View Single Post
Old 04-18-2004, 09:00 AM   #1 (permalink)
Yakk
Wehret Den Anfängen!
 
Location: Ontario, Canada
Quantum Immortality

So, this is a wierd consequence of one interpritation of QM, namely many worlds.

The many-worlds interpritation of QM has a few interesting properties.
1> It is deterministic. You know exactly what will happen from a given situation.
2> There is no magic "quantum wave collapse".
3> It doesn't require hidden variables.
4> It is local: ie, you don't require faster-than-light communication between quantum hidden variables to explain waht is going on.

I believe it is the only interpritation that deals with all of the above.

The other interesting thing about it is there is an experiment you can theoretically perform to verify for yourself if the many-worlds interpritation is correct or not.

You become Schrödinger's cat.

Put yourself in a box. Have a device that uses radioactive decay to generate a random number.

Every time you push a button, it uses the random number to decide if you will die. 50% chance you die, 50% chance you live, each time.

Press the button 1000 times.

Now, under non multi-world interpritations of QM, you will never hit the button 1000 times. The odds against you successfully doing this are so slim, they are basically zero.

Under the multi-world interpritation, one of you will walk out of that box, having hit the button 1000 times, the machine working perfectly, alive.

At which point, you will know that the many-worlds interpritation is true, beyond any reasonable doubt.

Anyone watching from outside the box will almost certainly not know it: they will see you enter the box, and die, basically 100% of the time.

Of course, if you are wrong, you end up dead.

If you generalize this thought experiment, what is going on in the box is no different than what is going on in the universe. Various events which boil down to QM events happen, and we grow old and die.

But, for every physical process, there is a miniscule chance that almost any result will happen. For instance, there is a miniscule chance that you will never grow old, because your body just won't age.

This chance is zero for almost all practical puposes. Except, of course, if many-worlds is true. If many-worlds is true, those chances will happen. There will be a universe where you never ever die. 1 billion years from now, you will be walking around without any medical aid.

It is a wierd thought.

Note that you won't be alive with anyone else: all your family and friends etc will die almost certainly.

Any thoughts?
__________________
Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.
Yakk is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360