistical anomaly serve as proof that it is real then? Killing someone is just to take things to the extreme, there oughtta be an universe where someone will always get heads with the flip of any coin whatsoever that does have a heads side for example, that is the exact same thing as many-worlds immortality. --
TiagoTiago (
talk)
03:30, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Just imagine all of the possible universes in your past in which you made a different decision and would still be alive and well today (although in different universes). The "you" that exists now is just one of infinitely possible copies of "you". The "me" that is typing right now shares exactly the same history and continuity with the "me" that isn't typing this. At the same time, if it were ever possible for both copies to confront one another, I would not be able to get inside the head of my alternate self any more than I'd be able to get inside the head of any other being sharing a seperate existance in my reality (though my "double" would be a little more predictable).
So, if I were to perform this experiment, why is it assured that the "I" that I think I am every morning when I wake up has priority over the other copies of me who wake up to a different morning? If the odds in the experiment are against me surviving, isn't it likely that "my" conscious existance, which is only one of many copies, would cease to exist forever, while the survivors would be my copies? It's the same hesitation I have to "mind uploading"... If you transfer my consciousness to a machine while keeping the original human "me" alive, there will be two of me in one universe. For all intents and purposes, the robot "me" would be every bit as "me" as the human, though each has its own seperate existance. That's not exactly comforting... -- 166.66.106.50 15:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Please read the contents of the page indicated by the following url, wherein will be revealed that already in 1964 had been conceived such ideas, whereof this article purports to account a history, omissions to which ought well be corrected. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.90.137 ( talk) 20:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Right, if any event has a non-zero probability, and the universe lasts forever, surely it's possible my brain will pop out of the vacuum of space infinitely many times after my death and thus my consciousness will be allowed to continue indefinitely? Isn't this idea independent of whether you use the Copenhagen or M.W.I? Thanks for any info. AnCh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.134.233.151 ( talk) 21:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I doubt that "The Prestige" is relevant to this article - it simply involves creating duplicates with a non-destructive teleporter. If you think it is relevant you should also include the glorious old novella, " Rogue Moon", which used similar teleports over a longer distance. 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 18:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[2] the short story has all the basic ideas, the universe is split each time a decision is made, there are a myriad universes, anything that can, happens in one of them. etc. et.c —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vish ( talk • contribs) 10:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
If you believe Robin Hanson's account of MW [3], the low-measure worlds are posited to fall apart due to interference from the high-measure world. If you do this experiment, the world in which you survive may turn out to be so low-measure as to disintegrate taking you with it. — ciphergoth 09:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Reading the article, the idea of Quantum Immorality sounds a lot like a tautology. Basically, being hooked up to a machine that will cause instant death, which here is assumed to be the cessation of consciousness, here assumed to be the ability to perceive. Then the situation becomes "as long as the device does not kill the experimenter then the experimenter will never experience his own death". This would come quite literally because no one could perceive their own death. In order to experience death, or perceive death, one would have to continue perception and experience after death. Under the presumption of an after-life (let's assume a Christian-like one, where your consciousness continues only elsewhere) then one would have the chance to experience and perceive their own death, however under this same assumption the experimenter would be capable in all worlds of experiencing the outcome of each event, until such time as he is transfered to the "elsewhere". As it has been so widely taught "cogito ergo sum", the metaphysics of reality is that the absolute skeptic cannot doubt that he exists. To doubt his existence is to prove his existence. The mere fact that we are able to think proves to each one of us individually of our existence. Such a definitive meta-physical statement cannot be said for anything, anything else at all (due to veil of perception). Thus, defining the end of our existence is simply "when we stop perceiving ourselves". Faced with such an end of existence (not "death", which might have an after-life, this is guaranteed to be the End for you) we could never experience it, or perceive it. Such an event will never be known to us, because once the End comes, we will have stopped being able to perceive even the most definitive thing in the universe, ourself.
This concept of Quantum Immortality and this article itself reflect no different a notion to me other than the tautological statement: "I'm immortal until I die". -- Puellanivis ( talk) 23:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
What has this got to do with the article? Sure, it's related to quantum physics in general, but has nothing to do with quantum suicide or immortality. I'm removing it; if someone has a good reason to add it back in, undo my edit after posting the reason. 86.135.97.226 ( talk) 15:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, I know the talk page is to discuss ways to improve the article and not for questions, but the explanation leads me to several questions. In some world(s), there would exist an immortal observer, but does that mean that each time we die our conscious is forced to move to a 'surviving' state? How does the nature of the existence of consciousness relate to the MWI in the first place? Maybe I missed something in the article but why is ceasing to exist not a state, is conscious separate from the physical brain? I'd appreciate if someone could explain that in plain English (and without getting into philosophy or religion) Something Edible ( talk) 18:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
What about dying to get to a parallel universe? There is a lot of discussion about going to the next closest (however that is measured) parallel universe at death, but why should that be the case? Could this not be a means of accessing your own (subjective) heaven and hell? How one would direct which universe you would go to is beyond me, but this seems like the key to happiness for some of the more suicidal folk.
Ghostface26 (
talk)
07:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
No kidding. But thus far this seems like the only method this side of a Level II civilization that I can think of that allows universe hopping. And that`s not much of a difference if it only affects the absolute instant.
What of David Ambrose`s `The Man Who Turned Into Himself?` Okay, it`s fiction, but in it our protagonist`s consciousness essentially gets transported into a new universe of him, but with most of the world different. Even he`s a different person, with new memories and all. Is there some mechanism that allows for that? I`m also reminded of Ken Grimwood`s `Replay`, where the protagonist dies and is suddenly alive in his 18 year old body (from age 43). Ghostface26 ( talk) 22:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Your conscience doesn't get moved into your surviving body, it was with it all along. --
TiagoTiago (
talk)
03:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
I`ve no idea how someone would go about navigating or directing the travel, but does it not stand to reason that, should quantum immortality hold true (admittedly a big if), then one could use that as a way to get to a better (or far worse!) universe? Could this effectively amount to time travel? I mean, if in the multiverse, all times are happening `now`(ie: the snapshot hypothesis of reality, that each instant is its own `now`), and your mind `carried over` to those worlds, would that not for all intents and purposes BE time travel?
Thanks!
Ghostface26 ( talk) 17:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
But why must that be? If the theory implies that consciousness can`t be extinguished, then why not just have my consciousness transferred (or whatever the term is) to any other world than the one immediately in the future? How come we can interact with just some but not others? It seems to me that that`s a double standard. If all moments exist at the same `now`, then subjectively they are all in the future. If there was some independent observer who witnessed that transaction,they would think you`d leapt into the future, even if that future was a snapshot of the past. Ghostface26 ( talk) 22:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
According to Dictionary.com, science is: 1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences. 2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Read through my thought experiment, and see what you think.
An experimenter flips a coin a thousand times, and lands heads every time. (Flipping a coin 1000 times gives you about 2^1.07150861 x 10^301 different worlds, and only one would have 1000 consecutive heads flips.) The experimenter, who accepts the many worlds hypothesis, will say: "I am in that one world in which all outcomes were heads. All other copies of myself got other results."
An uneducated observer asks him, "So it was just luck that the penny landed that way?"
"Yes", said the Physicist. "It was simply my good fortune to be in the one universe in which all outcomes are heads. Perhaps some of my copies no longer believe in many worlds."
Another observer, this time a physicist, says "So you had a 1/(2^1000) chance of being in the world that you are?"
"Yes, of course."
"I believe that the Copenhagen interpretation is correct. I'm not going to use it to explain your results; I'll use simple probability. Assuming that there are not 'many worlds', and I flip a coin, there is a 50% probability of it landing heads. 2 flips lower the odds to 25%. 1000 flips lower the odds to 1/(2^1000). If you succeed in getting 1000 consecutive heads flips, then you have simply been fortunate in defying the odds. You say you have been fortunate in being in the one world where all the flips were heads. But you have no justification for including worlds in your analysis - the odds of being in this particular world exactly equal the odds of randomly flipping heads 100 times! It could be that you were fortunate in getting 1000 heads flips without all the unfortunate other copies who didn't! These other quantum worlds, if they exist, are undetectable. This experiment simply followed the laws of probability."
How could you respond to that? Is there any way of experimentally showing Many Worlds to be correct? If not, then it is not experimentally verifiable, or provable using empirical data, and as such as not scientific (by the above definition). It's more of a psychological idea than a scientific one.
My main problem with the article is that it is rather unfair to be criticising the points and counterpoints. Wikipedia should be unbiased! Also is counter-counter-point a good expression to use? Overall the quality of the article is rather poor. -- Astropastime ( talk) 17:06, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
The odds are always 1:1 that you would be in the universe you are; the same holds true for all other yous. It's not a matter of luck, with infinite different universes, if somthing is possible it will be true in some; you could think that the odd of a tick in the compass being the one for 180 is 1 in 360, but the odds the 180 tick is gonna be the 180 tick is 1 in 1. -- TiagoTiago ( talk) 03:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Nuclear bomb
Another example is where an experimenter detonates a nuclear bomb beside himself. In almost all parallel universes, the nuclear explosion will vaporize the experimenter. However, there should be a small set of alternative universes in which the experimenter somehow survives (i.e. the set of universes which support a "miraculous" survival scenario, or some extremely unlikely, but technically possible event occurs saving the experimenter). However this variation of a quantum suicide has one factor that automatically collapses the wave function as soon as it affects more than one observer making the experimenters probability at achieving a sound result a paradox upon affecting anyone other than oneself.
Wavefunctions only collapse in the Copenhagen Interpretation, and quantum suicide only works in the Many-Worlds Interpretation, so I don't see how one can say that one variation of a quantum suicide experiment is a paradox because of wavefunction collapse, without first assuming that MWI is false. I am going to remove the sentence beginning with "However".
71.72.235.91 ( talk) 12:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
Though the references are still too sparse for me to use for Wikipeida, people are starting to talk about the possibility of controlling reality using quantum suicide. If you have an absolutely reliable killing machine, you can simply wish for something to happen, and activate the machine if it doesn't happen. Then, only two sets of universes will exist: The set of universes in which you died (which you cannot experience), and the set of those in which you were convinced that your wish came true. So from your point of view, such a machine would function as a genie. 71.72.235.91 ( talk) 13:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
And it is not from the theory on this page... it is from this section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality#Max_Tegmark
I am not sure of a better way to word it, but it needs to be done. It looks like someone just decided to add a comment to the end of the section as it is barely even a sentence. SeanJA ( talk) 12:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I think I fixed it up a little bit... SeanJA ( talk) 12:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Recent changes have presented Mallah's arguments as the final and complete refutation to quantum suicide, along with a few strawmen tossed in for good measure. I have tried to add some NPOV to the issue [4]. See [5] for dialogue on the matter. -- Michael C. Price talk 01:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Mallah is a philosopher, is he even qualifed to talk about the subject? Mind you , I'm no expert myself but some of his arguments didn't make much sense. Ngherappa ( talk) 12:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
David Papineau is quoted as saying
"If one outcome is valuable because it contains my future experiences, surely an alternative outcome which lacks those experiences is of lesser value, simply by comparison with the first outcome. Since expected utility calculations hinge on relative utility values rather than absolute ones, I should be concerned about death as long as the outcome where I die is given less utility than the one where I survive, whatever the absolute value." [2]
It seems to me that instead of "I should" he meant to say "Should I" (i.e. posing a rhetorical question). Does anyone have access to the publication to see if there's been a transcription error somewhere down the publication chain. -- Michael C. Price talk 01:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
The idea of quantum immortality, is not that your specific consciousness is immortal, but that a copy of it will live on in alternate realities or dimensions after your death. For better explanation, let's take 100 pennies. They are all pennies, alike and similar, fresh from the mint, same date, with impossibly perfect fabrication. We toss them violently at a sewer drain on the side of the road. Some may go down, some will ricochet and land on the cement. The pennies that did not make it, are much similar to the dead consciousness possibilities/branches. They are gone in their world. But those that ricocheted and landed on the ground, are the living ones, and continued in theirs.
Upon death you may split into either a living, or dead possibility branch.
But no matter what, you keep on living. Just not the specific consciousness that you were. You will be dead, but another "you" will go on.
The phenomenon is difficult to explain, but the "you" is who you are in every way except the consciousness is a copy.
I edited the section on works of fiction, removed "The Prestige" as it was concerned with teleportation and having multiple "copies" of a person in the same universe, not really related to the idea of "quantum suicide." I added "Anathem" as an example, because it focuses very directly on the idea of living and dying simultaneously in multiple universes. But having just one example doesn't make a very good list, so others should be added, possibly any of these: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/8284761 - LesPaul75 talk 21:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I was very excited to see the note about Anathem, because that was the first thing that came to my mind after reading this article. I vote that the Anathem note stays in! --
Tibbs (
talk)
03:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Why do the other copies need to die? How does it change the experiment if instead of the other copies being shot, they instead see a message on a screen, or see a light turn on? The winning copy can still draw the same conclusions about MWI regardless of whether the other copies die. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomfrh ( talk • contribs) 09:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Am I correct in thinking that substantial portions of "The quantum suicide thought experiment" are plaigarised from HowStuffWorks? Brainfsck ( talk) 08:17, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so what qualifies someone as being as expert? If I need to be published, that's a problem. However, I do now possess a B.S. in physics.
I'll restate my argument. I'm going to play a little loose with my terminology in an attempt to avoid future semantics arguments.
1. In quantum mechanics, an observable is anything that can be measured.
2. In quantum mechanics, observation and measurement are identically the same thing.
This comes from the fact that we are dealing with elemental particles. In your everyday, macroscopic world, you know where things are because light bounces off of them. So, when you try to find your basket ball in your room, you're actually looking for the light that bounced off of it. Now, imaging what would happen if you where blindfolded and had to find your ball by bouncing other basketballs off of it. Ignoring possible property damage, the most immediate problem is that if you do happen to hit your ball with one of the test balls, it is likely to move. When trying to locate a particle in a box, the only known way to find it is to bounce something off of it. If the box is your room, the particle is a basketball and the something is alot of photons, there is no problem. The tiny amount of momentum imparted by the photons will not move the basketball in any meaningful way. If the box is a potential well, the particle is an electron and the something is a photon, the electron's position and momentum can be greatly changed. The out come is just like finding basketballs with basketballs, (or baseballs, or vollyballs,. . . the import thing is that they can impart comparable momentums on each other.)
This is why "observation" changes a system.
The reason why measurement and observation are the same thing is because measurement amounts to counting quanta. It's like "observing" there are 5 marbles in a bag. You "measured" the number of marbles when you counted them.
3. If a system is observed in such a way that its state in know at all times, it will behave in accordance with classical models
Knowing the state of a system at all times means there is no super-positioning of states, no uncertainty of measure. That means, Newtonian. That mean, deterministic. If you doubt me, read up on the electron double slit experiment.
4. The gun fires based on the state of the system
5. In order for a the gun to know when to go off, the system needs to be observed at all times
Ok, yes, the gun doesn't "know" anything, it's not intelligent. The person who set it up is. The system needs to be observed at all times, or the gun may miss the change.
6. The mechanics of the described system are NOT statistical in nature
7. The Quantum Suicide thought experiment is invalid because it is based on a model that does not describe the mechanics of the system it sets up.
Look, general rule of thumb: If someone is talking about quantum mechanics, and they aren't describing something *much* smaller that you can possibly see, they're probably wrong.
DarkEther ( talk) 20:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
ok, you'll have to forgive me, that last time I read the article, it was talking about radio active decay as a trigger. As it stands now, every 10 seconds the experimenter has a 50-50 chance to live. At every single moment, he knows if he's alive and what the outcome of every "flip" is, so that part is not statistical in nature. Because we are taking a random photon and measuring it, that part is probabilistic yes, but still not statistical. The random photon is functionally no different than the experimenter flipping a coin repeatedly while holding the gun himself. Just because you're measuring a spin state rather than a coin face doesn't mean that the laws of quantum mechanics apply. You might as well argue that the rules of special relativity apply because you're measuring something that's moving at the speed of light.
DarkEther ( talk) 21:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
I find this article to have several issues.
My suggestion is that this article presents the quantum suicide material, and leave the quantum immortality to the science fiction section. There does not seem to be a production in Philosophy or Physics that is relevant to this topic, even to qualify it as a metaphysical discussion in the philosophy literature (lack of any work on quantum immortality in philosophy journals seems to suggest that discussion on this topic as a metaphysical theory is completely inexistent). From 5,6,8 the whole "Against quantum immortality" section will disappear. Bode One ( talk) 22:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to see some sources on this article, esp. this statement:
". For instance, there are a number of people who have "flirted with death" only to come out just fine. Some of these people report "otherworldy" experiences during this transition stage and may also report subtle yet observable changes to their world. In some instances, people come through such experiences with recent news events missing or people outside of their social circle who had died, being mysteriously still alive. "
If I've ever heard something that sounded like BS, this is it.
174.114.87.236 ( talk) 02:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I think there's some sort of subtle logical flaw in the notion of quantum immortality. Some sort of fallacy of excluded middle. Quantum immortality seems plausible when you think of abstract 'death', but when you think of gradual loss of function of the brain, it becomes a lot less plausible.
How does quantum immortality protect you from, say, succumbing to Alzheimer's ? There would be an alternative you, who never got Alzheimer's, but he diverged from you ages ago. There would be alternative you's whose alzheimer got suddenly cured stopped at different times. All of them are different people from you; there's no more reason to expect your subjective 'self' to switch into a less damaged brain than there is to expect it to switch into your neighbour. Same goes for more sudden death; the loss of consciousness is gradual. Does quantum immortality protect your neurons from dying off? Each dead neuron makes you to be very slightly less, but with no well defined boundary where you suddenly become non conscious.
In my opinion, the whole notion of quantum immortality derives from ill defined notion of 'self'. You are not the same you few seconds into the future or few seconds into the past; you are not the copy of you that diverged a few seconds ago.
It does not follow from MWI that you will subjectively survive a quantum suicide experiment. It only means that a lot of people rather similar to you will survive the experiment (vast majority of them by deciding not to perform experiment themselves and forking off early). That offers some consolation, but not immortality. It makes death less extreme in that someone very similar to you lives on somewhere else, as opposed to total loss of information. But as you don't expect your subjective experience to jump backward or forward a few seconds just because you few seconds ago are very similar to you now, you should not expect your subjective experience to somehow transition to already-branched off you.
I fainted one time in my life - no idea why - dark spots in visions, followed by whats best described as first hand experience of HAL's end in 2001 the space odyssey - being gradually switched off. I don't see how existence of parallel myselves whom are constantly forking off would prevent subjective me from experiencing this gradual sequence to it's logical limit - nothingness - just as the zeno's paradox is no reason to expect the Achilles to never catch up with tortoise.
And the entire notion that only the observers who did not die observe - well you can replace the gun with a red light, and speak of people who did not see the red light instead of people who are alive. All the people who did not see the red light did not see the red light, that's a tautology the same as all the people who are observing observe they aren't dead.
edit: or suppose for example that the number of yous is arbitrarily large but not infinite. Then the number of you's with the quantum suicide experiment is less than without, meaning that something had died. Perhaps our notion of infinity is wrong and we should use notion of something that can be arbitrarily large but not infinite (so that it, divided by 2, is not equal to itself). The whole 're-normalization' issue in quantum mechanics seem to indicate that it is the case.
78.63.245.109 ( talk) 22:30, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
This wiki page use to have a section with Jack Mallah's work on it, but it got taken down because "he doesn't have an affiliation with a university." It is very important that both sides of the Quantum Immortality argument are addressed, so I added a section for Mallah. He has been arguing against Quantum Immortality and Quantum Suicide for years, and he does hold a Ph.D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.1.128.18 ( talk) 14:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
This paper does not represent a source that's up to Wikipedia's quality, nor does it necessitate inclusion in this article. I move that it be removed once more. 222.147.159.195 ( talk) 04:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC)Bachelor's/Master's, Mechanical Engineering, Cooper Union PhD, Physics, NYU Master's, Medical Physics, UW-Madison
I'm moving this here since it seems to be outside of mainstream discussion of this topic, and imho distracts and confuses if it's placed in between paragraphs describing the discussion within the physics community. -- 213.196.194.37 ( talk) 17:58, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Assuming quantum immortality is true, it can be used to achieve virtually anything. By linking the results of an action to the hypothetical instant brain-death machine, say, whether a coin lands on heads, you must live in the universe in which you do not die (and therefore where the result you want happens). Assuming the machine had an astronomically unlikely rate of failure (orders of magnitude less likely than the result you want), you could get over the oft-mentioned problem of "maimed, but not brain dead", by programming the device to kill you if you so much as get a papercut. Sure, in the vast majority of universes people would observe you getting a papercut and then dying, but in the one in which you are conscious, you could make yourself indestructible.
Theoretically, in your own universe, you could end world hunger, stop all wars, cure all diseases, etc. this way. Pretty freaky. Silenceisgod ( talk) 19:31, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Actually the story described is called Angels of Ashes, The Real Story is a Carrie Clay story, both published in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories. There is another story called Everlasting which more directly addresses this idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.124.155.247 ( talk) 09:17, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
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The explanation is that given by Max Tegmark, who independently originated the thought experiment some time earlier. The source given is extremely clear that it refers to this thought experiment. It is very relevant to having a neutral point of view to give reasons why it would not actually work. It is still quantum immortality, since in many-worlds a version of the experimenter will always find they defy all odds. Crossroads1 ( talk) 05:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Tegmark is not the originator of the thought experiment and it also doesn't make sense to include it in the main section - since it just says it won't work. I don't know if the quote is accurate, but giving the benefit of the doubt, I moved it to the section about his beliefs. Your paragraph doesn't make much sense to me, but my understanding of Max Tegmark is that he doesn't actually think quantum immortality is a real phenomena, yet he's one of the few respectable scientists to write about it. So it's fine if it's part of "his section", which is basically a criticism section. But QI implies actual immortality, so it's just wrong. Akvadrako ( talk) 17:11, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
So, here's why I think it would be utterly awful if this turned out to be a real situation: The version of "you" which retains consciousness for the longest period of time will continually be asymptotically approaching dead. You will not know about the other "you"s, and, assuming you're conscious right now while reading this, the "you" that exists now WILL continue to be the one that's in this situation, in one universe. I won't go into detail on what I mean by "asymptotically approaching dead", but I think you can imagine - horrific injuries, paralysed, decrease mental faculties, and so on. I assume someone else has made this argument somewhere before, and I think it should be mentioned in the article somewhere. 130.63.110.250 ( talk) 23:16, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
If you want to write about this, you have ample sources. David Lewis is a well known philosopher who thought the same as you did and had a number of articles published on the topic. See the end of http://andrewmbailey.com/dkl/How_Many_Lives.pdf, one of the last papers he wrote before dying in 2001. Personally I don't think you need to worry about it - I've thought about this a lot and read all the literature I can find on it. Consider not dying to be a boundary condition. Accepting that, whatever is most probable will happen. For example, it's more likely someone will cure ageing then you are currently "asymptotically approaching dead". Akvadrako ( talk) 21:57, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Actually this article used to contain references to Lewis work, but it was removed in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Quantum_suicide_and_immortality&diff=prev&oldid=392880020&diffmode=source — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akvadrako ( talk • contribs) 10:47, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
The article says "Therefore, the experimenter will have a lower probability of observing a world in which they survive than the world in which they set up the experiment". Should it not be "than the world in which they don't set the experiment"? Because there are likely many more Universes where they set up the experiment than Universes where they set up the experiments and survive (given they survive in only a very tiny fraction of them). -- Mati Roy ( talk) 17:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
Ok, so. The "In fiction" section was removed by anonymous user. I don't see any particular discussion regarding this deletion, certainly not surrounding the time the particular section was deleted. Was there any particular prior discussion why this was supposed to be deleted elsewhere? -- wwwwolf ( barks/ growls) 00:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
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AFAIK it is incorrect to apply the unitarity principle of the QM wave function transition to the system consisting of a man and a gun. It is not and can never be an isolated system and the unitarity principle does not work on open systems. So this thought experiment is invalid.
-- Dc987 ( talk) 19:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC) We have always existed since our physical bodies are comprised of atoms and molecules that have been around since beginning of our universe. Likewise when our physical body dies the atoms and molecules eventually get rearranged. My thought on "dying" is that when loose all conciousness we probably revert back state of conciousness we were in before we were born, remember that? We don't know we died, we don't know we ever lived, maybe. If alt. universes pick up our conciousness, I don't know and the rest of us can never know. Based on probabilities as we know it none of us can ever "know" anything absolutely. 74.107.171.137 ( talk) 20:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)terry lyon 7-04-10
The thought experiment has the experimenter surviving a near-death experience in a box. But I'm surviving my very own near-death experience right now. I am alive, and that is always a near-death experience.
Let's say I have a heart attack and drop dead when I'm 80. But there's another one of me that won't have that experience and will keep on living. I keep living, and then I get hit by a truck when I'm 90. But another one of me won't. I get killed by my great grand kids at 100. Another one of me wont. The one me that keeps on living, will keep on living forever. I don't need a Schroedinger's cat box to show that this experiment is false - I won't go on living forever! And this would be true of everyone - that everyone keeps on living forever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jgroub ( talk • contribs) 05:47, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
You seem to be implying that there is always a branch to take at every moment in which you survive. Surely, by the time you get old enough, you will have died of old age in all possible futures. -- 118.90.74.223 ( talk) 10:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't know a lot about aging, or about quantum mechanics, but, on a cellular level... well, an atomic level, with the atoms making up the cells... (or something like that), there must be some non-zero probability that the atoms in the cell will not decay (that's what atoms do, right?), and the cell will not die. Expand this to cover all cells in the body, and there must be some non-zero probability that the person to whom those cells belong to will not age, and thus will not die of old age. Which, when combined with the non-zero probability that they will not die in any other way, gives you an infinitesimal probability that this person is immortal. Possibly. Am I right, people who know the slightest thing about this stuff? PopeJaimie ( talk) 13:26, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Probably not, but you will be the oldest person on Earth and so will I, except at different realities.
Yes you are right..In some universe you will not age..In the many worlds interpretation, every possible outcome will be played out, even whether you will age or not..everything will always be played out
So, I realize that everyone here thinks they are such good physicists that they need to argue their points forever, but allow me to point out how this is absolutely NOT in any kind of encyclopedia format. I mean seriously, it's like: Point Counter-Point Counter-Counter-Point. That is obvious on this discussion page, but the whole article needs to be re-edited to remove all the internal arguing, and made a lot more fluid. -----Tobias —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.93.65.19 ( talk) 20:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
The fairly obvious problem that seems missing from this discussion is this: Quantum suicide experiment only leads to a possible Quantum Immortality in the set of universes in which the only form of death is suicide. And presumably, if you're in such a universe, you know it, so you never conduct this experiment except in unverses as we know them. In any of these universes, the experimenter will eventually die anyway, just not always from suicide. In fact, if the subject simply sits in front of that gun indefinitely, splitting off at every branch still both shot and not shot, he'll starve on the not-shot branch, eventually. Or end the experiment.
But suicide isn't a cause of death. Death is always caused by destruction of the brain, stopping of the heart. Therefore suicide as used in the experiment is just a means to the end and irrelevant to the outcome. 67.160.174.24 ( talk) 12:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Is this Michael Tegmark or Max Tegmark?
I hope nobudy ever dus this experement, becuse it will be imposible to pruve... -- 24.207.69.51 04:52, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think it can be proven -- see "It IS possible to convince others of your findings" further down on this page. -- Parsiferon 05:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Nonetheless, if this view is admissible, then it settles the age-old controversy among Christians over the "free-will/predestination" debate, as the many-worlds conjecture allows God to know the state of the entire system of his creation -- what is happening in *ALL* of the "many-worlds". It is only when a measurement is taken, and a choice point is traversed, that the non-god observer "colapses the wave function" and travels along the trajectory to a down-stream sub-tree of the many-worlds heirarchy. The probability associated with each different choice at such a choice-point is similar to the "heuristic values" computed by the heuristic functions used to decide how to expand the search tree in classical artificial intelligence programming. Thus we as humans perceive it as an evolutionary narural selection process, but only because we have no knowledge of what is happening in other parallel worlds associated with what Robert Frost calls "The Road not Taken".
See my semi-rambling objections on the Talk:Quantum immortality. In particular, any suicide is a quantum suicide, so all you have to do for an experiment is try to kill yourself (NOT RECOMMENDED!); this is totally non-falsifiable because it cannot be observed, by definition; and it assumes that, at any wave-function collape point, the mind/consciousness/soul will usually choose the most likely point (at least I must conclude that from my subjective experience), except it will always choose one in which it continues to exist. And another thought I just had; the existence of Heaven (in which I do not believe), or any other mechanism by which the mind can outlive the body, would mean that "quantum suicide" would still be permanent, regardless of the soul's insitence on continuing to exist. So I'd recommend nobody who does believe in Heaven try this at home. (Note: I'd recommend that NOBODY try this at home. Just making a point.) Glenn Willen ( Talk) [[]] 21:36, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You don't even need to commit suicide, just flip a coin. If the many worlds theory is correct then there must exists a world where you can get 1000 consecutive heads in a row thus proving that the many worlds theory is correct. Pity you can't send the result to the other ((2^1000) - 1 ) other worlds. -- (Anon)
While I agree one cannot experience anything once one has ceased to exist, does it really make this experiment work? What if not experiencing anything is a null experience, which, while it isn't an experience in the normal sense, is still fundamentally a valid experience. Why would a mind magically evade the null experience? -- Lakefall 21:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is another flaw in this thought experiment. Whether there are multiple universes or not, this experiment cannot fail! If we assume a mind is a valid observer in quantum mechanical sense and the only observer in this case, it doesn't in any case measure a negative result even if there is only one universe. That is because the mind ceases to exist before it gets any result. It's like measuring something with a device, which can only return true or blow up. Either you get a positive result or a null result. Negative result is not possible. -- Lakefall 19:41, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I believe that questioning the individuality of consciousness is indeed the solution to this paradox. If you enforce individuality rigorously, no one is the same as they were a minute or an hour ago, let alone over the course of years as most of the atoms in their body are exchanged for new ones. So quantum immortality would dictate that each moment's "self" should verge into a parallel universe where nothing ever changes; our memories of a past are just an illusion. I'd say the opposite - in the suicide-universe consciousness continues, so does it matter "whose"? There is just a change in the conformation of matter and memory between moments, as usual.
A curious corollary concerns the fate of the universe as entropy increases. If the universe is torn apart to widely separated cold atoms, as many physicists predict, there is no material seat for conscious thought; yet the quantum immortality paradox dictates that the only relevant possibilities are those that can be experienced. This demands either that the second law of thermodynamics must fail in the future, or else that consciousness can continue to exist in an essentially "empty" universe. In this way the Universe can be perceived as a scientific experiment that is actually capable of proving the existence of God (or spirits, etc) ... though not, of course, to a non-supernatural conscious observer! Well, either that or you decide that if the universe tore apart and there was nobody there to see it, it never really happened.
(The problem with our comments, alas, is that they are somewhere past the far side of "original research", so some corroborating source has to be dug up before we can decorate the article with them) 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 19:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
80.14.70.148 wrote:
I removed this text foremost because the above-written assertion is demonstrably not the case, and also because it is not appropriately placed or phrased. For one thing, the experiment does not assume that the physicist's observing mind ends up in a world in which he is alive—in fact, the fact that this is not assumed is what makes the Quantum suicide experiment an experiment in the first place. Of course, the experimenter who attempts such an experiment at all is taking the risk that, indeed, his consciousness may well cease to exist in any world (or that in fact there is only one "stream" of reality, thus falsifying the Many-worlds interpretation). — Ryanaxp 17:16, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
I don't know much about QM or it's interpretations, but this description sounds a bit wrong to me. Whether the gun fires or not is not the direct cause of death/life. Even if the gun fires - you will still live untill the bullet reaches your brain and does whatever causes you to die. There is no reason you should be experiencing only what happened when the gun didn't fire (because not firing is not what REALLY makes you stay alive). This thought experiment should focus on the final and direct cause for completely loosing consciousness, and perhaps when the bullet reaches a certain stage (and the person is still not dead) there isn't any probability left that it won't kill him, meaning he will die anyway.
The original poster wrote:
This thought experiment should focus on the final and direct cause for completely loosing consciousness, and perhaps when the bullet reaches a certain stage (and the person is still not dead) there isn't any probability left that it won't kill him, meaning he will die anyway.
The portion I emphasized in your quote leads to the crux of the Quantum Suicide exercise: According to the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics, there is never a scenario in which something has exactly zero probability. A particular future event might have a vanishingly infinitesimal probability of occurring—say, odds of one in a googleplex, for example—but that probability still is non-zero. Therefore, if the many-worlds interpretation of QED is accurate, then there is always some universe in which even that incredibly unlikely event occurs. That is the powerful and sobering (not to mention seemingly absurd) implication of the many-worlds interpretation of QED.
So, for instance, while it is extraordinarily improbable that a bar of pure gold will materialize out of empty space and drop onto my desk—nonetheless if in fact MW is correct, then in some universe I'll be celebrating my newfound wealth. By the same token, while it's very unlikely that a bullet could liquify 99% of the Quantum Suicide experimenter's brain and yet he still survive (to make it even more far-fetched, let's say with full consciousness and no permanent effects), nevertheless this thought-experiment asserts that at least in some universe(s) the experimenter does in fact live, and that his "awareness of being" will of course continue only in those universes. — Ryanaxp 17:29, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
Replace the gun with an atomic bomb. The bomb is right next to the physicist and if one of the radioactive atoms decay, the physicist dies. But, in an alternate world(s) the physicist still lives and doesn't experience death. So the physicist never dies in one scenario or another, but the physcist also ends up dying in other scenarios. How many times he/she dies depends on the probability of the atom decaying. So if there is a 50-50 chance the scientist will die in half of the worlds and live in another half. In this case you cannot say that the physicist won't die because if an atoic bomb explodes let's say 2 feet from a person the chance of death is 99.999%.
Doesn't this idea assume that death is the end of conciousness?
I don't think that is relevant. The split will supposedly still occur and you will live on in one universe. In the universe that you die in you may end up in heaven watering pot plants and talking to God however. It does raise the interesting point as to weather Consciousness (or should I say: Sentience) is 'special' or purely just a bi-product of the brain.
The experiment does assume death is the end of consciousness. If your consciousness doesn't permanently end but you end up in Heaven, then you will with high probability find yourself in Heaven after a few rounds, whether Many Worlds is true or not. Spgrk 09:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
-Shouldn't it be "Quantum invincibility" rather than "immortality" to avoid confusion - the experiment described only makes the test-subject invulnerable to a gun bullet - they don't suddenly become a vampire that never dies as long as they are in the experiment (I suppose you could argue that in some universes events might come in to play that would somehow prevent a person's biological decay over time but I dont think thats the main argument of this article...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.192.248.235 ( talk) 16:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I do not see how this is a categorical proof of multiple universes.
Say, during the first round the observer survives. Now there are two possibilites:
1> He/she is dead in an alternate universe. 2> He/she survived, as the probability of survival was 1/2.
Now, after the second round the two above statements would still hold true except that the probability would change to 1/4. We can continue almost* ad infinitum. So, my question is, how does the survivor know which of the two cases it is? The notion that he/she will EVENTUALLY die is disturbing. After any given number of finite rounds, there exists a probability of >0 that the observer would survive(in a Copenhagen world). It does get highly improbable, but it is possible. So, in my opinion the observer can never say with surity whether he/she has survived by luck or is he/she living in an alternate universe and dead in several others. Hence, it is not a categorical proof.
Another question I have is how many universes is the original universe split into? if the chance is 1/2, is it split into 2 unvierses? or 4 with 2 universes having similar outcomes? Which raises the question that how does the alternate universe thing works for irrational probabilities?
L'Umais 14:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
You've touched on something i was looking for comment on. Does the universe have a concept of reduced fractions? If there was a 2/3 chance of the gun firing, are 2 universes created in which the gun fires and one where the gun does not? Is there one full universe created where the gun fires and another incomplete, half universe created that limps along through time? Just something I think could be worth touching on.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
There's 100% chance the gun will fire, and 100% chance that it will not. It actually happens in both worlds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.86.178 ( talk) 22:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The anthropic principle is necessary for this experiment.
I'm assuming that the MWI isn't a load of sh1t to start with.
But, the way I see it, this experiment isn't just 'proof' to the subject, but to an increasing number of Universes of observers to the experiment along the way.
To be brief, if the guy pulls the trigger 1000 times in a row and then stops, the observers in the Universe he ends up in will verify that he did indeed pull the trigger 1000 times in a row and not die. Naturally there will be all manner of Universes along the way (like the one just prior) where the observers saw him pull the trigger 999 times and then die on the 1000th. And such like. With each pull of the trigger there will be an increasing number of universes who are now very sure that MWI is correct.
Which then brings me back to 'proof'. Perhaps 10 pulls would be enough proof to the subject or the observer. Or maybe it would take a 100 or 1000 or a million or so to do it. etc etc.
Could someone provide cites for the Moravec and Machal articles? I can't find anything which fits the bill and am wondering if it's a bit of a stretch to say these people published something regarding this subject. Thanks, 68.147.56.203 05:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I've read some books related to the topic that develop it just as a possible scenario of the multiple interpretations of QM, and in one of them I find a reference of a Moravec's Essay about consciousness. Hope it helps.
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
There is currently a paragraph that reads
Even if the many-worlds interpretation is correct, the measure (given in MWI by the squared norm of the wavefunction) of the surviving copies of the physicist will decrease by 50% with each run of the experiment. This is equivalent to a single-world situation in which one starts off with many copies of the physicist, and the number of surviving copies is decreased by 50% with each run. Therefore, the quantum nature of the experiment provides no benefit to the physicist; in terms of his life expectancy or rational decision making, or even in terms of his trying to decide whether the many-worlds interpretation is correct, the many-worlds interpretation gives results that are the same as that of a single-world interpretation.
but I do not see how the sentences before the "Therefore" justify the sentences after it. For instance, if MWI were true wouldn't it be quite valuable for the physicist to buy an annuity that paid her an inflation-adjusted value for as long as she lived? Sure, in the average universe the life insurance company would not lose big time and, sure her heirs might be pissed about how much she is spending on an annuity of dubious value -- but wouldn't a selfish physicist win big time in the universes she cared about? Quantling 21:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I found the quantum suicide article extremely biased against the thought experiment. It was overly dismissive to the pro point of view and gave the impression the issue was settled when in fact this is far from the case. I have edited it to give a less biased and more accurate picture of the debate. Jared333 03:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
When physicists uses the word "observed", we don't mean, "seen with human eyes". The gun indicates the state of the system, therefore it is observed. In fact, if any kind of signal that can be seen outside the box is triggered by something inside the box, the system inside the box is being observed. Schrödinger's cat is a bit misleading because it attempts to describe the subatomic with a macroscopic system. I'm sorry, but this thought experiment is completely invalid, not because of anything remotely philosophical, but because one of it's basic assumptions is false. That being that the mechanics of the described system are statistical in nature. DarkEther 07:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
-there is a nobel prize waiting for you if you can prove QM is deterministic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.63.137.34 ( talk) 19:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
When physicists uses the word "observed", we don't mean, "seen with human eyes". The gun indicates the state of the system, therefore it is observed.
I think you are mixing observation with measurement.
Firstly, observation is a psychological function, a function of awareness. We observe what our measurment apparatus tell us. Indeed, measuring apparatus are sufficient to eradicate superpositions from our observations, but it takes an observation to see that the measurement has indeed done this.
Secondly, while this distinction makes almost no practical difference to the typical work of a quantum physicist, the Quantum Suicide experiment is designed precisely to highlight it.
Lastly, by saying we can simply see things from the point of view of the gun itself, you seem to have missed the point: We haven't asked what the gun sees, or what any surrounding human observers will see. That is given in the setup, there is a probability amplitude of -(square root of 2i) that other observers will see the you die, leading to a 50/50 chance if there is one world and a world with a live and world with a dead experimenter if the many worlds is true.
The point of the experiment is to ask what the experimenter sees, not what the gun or other observers see. That experimenter cannot possibly see themselves dead, therefore they always perceive themselves as alive. And without any negative ramifications either.
You seem to think the experiment is saying that everyone else will not see them die either. That is not what the experiement says.
Anyway, I got rid of your "This is false" statement since it lacked a neutral position, but I left in your argument, and presented a counter argument.
As others have pointed out, the crux is the lack of any instantaneous way of causing death. If you could cease to exist in the timespan of a quantum decision, then perhaps. But instead you're going to fire the gun and for an exceedingly brief time feel the bullet rip through your skull and brain until consciousness finally ceases
Two problems that arise from this:
Unlikely (though not impossible) things happen in our universe as well. You would be surprised by the number of people who fail to kill themselves with a gun. I agree with you that death is a process and not a single moment though and we aren't sure of how much it takes for someone to be dead. If there is indeed a specific moment when someone stops being alive and this experiment is correct, there will always be a universe where the subject survives by halting near the brink of the abyss. And yes, you would most likely end up in bad shape. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.63.137.34 ( talk) 19:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I have not read that Schrödinger nor any one else considers a random element within the closed box as a part of the equation. The cat has by now; (out of curiosity) opened the bottle, in all the many worlds. JohnTDanaPoint
Tegmark's original paper presenting the quantum suicide (QS) experiment concludes with this sentence:
Perhaps as a result, it is often written that the experimenter can only convince herself. But I disagree, with good cause:
(1) If I ever see you step out of one of my thousands of QS boxes (which now occupy the tunnels originally excavated for the Superconducting Supercollider, by the way), I will be very impressed. After you tell me your story, I will be even more impressed. Then I will watch and listen to the videotape from the tamper-proof recording device that was in there with you. I will hear click after click, with occasional bangs when you moved your head out of the way of the gun to test the device. By counting the clicks while your head was in place, I can convince myself of the validity of your claim.
(2) Even if you arrive in my world dead, the recording device will show us the sequence of events you experienced. If it is sufficiently long (a total of N events), then from a statistical viewpoint I will be just as impressed as if you stepped out of the box alive after N-1 events. Thus, the common assumption that only one world can get an answer is not at all correct.
(3) If you step out of a QS box after an hour, smiling and relaxed, all ready to collect your $10,000,000.00 prize, and I know you have no major psychological issues, I can ask you whether you'd be willing to step back in for another hour, to earn an extra $1000.00 bonus. If you agree and get back in, I am highly persuaded that you have become convinced that you will always remember surviving. Of course a moment later you will most likely be fatally wounded as far as my morticians can see, but that was to be expected and it doesn't reduce my belief that you are still alive elsewhere. In fact, I am then happier than ever because I know that not I, but another I, must pay you all that money. -- Parsiferon 05:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't any statistical anomaly serve as proof that it is real then? Killing someone is just to take things to the extreme, there oughtta be an universe where someone will always get heads with the flip of any coin whatsoever that does have a heads side for example, that is the exact same thing as many-worlds immortality. --
TiagoTiago (
talk)
03:30, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Just imagine all of the possible universes in your past in which you made a different decision and would still be alive and well today (although in different universes). The "you" that exists now is just one of infinitely possible copies of "you". The "me" that is typing right now shares exactly the same history and continuity with the "me" that isn't typing this. At the same time, if it were ever possible for both copies to confront one another, I would not be able to get inside the head of my alternate self any more than I'd be able to get inside the head of any other being sharing a seperate existance in my reality (though my "double" would be a little more predictable).
So, if I were to perform this experiment, why is it assured that the "I" that I think I am every morning when I wake up has priority over the other copies of me who wake up to a different morning? If the odds in the experiment are against me surviving, isn't it likely that "my" conscious existance, which is only one of many copies, would cease to exist forever, while the survivors would be my copies? It's the same hesitation I have to "mind uploading"... If you transfer my consciousness to a machine while keeping the original human "me" alive, there will be two of me in one universe. For all intents and purposes, the robot "me" would be every bit as "me" as the human, though each has its own seperate existance. That's not exactly comforting... -- 166.66.106.50 15:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Please read the contents of the page indicated by the following url, wherein will be revealed that already in 1964 had been conceived such ideas, whereof this article purports to account a history, omissions to which ought well be corrected. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.90.137 ( talk) 20:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Right, if any event has a non-zero probability, and the universe lasts forever, surely it's possible my brain will pop out of the vacuum of space infinitely many times after my death and thus my consciousness will be allowed to continue indefinitely? Isn't this idea independent of whether you use the Copenhagen or M.W.I? Thanks for any info. AnCh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.134.233.151 ( talk) 21:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I doubt that "The Prestige" is relevant to this article - it simply involves creating duplicates with a non-destructive teleporter. If you think it is relevant you should also include the glorious old novella, " Rogue Moon", which used similar teleports over a longer distance. 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 18:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[2] the short story has all the basic ideas, the universe is split each time a decision is made, there are a myriad universes, anything that can, happens in one of them. etc. et.c —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vish ( talk • contribs) 10:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
If you believe Robin Hanson's account of MW [3], the low-measure worlds are posited to fall apart due to interference from the high-measure world. If you do this experiment, the world in which you survive may turn out to be so low-measure as to disintegrate taking you with it. — ciphergoth 09:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Reading the article, the idea of Quantum Immorality sounds a lot like a tautology. Basically, being hooked up to a machine that will cause instant death, which here is assumed to be the cessation of consciousness, here assumed to be the ability to perceive. Then the situation becomes "as long as the device does not kill the experimenter then the experimenter will never experience his own death". This would come quite literally because no one could perceive their own death. In order to experience death, or perceive death, one would have to continue perception and experience after death. Under the presumption of an after-life (let's assume a Christian-like one, where your consciousness continues only elsewhere) then one would have the chance to experience and perceive their own death, however under this same assumption the experimenter would be capable in all worlds of experiencing the outcome of each event, until such time as he is transfered to the "elsewhere". As it has been so widely taught "cogito ergo sum", the metaphysics of reality is that the absolute skeptic cannot doubt that he exists. To doubt his existence is to prove his existence. The mere fact that we are able to think proves to each one of us individually of our existence. Such a definitive meta-physical statement cannot be said for anything, anything else at all (due to veil of perception). Thus, defining the end of our existence is simply "when we stop perceiving ourselves". Faced with such an end of existence (not "death", which might have an after-life, this is guaranteed to be the End for you) we could never experience it, or perceive it. Such an event will never be known to us, because once the End comes, we will have stopped being able to perceive even the most definitive thing in the universe, ourself.
This concept of Quantum Immortality and this article itself reflect no different a notion to me other than the tautological statement: "I'm immortal until I die". -- Puellanivis ( talk) 23:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
What has this got to do with the article? Sure, it's related to quantum physics in general, but has nothing to do with quantum suicide or immortality. I'm removing it; if someone has a good reason to add it back in, undo my edit after posting the reason. 86.135.97.226 ( talk) 15:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, I know the talk page is to discuss ways to improve the article and not for questions, but the explanation leads me to several questions. In some world(s), there would exist an immortal observer, but does that mean that each time we die our conscious is forced to move to a 'surviving' state? How does the nature of the existence of consciousness relate to the MWI in the first place? Maybe I missed something in the article but why is ceasing to exist not a state, is conscious separate from the physical brain? I'd appreciate if someone could explain that in plain English (and without getting into philosophy or religion) Something Edible ( talk) 18:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
What about dying to get to a parallel universe? There is a lot of discussion about going to the next closest (however that is measured) parallel universe at death, but why should that be the case? Could this not be a means of accessing your own (subjective) heaven and hell? How one would direct which universe you would go to is beyond me, but this seems like the key to happiness for some of the more suicidal folk.
Ghostface26 (
talk)
07:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
No kidding. But thus far this seems like the only method this side of a Level II civilization that I can think of that allows universe hopping. And that`s not much of a difference if it only affects the absolute instant.
What of David Ambrose`s `The Man Who Turned Into Himself?` Okay, it`s fiction, but in it our protagonist`s consciousness essentially gets transported into a new universe of him, but with most of the world different. Even he`s a different person, with new memories and all. Is there some mechanism that allows for that? I`m also reminded of Ken Grimwood`s `Replay`, where the protagonist dies and is suddenly alive in his 18 year old body (from age 43). Ghostface26 ( talk) 22:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Your conscience doesn't get moved into your surviving body, it was with it all along. --
TiagoTiago (
talk)
03:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
I`ve no idea how someone would go about navigating or directing the travel, but does it not stand to reason that, should quantum immortality hold true (admittedly a big if), then one could use that as a way to get to a better (or far worse!) universe? Could this effectively amount to time travel? I mean, if in the multiverse, all times are happening `now`(ie: the snapshot hypothesis of reality, that each instant is its own `now`), and your mind `carried over` to those worlds, would that not for all intents and purposes BE time travel?
Thanks!
Ghostface26 ( talk) 17:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
But why must that be? If the theory implies that consciousness can`t be extinguished, then why not just have my consciousness transferred (or whatever the term is) to any other world than the one immediately in the future? How come we can interact with just some but not others? It seems to me that that`s a double standard. If all moments exist at the same `now`, then subjectively they are all in the future. If there was some independent observer who witnessed that transaction,they would think you`d leapt into the future, even if that future was a snapshot of the past. Ghostface26 ( talk) 22:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
According to Dictionary.com, science is: 1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences. 2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Read through my thought experiment, and see what you think.
An experimenter flips a coin a thousand times, and lands heads every time. (Flipping a coin 1000 times gives you about 2^1.07150861 x 10^301 different worlds, and only one would have 1000 consecutive heads flips.) The experimenter, who accepts the many worlds hypothesis, will say: "I am in that one world in which all outcomes were heads. All other copies of myself got other results."
An uneducated observer asks him, "So it was just luck that the penny landed that way?"
"Yes", said the Physicist. "It was simply my good fortune to be in the one universe in which all outcomes are heads. Perhaps some of my copies no longer believe in many worlds."
Another observer, this time a physicist, says "So you had a 1/(2^1000) chance of being in the world that you are?"
"Yes, of course."
"I believe that the Copenhagen interpretation is correct. I'm not going to use it to explain your results; I'll use simple probability. Assuming that there are not 'many worlds', and I flip a coin, there is a 50% probability of it landing heads. 2 flips lower the odds to 25%. 1000 flips lower the odds to 1/(2^1000). If you succeed in getting 1000 consecutive heads flips, then you have simply been fortunate in defying the odds. You say you have been fortunate in being in the one world where all the flips were heads. But you have no justification for including worlds in your analysis - the odds of being in this particular world exactly equal the odds of randomly flipping heads 100 times! It could be that you were fortunate in getting 1000 heads flips without all the unfortunate other copies who didn't! These other quantum worlds, if they exist, are undetectable. This experiment simply followed the laws of probability."
How could you respond to that? Is there any way of experimentally showing Many Worlds to be correct? If not, then it is not experimentally verifiable, or provable using empirical data, and as such as not scientific (by the above definition). It's more of a psychological idea than a scientific one.
My main problem with the article is that it is rather unfair to be criticising the points and counterpoints. Wikipedia should be unbiased! Also is counter-counter-point a good expression to use? Overall the quality of the article is rather poor. -- Astropastime ( talk) 17:06, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
The odds are always 1:1 that you would be in the universe you are; the same holds true for all other yous. It's not a matter of luck, with infinite different universes, if somthing is possible it will be true in some; you could think that the odd of a tick in the compass being the one for 180 is 1 in 360, but the odds the 180 tick is gonna be the 180 tick is 1 in 1. -- TiagoTiago ( talk) 03:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Nuclear bomb
Another example is where an experimenter detonates a nuclear bomb beside himself. In almost all parallel universes, the nuclear explosion will vaporize the experimenter. However, there should be a small set of alternative universes in which the experimenter somehow survives (i.e. the set of universes which support a "miraculous" survival scenario, or some extremely unlikely, but technically possible event occurs saving the experimenter). However this variation of a quantum suicide has one factor that automatically collapses the wave function as soon as it affects more than one observer making the experimenters probability at achieving a sound result a paradox upon affecting anyone other than oneself.
Wavefunctions only collapse in the Copenhagen Interpretation, and quantum suicide only works in the Many-Worlds Interpretation, so I don't see how one can say that one variation of a quantum suicide experiment is a paradox because of wavefunction collapse, without first assuming that MWI is false. I am going to remove the sentence beginning with "However".
71.72.235.91 ( talk) 12:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
Though the references are still too sparse for me to use for Wikipeida, people are starting to talk about the possibility of controlling reality using quantum suicide. If you have an absolutely reliable killing machine, you can simply wish for something to happen, and activate the machine if it doesn't happen. Then, only two sets of universes will exist: The set of universes in which you died (which you cannot experience), and the set of those in which you were convinced that your wish came true. So from your point of view, such a machine would function as a genie. 71.72.235.91 ( talk) 13:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
And it is not from the theory on this page... it is from this section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality#Max_Tegmark
I am not sure of a better way to word it, but it needs to be done. It looks like someone just decided to add a comment to the end of the section as it is barely even a sentence. SeanJA ( talk) 12:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I think I fixed it up a little bit... SeanJA ( talk) 12:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Recent changes have presented Mallah's arguments as the final and complete refutation to quantum suicide, along with a few strawmen tossed in for good measure. I have tried to add some NPOV to the issue [4]. See [5] for dialogue on the matter. -- Michael C. Price talk 01:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Mallah is a philosopher, is he even qualifed to talk about the subject? Mind you , I'm no expert myself but some of his arguments didn't make much sense. Ngherappa ( talk) 12:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
David Papineau is quoted as saying
"If one outcome is valuable because it contains my future experiences, surely an alternative outcome which lacks those experiences is of lesser value, simply by comparison with the first outcome. Since expected utility calculations hinge on relative utility values rather than absolute ones, I should be concerned about death as long as the outcome where I die is given less utility than the one where I survive, whatever the absolute value." [2]
It seems to me that instead of "I should" he meant to say "Should I" (i.e. posing a rhetorical question). Does anyone have access to the publication to see if there's been a transcription error somewhere down the publication chain. -- Michael C. Price talk 01:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
The idea of quantum immortality, is not that your specific consciousness is immortal, but that a copy of it will live on in alternate realities or dimensions after your death. For better explanation, let's take 100 pennies. They are all pennies, alike and similar, fresh from the mint, same date, with impossibly perfect fabrication. We toss them violently at a sewer drain on the side of the road. Some may go down, some will ricochet and land on the cement. The pennies that did not make it, are much similar to the dead consciousness possibilities/branches. They are gone in their world. But those that ricocheted and landed on the ground, are the living ones, and continued in theirs.
Upon death you may split into either a living, or dead possibility branch.
But no matter what, you keep on living. Just not the specific consciousness that you were. You will be dead, but another "you" will go on.
The phenomenon is difficult to explain, but the "you" is who you are in every way except the consciousness is a copy.
I edited the section on works of fiction, removed "The Prestige" as it was concerned with teleportation and having multiple "copies" of a person in the same universe, not really related to the idea of "quantum suicide." I added "Anathem" as an example, because it focuses very directly on the idea of living and dying simultaneously in multiple universes. But having just one example doesn't make a very good list, so others should be added, possibly any of these: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/8284761 - LesPaul75 talk 21:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I was very excited to see the note about Anathem, because that was the first thing that came to my mind after reading this article. I vote that the Anathem note stays in! --
Tibbs (
talk)
03:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Why do the other copies need to die? How does it change the experiment if instead of the other copies being shot, they instead see a message on a screen, or see a light turn on? The winning copy can still draw the same conclusions about MWI regardless of whether the other copies die. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomfrh ( talk • contribs) 09:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Am I correct in thinking that substantial portions of "The quantum suicide thought experiment" are plaigarised from HowStuffWorks? Brainfsck ( talk) 08:17, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so what qualifies someone as being as expert? If I need to be published, that's a problem. However, I do now possess a B.S. in physics.
I'll restate my argument. I'm going to play a little loose with my terminology in an attempt to avoid future semantics arguments.
1. In quantum mechanics, an observable is anything that can be measured.
2. In quantum mechanics, observation and measurement are identically the same thing.
This comes from the fact that we are dealing with elemental particles. In your everyday, macroscopic world, you know where things are because light bounces off of them. So, when you try to find your basket ball in your room, you're actually looking for the light that bounced off of it. Now, imaging what would happen if you where blindfolded and had to find your ball by bouncing other basketballs off of it. Ignoring possible property damage, the most immediate problem is that if you do happen to hit your ball with one of the test balls, it is likely to move. When trying to locate a particle in a box, the only known way to find it is to bounce something off of it. If the box is your room, the particle is a basketball and the something is alot of photons, there is no problem. The tiny amount of momentum imparted by the photons will not move the basketball in any meaningful way. If the box is a potential well, the particle is an electron and the something is a photon, the electron's position and momentum can be greatly changed. The out come is just like finding basketballs with basketballs, (or baseballs, or vollyballs,. . . the import thing is that they can impart comparable momentums on each other.)
This is why "observation" changes a system.
The reason why measurement and observation are the same thing is because measurement amounts to counting quanta. It's like "observing" there are 5 marbles in a bag. You "measured" the number of marbles when you counted them.
3. If a system is observed in such a way that its state in know at all times, it will behave in accordance with classical models
Knowing the state of a system at all times means there is no super-positioning of states, no uncertainty of measure. That means, Newtonian. That mean, deterministic. If you doubt me, read up on the electron double slit experiment.
4. The gun fires based on the state of the system
5. In order for a the gun to know when to go off, the system needs to be observed at all times
Ok, yes, the gun doesn't "know" anything, it's not intelligent. The person who set it up is. The system needs to be observed at all times, or the gun may miss the change.
6. The mechanics of the described system are NOT statistical in nature
7. The Quantum Suicide thought experiment is invalid because it is based on a model that does not describe the mechanics of the system it sets up.
Look, general rule of thumb: If someone is talking about quantum mechanics, and they aren't describing something *much* smaller that you can possibly see, they're probably wrong.
DarkEther ( talk) 20:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
ok, you'll have to forgive me, that last time I read the article, it was talking about radio active decay as a trigger. As it stands now, every 10 seconds the experimenter has a 50-50 chance to live. At every single moment, he knows if he's alive and what the outcome of every "flip" is, so that part is not statistical in nature. Because we are taking a random photon and measuring it, that part is probabilistic yes, but still not statistical. The random photon is functionally no different than the experimenter flipping a coin repeatedly while holding the gun himself. Just because you're measuring a spin state rather than a coin face doesn't mean that the laws of quantum mechanics apply. You might as well argue that the rules of special relativity apply because you're measuring something that's moving at the speed of light.
DarkEther ( talk) 21:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
I find this article to have several issues.
My suggestion is that this article presents the quantum suicide material, and leave the quantum immortality to the science fiction section. There does not seem to be a production in Philosophy or Physics that is relevant to this topic, even to qualify it as a metaphysical discussion in the philosophy literature (lack of any work on quantum immortality in philosophy journals seems to suggest that discussion on this topic as a metaphysical theory is completely inexistent). From 5,6,8 the whole "Against quantum immortality" section will disappear. Bode One ( talk) 22:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to see some sources on this article, esp. this statement:
". For instance, there are a number of people who have "flirted with death" only to come out just fine. Some of these people report "otherworldy" experiences during this transition stage and may also report subtle yet observable changes to their world. In some instances, people come through such experiences with recent news events missing or people outside of their social circle who had died, being mysteriously still alive. "
If I've ever heard something that sounded like BS, this is it.
174.114.87.236 ( talk) 02:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I think there's some sort of subtle logical flaw in the notion of quantum immortality. Some sort of fallacy of excluded middle. Quantum immortality seems plausible when you think of abstract 'death', but when you think of gradual loss of function of the brain, it becomes a lot less plausible.
How does quantum immortality protect you from, say, succumbing to Alzheimer's ? There would be an alternative you, who never got Alzheimer's, but he diverged from you ages ago. There would be alternative you's whose alzheimer got suddenly cured stopped at different times. All of them are different people from you; there's no more reason to expect your subjective 'self' to switch into a less damaged brain than there is to expect it to switch into your neighbour. Same goes for more sudden death; the loss of consciousness is gradual. Does quantum immortality protect your neurons from dying off? Each dead neuron makes you to be very slightly less, but with no well defined boundary where you suddenly become non conscious.
In my opinion, the whole notion of quantum immortality derives from ill defined notion of 'self'. You are not the same you few seconds into the future or few seconds into the past; you are not the copy of you that diverged a few seconds ago.
It does not follow from MWI that you will subjectively survive a quantum suicide experiment. It only means that a lot of people rather similar to you will survive the experiment (vast majority of them by deciding not to perform experiment themselves and forking off early). That offers some consolation, but not immortality. It makes death less extreme in that someone very similar to you lives on somewhere else, as opposed to total loss of information. But as you don't expect your subjective experience to jump backward or forward a few seconds just because you few seconds ago are very similar to you now, you should not expect your subjective experience to somehow transition to already-branched off you.
I fainted one time in my life - no idea why - dark spots in visions, followed by whats best described as first hand experience of HAL's end in 2001 the space odyssey - being gradually switched off. I don't see how existence of parallel myselves whom are constantly forking off would prevent subjective me from experiencing this gradual sequence to it's logical limit - nothingness - just as the zeno's paradox is no reason to expect the Achilles to never catch up with tortoise.
And the entire notion that only the observers who did not die observe - well you can replace the gun with a red light, and speak of people who did not see the red light instead of people who are alive. All the people who did not see the red light did not see the red light, that's a tautology the same as all the people who are observing observe they aren't dead.
edit: or suppose for example that the number of yous is arbitrarily large but not infinite. Then the number of you's with the quantum suicide experiment is less than without, meaning that something had died. Perhaps our notion of infinity is wrong and we should use notion of something that can be arbitrarily large but not infinite (so that it, divided by 2, is not equal to itself). The whole 're-normalization' issue in quantum mechanics seem to indicate that it is the case.
78.63.245.109 ( talk) 22:30, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
This wiki page use to have a section with Jack Mallah's work on it, but it got taken down because "he doesn't have an affiliation with a university." It is very important that both sides of the Quantum Immortality argument are addressed, so I added a section for Mallah. He has been arguing against Quantum Immortality and Quantum Suicide for years, and he does hold a Ph.D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.1.128.18 ( talk) 14:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
This paper does not represent a source that's up to Wikipedia's quality, nor does it necessitate inclusion in this article. I move that it be removed once more. 222.147.159.195 ( talk) 04:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC)Bachelor's/Master's, Mechanical Engineering, Cooper Union PhD, Physics, NYU Master's, Medical Physics, UW-Madison
I'm moving this here since it seems to be outside of mainstream discussion of this topic, and imho distracts and confuses if it's placed in between paragraphs describing the discussion within the physics community. -- 213.196.194.37 ( talk) 17:58, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Assuming quantum immortality is true, it can be used to achieve virtually anything. By linking the results of an action to the hypothetical instant brain-death machine, say, whether a coin lands on heads, you must live in the universe in which you do not die (and therefore where the result you want happens). Assuming the machine had an astronomically unlikely rate of failure (orders of magnitude less likely than the result you want), you could get over the oft-mentioned problem of "maimed, but not brain dead", by programming the device to kill you if you so much as get a papercut. Sure, in the vast majority of universes people would observe you getting a papercut and then dying, but in the one in which you are conscious, you could make yourself indestructible.
Theoretically, in your own universe, you could end world hunger, stop all wars, cure all diseases, etc. this way. Pretty freaky. Silenceisgod ( talk) 19:31, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Actually the story described is called Angels of Ashes, The Real Story is a Carrie Clay story, both published in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories. There is another story called Everlasting which more directly addresses this idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.124.155.247 ( talk) 09:17, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
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The explanation is that given by Max Tegmark, who independently originated the thought experiment some time earlier. The source given is extremely clear that it refers to this thought experiment. It is very relevant to having a neutral point of view to give reasons why it would not actually work. It is still quantum immortality, since in many-worlds a version of the experimenter will always find they defy all odds. Crossroads1 ( talk) 05:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Tegmark is not the originator of the thought experiment and it also doesn't make sense to include it in the main section - since it just says it won't work. I don't know if the quote is accurate, but giving the benefit of the doubt, I moved it to the section about his beliefs. Your paragraph doesn't make much sense to me, but my understanding of Max Tegmark is that he doesn't actually think quantum immortality is a real phenomena, yet he's one of the few respectable scientists to write about it. So it's fine if it's part of "his section", which is basically a criticism section. But QI implies actual immortality, so it's just wrong. Akvadrako ( talk) 17:11, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
So, here's why I think it would be utterly awful if this turned out to be a real situation: The version of "you" which retains consciousness for the longest period of time will continually be asymptotically approaching dead. You will not know about the other "you"s, and, assuming you're conscious right now while reading this, the "you" that exists now WILL continue to be the one that's in this situation, in one universe. I won't go into detail on what I mean by "asymptotically approaching dead", but I think you can imagine - horrific injuries, paralysed, decrease mental faculties, and so on. I assume someone else has made this argument somewhere before, and I think it should be mentioned in the article somewhere. 130.63.110.250 ( talk) 23:16, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
If you want to write about this, you have ample sources. David Lewis is a well known philosopher who thought the same as you did and had a number of articles published on the topic. See the end of http://andrewmbailey.com/dkl/How_Many_Lives.pdf, one of the last papers he wrote before dying in 2001. Personally I don't think you need to worry about it - I've thought about this a lot and read all the literature I can find on it. Consider not dying to be a boundary condition. Accepting that, whatever is most probable will happen. For example, it's more likely someone will cure ageing then you are currently "asymptotically approaching dead". Akvadrako ( talk) 21:57, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Actually this article used to contain references to Lewis work, but it was removed in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Quantum_suicide_and_immortality&diff=prev&oldid=392880020&diffmode=source — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akvadrako ( talk • contribs) 10:47, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
The article says "Therefore, the experimenter will have a lower probability of observing a world in which they survive than the world in which they set up the experiment". Should it not be "than the world in which they don't set the experiment"? Because there are likely many more Universes where they set up the experiment than Universes where they set up the experiments and survive (given they survive in only a very tiny fraction of them). -- Mati Roy ( talk) 17:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
Ok, so. The "In fiction" section was removed by anonymous user. I don't see any particular discussion regarding this deletion, certainly not surrounding the time the particular section was deleted. Was there any particular prior discussion why this was supposed to be deleted elsewhere? -- wwwwolf ( barks/ growls) 00:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)