Talk:Quantum immortality/Archive 2

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Removed Permutation City citation

The plot summary was quite wrong. The novel is not about quantum immortality; it's about mathematical simulations of life and consciousness.


Wave function of an observer

Is it true that the observer's own wave function has a singularuty in his universe? How can observer measure his own wave function? Is there exist a point where there is no quantum indeterminity?--Nixer 23:19, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

No; He can't; and no. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
He cant - why? If to enact an experiment of this measurement with conventional means? So if he cant - then he hasent a wavefunction, yes?--Nixer 14:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
There is a wave function associated with each observer but you can no more measure it than you can measure any other wave function. Wave functions are mathematical constructs not physical objects. So you can calculate them but you can't measure them. All they are useful for is to indicate the probability of a particle being found in a particular position.
This is also true of the concept of an average. It is, for example, possible to calculate the average weight of a chipmunk. However it is not possible to measure the average weight of a chipmunk. All that can be done is to measure the weight of a lot of chipmunks and then use those measurements to calculate the average weight of the chipmunks measured. For more information see the wave function article. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:33, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Heh. Is there an equation, which calculates the wave function and takes into account the quantum immortality phenomenon? Yes or No? Does it differ from the classical formula?--Nixer 18:32, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, there are such equations. Schrodinger invented them in the 1920s. Do they take into account the Quantum Immortality phenomenon ? Well it depends upon which interpretation of Quantum Mechanics you favour. For the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics they do and for the Copenhagen interpretation they don't need to. But that's only because Quantum Immortality cannot exist under the Copenhagen interpretation; the equations are actually the same whichever interpretation of them you choose. As the wave function is an inherently quantum equation, it has no classical equivalent to differ from. -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:44, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
First, QI may exist in Copenhagen too. Next, Copenhagen and MWI use the same formula for the wave function, which does not take into account the QI phenomenon. MWI simply prohibits some cases, but the equation does not take this into account. What cases are prohibited is still not clear because it is uncertain what is unrevertable death and can death be unrevertable at all.--Nixer 08:10, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
By the way, the wave function is not only a mathematical object. It is material.--Nixer 18:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Interesting! But can you name the instrument that is used to detect it ? -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:44, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Video Games

Many video game characters are an example of this, especially in 1-player first person shooters and CRPGs. If the player finishes the game, than the character has survived a ton of dangerous events. But if it's a hard game, than they've also died in tons of alternate realities. The player reloads and tries again. So for the one Parker who miraculously beat the final boss without a vehicle, about a dozen were gunned down, and more died throughout the course of the game. At the end, Parker should feel amazed that he was able to fight through so many missions, killing hundreds of enemies, without permananent injury. Even if the character is logically able to do something like that, such as in Halo or Republic Commando, there would be a ton of extremely close calls after a long campaign. -LtNOWIS 05:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Removed criticism paragraphs

I am removing these three paragraphs:

Detractors regard this idea as nonsense, and argue that this outcome does not fall out naturally from the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. They say that in the vast majority of universes, the physicist would cease to exist and therefore the most likely experience of a physicist standing next to a nuclear explosion would be the experience (or lack of experience) of ceasing to exist. The counterargument to this is that lack of experience is not itself an experience.
The critics also argue that the continuity of consciousness, and the possibility of it enduring forever, are actually assumptions in this scenario, and ones with no physical basis. They also claim that the logic of the thought experiment would suggest that a conscious observer can never become unconscious, and therefore can never sleep. A counterargument to this is that the theory does not claim that one can never experience worlds where one loses consciousness, but rather that one can never experience the period of unconsciousness itself. The observer will therefore never experience a world where he dies in his sleep, but if he wakes up again he will simply note that there was a gap in his conscious experience.
Another counter argument is that, given an infinite number of situations, at some point a situation would occur where the person could not survive (or remain consious) without breaking at least one law of physics. There will not be a split of universes because the one that wants to split off can't do so without creating a universe where the now broken laws of physics do not exist. Even if assumed that a jump to a more "lenient" universe would happen, as more and more laws would be erased, one would be left with a universe with no laws at all. A universe without physical laws is either impossible or exists as complete chaos because there is nothing to base any form of order on. Any person entering this universe would cease to exist as a person in every sense of the word.

These paragraphs violate Wikipedia policy on verifiability and original research. All these arguments and counterarguments are attributed to nameless "critics" and "detractors," and thus there is no verifiable claim that anybody of any notability has ever argued along these lines. If anyone notable has, then these arguments should be reinserted with proper attribution and citation. -- Schaefer 07:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

In these sort of cases the best course of action is to search for examples of "critics" and "detractors", yourself. Merely removing the offending paragraphs is a very lazy way of fixing the problem. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:38, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Any Wikipedia editor could, of course, do the same. Maybe one of us will, eventually, but until that happens I see no reason to assume these are anything but original research. Quantum immortality is an obscure subject. The phrase "quantum immortality" (in quotes) currently returns less than a thousand hits on Google, and the very first hit is this article. I think it's likely these criticisms, upon a thorough search of everything within Google's reach, would reveal themselves to have no notable proponents, and I don't want to spend so much time looking for something I believe not to exist. If you think I'm wrong, which I may very well be, feel free to look for these notable people and re-add their claims, properly attributed, and the article will be better off for it. But leaving unsourced views in Wikipedia hurts its credibility, so I would rather these stay out of the article until then. -- Schaefer 06:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

possible indication of the validity of QI (and the MWI)

there have been a few instances where executions have failed, for a list see: http://www.phadp.org/botched.html and http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=8&did=478 (I can't vouch for the validity of these websites, but for the sake of argument, assume that the botched executions listed really did take place.)

Isn't it possible that the reason that some of these people failed to die on the first attempt is because of QI? I'm no expert on the human body, electric chair, or executions in general, but isn't it possible that some of them were not killed because of the extremely small chance that they would live, just like the quantum suicide experiment where it seems to the subject that something has gone wrong when the gun does not kill him? The difference is that we would have to be in the same universe as the subject is in during a few of the failed execution attempts, so we witness a few failed execution attempts before it finally works. Do you guys think this is likely? --24.110.50.200 02:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't. And this is off-topic for an article talk page, anyway. Please discuss it elsewhere. -- Schaefer 02:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Well that was harsh. And to the GP: from the prisoner's point of view, they might survive multiple attempts. But it's much more likely that they live in a universe where they never committed the crime, or never got caught. So surviving an execution attempt would for a third person observer just seem like extraordinarily luck. Another example of this would be people who have survived falling out of planes without parachutes. --85.157.224.228 03:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it was. I don't recall intending it the way it reads to me now. My apologies to 24.110.50.200. -- Schaefer 09:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Could QI lead to a solution to the Halting Problem?

This is probably wrong since I don't really know the physics or the math behind this idea. But it seems to me that each quantum flip essentially creates a powerset of alternative universes, and if the universe is infinite in size, the resulting powerset would be uncountibly infinte. So each instance of that universe could try to solve a subset of the halting problem. I guess what matters is if the size of this powerset of universes is equal or greater then then number of problems there are to solve.

It also seems to me that if the universe is not infinite in size, then there is only a finite number of purmuntations that could possibly arise from the quantum flip. Seems like that leads to some contridiction some where. What happends if we go through all the possible combinations? -- User317 08:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more mathimatically inconsistant this theory gets. If QI is possible and universe is infinite then there are uncountibly infinite number of worlds out there, which will lead to some worlds having inconsistant physical laws, as pointed out in one of the rejected paragraphs. This is consistant with Godels Incompletess theorem. If QI is possible and Universe is finite then there are only finite number of permutations of the Universe. This is not nessessarly false, but does pose a paradox. -- User317 23:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The largest problem with your idea is that there is no way to know what is happening in other universes, and no way to designate our own in comparison to them. Hence, not only would we be unable to determine which part of the problem we should work on, we would also be unable to recombine the results into a final solution.

It's true that many worlds would seem to have inconsistent physics for at least a brief period, but that's only because they exist on the edge of the bell curve. The odds of any world staying on that edge, however, are statistically insignificant--unless, of course, your survival depended on the laws of physics being wonky. =) --Algorithm 02:02, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Lets say there is a universe were someone is writing down a real number. Given the permutations of that universe that only have to do with what real number it is, we still get an infinite powerset, each instance being unique, since we only care about the differences in that number. So now we have a way of counting all the Real numbers, and solving the halting problem, etc...

This leads to Godels Incompleteness Theorem. If you have each universe with a unique set of mathematical axioms, and we have uncountibly infinite unique universes, you end up with sets of axiums that are contridictory across universes. So the way math is understoood in one is contridctory to the way its understood in another, and not for just a breif period. -- User317 17:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

There are a couple of flaws in that argument.

  1. A person is finite and thus incapable of knowing all the digits of a Real number. It is only possible to know the first N digits where N depends upon the person concerned. Thus people can only know rational approximations to Real numbers. The only way that we can handle Real numbers is by naming them pi, e, etc.
  2. Even if a person could somehow know all the digits of a real number, that person will only have written down a finite number of them at any given time in the lifetime of the universe.
  3. You assume that we can apply our mathematics to universes where the mathematical axioms are completely different from ours. That's a big assumption.

So I wouldn't be so certain of my conclusions if I were you. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The fact that a person is finite is irrelevent. The universe is infinite, and you could keep adding paper, hard drives etc... to infinity. You also do not need to actually complete writing down every Real number, just a method that makes it possible to do so given infinite amount of time and "paper". This is all thats nessesary to violate Godels thereom, you can look at the diagonalization proof of Cantors Uncountability Theorem to undertsand why. At least as far as I understand it.

You assume that we can apply our mathematics to universes where the mathematical axioms are completely different from ours. That's a big assumption. I am not sure what you mean by this. There is only one Universe, even if it contains instances of universes that cant communicate, and the laws of physics and math have to be consistant throughout. User317 03:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I mean that such a universe may not be countable. It may be partial or multiple in some way or may have a stranger form of wholeness such as being [1-0.7i..15.3+3i) or even some representation which is too complex for us to understand. That is what is implied when you state that "the way math is understoood in one is contridctory to the way its understood in another". -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

What i mean when I say contridictory, is not that we "can't" undersand it, its that both cannot be true at the same time without violating logic. This is what Godel proved in his theorom. User317 08:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Test it and get rich

I was thinking that if you was to join a nuclear weapon/s, a computer and the lottery, you could get rich.

First, write a program that will allow you to detonate a bomb in super fast time if it receives off the internet lottery numbers which YOU HAVE NOT CHOSEN. So you buy a ticket before a draw, with one row of numbers, and you tell that program to ignore all lines except for your own.

Then get as many hydrogen bombs as you can, fit them up round your home, like your kitchen,bedroom...all the rooms and lastly strap yourself to one with your brain as close to the main explosive area.

Hopefully if you set it up correctly you will always win the lottery, because the only worlds where you can possibly survive are the ones in which your ticket number is anounced the winner.

Of course if it goes wrong you'll be remembered forever as "that damn genocidal maniac" so some immortality in that sense too. (said someone who didn't sign it.)

The New Scientist letters page has already discussed this at length although they recommended a machine gun rather an H-bomb (it's so much easier to get hold of). -- Derek Ross | Talk 07:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Of course, you will be remembered as "that damn genocidal maniac" in the vast majority of the worlds parallel to the few ones you survive/win in.

You will be a lottery winner in one universe out of every 5 million, or 10 million, or whatever, depending on the odds against winning the particular lottery that you have entered, but for every one of these universes there will be a lot more where your internet connection fails. That is, most of the universes that you are alive in will be ones where the ISP went down, or the computer froze up, and you did not win the lotto. Therefore, I recommend betting on basketball, where you have a greater chance of making the correct choice than your internet connection has of failing.  ; ) Lionel Nashe 06:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

probability

This assumes that determinism is false and that there are different outcomes for one event. According to determinism the nuclear decay has only one half life graph, since all of its constituents have been caused by prior events and there is no room for indeterminism or chance. Of course this is just one theory, but it and the uncertainty principle do play a part in the concept.

Anthropic principle

Perhaps this article could be tied or at least mention the Anthropic principle. Even though AP doesn't really cover multi-verse, it does contend we can only exist in a universe that is favorable for us existing. If our reality does not allow us to exist (through personal death, global, or galactic catastrophe), then we wouldn't be around to observe the fact. So QI is the more personal (if you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger chances are that it will fail or we end up in a scenario of nuclear war etc) and AP is the higher level versions of this (but more on the lines of if our solar system was slightly different that life would cease to form and we still wouldn't be discussing this issue, but that maybe that is more on the lines of the Rare Earth hypothesis). Either way it is amazing that any of us are alive and concious if you consider the magnitude of infinite things that could have went wrong in the universe and at our local and personal levels. --Vertinox 21:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Second law of thermodynamics

Article says:

Most physical laws of the universe still cannot be broken - for example, the second law of thermodynamics is still considered to be conserved in all probabilities, theoretically preventing a parallel universe in which this law is violated from ever branching off.

Arguably, that is not true. The second law of thermodynamics is a statistical law. One can prove from certain assumptions that for a system of any significant size that violations of the second law of thermodynamics are extremely (astronmically) unlikely. But that does not mean it is obeyed in every universe; it merely means that the universes in which it is obeyed astronomically outnumber the universes in which it was violated. But, if QI is true, you will continue to exist in whichever universes permit your continued existence; so if the only universe in which you still exist is one in which the second law is violated, you will (by QI) exist in that universe, even though the number (or density) of such universes is astronomically less than that of universes in which 2nd law is conserved.

Furthermore, the claim "most physical laws of the universe still cannot be broken" seems doubtful to me. Certaintly if the MWH is to be a coherent physical theory, there must be some physical laws conserved across all universes (otherwise MWH becomes identical to Lewis' modal realism or Tegmark's ultimate ensemble theory.) But, it is possible that some of the apparent physical laws of our universe are actually varying across universes (e.g. they may be the consequence of the way symmetry broke in the early universe; or the vacuum state we are in; or some similar process as yet unknown.) The problem is that being unable to observe the other MWH universes we can't say what physical laws are absolute across all universes and what ones can vary. So, the claim that "most" doesn't seem justifiable. Certainly some should laws should be unbreakable, but I cannot see how (with our current limited understanding of physics) we can say which are and which aren't, or how many are and how many aren't. --SJK 20:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

How is this arguable? Is there any doubt that the second law of thermodynamics is anything but a statistical observation? Surely there have been experiments recording small "violations" of the 2nd law? If so then perhaps the paragraph should be removed rather than having SJK's counter-argument inserted rather messily in parentheses. Or maybe the whole paragraph could be reworded to make the above quote not sound so authoritative. Frankd 11:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

An article should not contadict itself. I am removing the "arguably" as it contradicts the preceding sentence. Either one or the other is true or should be presented differently. Perhaps a different example could be used. Arguing inside an article about the example given is not the way to present a subject. - Tεxτurε 20:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Most ridiculous idea

No physicist I know, including those dealing with quantum philosophy (and I know quite a few), pays any attention to this ridiculous idea. Shokopuma 20:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Why do they say it's ridiculous? 65.87.191.214 04:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
No physicist I know, including those dealing with geocentrism (and I know quite a few), pays any attention to this ridiculous idea of the earth traveling around the sun. --85.157.224.88 20:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC).

What does MWI have to do with it?

Even with classical physics, at all times that you exist you exist. Any person would have reason to say that he is immortal, as he has never died. The average age wouldn't be any less then with the MWI, as in the MWI as the age increases the fraction of worlds in which one has lasted that long decreases. It seems to me that the basis of QI can be put simply as 'one observes only when and where one observes' and it applies for any physical interpretation in which that is true. I admit, I do have a tendancy to omit common sense that I have never proven false, and QI might be a bit more complicated then that, but in all probability, it's close enough. It should be noted, however, that the worlds which one does not observe still exist, and I see no reson why they should be any less important. QS wouldn't make you any more likely to be a lottery winner; it would only make you more likely to be dead. — Daniel 01:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

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