Status
Not open for further replies.

JohnEmmett

Well-Known Member
Jan 21, 2017
5,139
454
Salt Lake City
Visit site
✟130,312.00
Country
United States
Faith
Buddhist
Marital Status
Celibate
Have You Died? Take the Quantum Immortality Test

Quantum immortality started as a thought experiment in the late 1980s, and later was more fully developed by physicist and cosmologist Max Tegmark.

Romeo and Juliet. “What light through yonder window breaks?” Where is Juliet standing? If you said a balcony, you and the other 88% of respondents may be experiencing an alternate reality.
 

FrumiousBandersnatch

Well-Known Member
Mar 20, 2009
15,258
8,056
✟326,229.00
Faith
Atheist
The article gets it wrong. In quantum immortality, a version or copy of an individual persists, supposedly for ever, in some exceedingly improbable branch of the wavefunction. There are objections to this as a realistic proposition. When the wavefunction branches, the duplicate individuals it produces are different people with a common history. They don't share a single consciousness. So when you die, you're dead, whether or not other 'descendent' individuals that share a common history with you live on in other branches.

The wavefunction only branches where quantum systems in superposition entangle with the environment, so only the superposed outcomes are possible. This does not mean that everything physically permissible occurs, only what is specifically possible given a particular configuration of the wavefunction. The interaction outcomes relevant to an individual's survival or death are large but finite; with increasing time the outcomes involving not dying will diminish to zero. There is no good reason to suppose that indefinite extension of death of descendent versions of an individual is a possible outcome.

But keep clutching those straws - on average, some descendent version of you is likely to live longer than you...
 
Upvote 0

JohnEmmett

Well-Known Member
Jan 21, 2017
5,139
454
Salt Lake City
Visit site
✟130,312.00
Country
United States
Faith
Buddhist
Marital Status
Celibate
We've been through this. The best-fit explanation is memory unreliability - for which there is a wealth of empirical evidence.

Take the test.

There is nothing to fear…
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

FrumiousBandersnatch

Well-Known Member
Mar 20, 2009
15,258
8,056
✟326,229.00
Faith
Atheist

Take the test.

There is nothing to fear…
I have. The more personally familiar the items are, the less likely you'll make the mistake. But the errors we make are related to our expectations; we remember the general gist of the thing and fill in the details from our expectations - Etch-a-Sketch and Kit-Kat get hyphenated because they're the sort of product names people expect to be hyphenated. They think the hand of God is higher than Adam's because that's what they'd expect, they think both Lincoln's hands are on the armrests because both his arms are. They remember "goodnight Gracie" because they tend to remember the instruction rather than the response (it's a relic of cheeky childhood literalism, where the child deliberately repeats everything after the instruction, so when told "Say 'goodnight', Harry" they say, "Goodnight Harry"), and so-on.

The real reasons for these perceptual and memory glitches are far more interesting than childish clickbait fantasies aimed at the impressionable and the gullible.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

JohnEmmett

Well-Known Member
Jan 21, 2017
5,139
454
Salt Lake City
Visit site
✟130,312.00
Country
United States
Faith
Buddhist
Marital Status
Celibate
The real reasons for these perceptual and memory glitches are far more interesting than childish clickbait fantasies aimed at the impressionable and the gullible.

Not convincing
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

FrumiousBandersnatch

Well-Known Member
Mar 20, 2009
15,258
8,056
✟326,229.00
Faith
Atheist
Not convincing
It's supported by a mass of evidence - compared to the untestable, unfalsifable fantasy of inexplicably skipping between alternate universes that differ by a couple of hyphens for no good reason at all...

Lol! "There's one born every minute" P.T. Barnum
 
Upvote 0

FrumiousBandersnatch

Well-Known Member
Mar 20, 2009
15,258
8,056
✟326,229.00
Faith
Atheist
Doubt is leading you to your conclusion.
Strictly speaking, I'm following the evidence; but of course, given the choice between a well-supported, well-tested explanation, and an untestable, inexplicable, ill-defined, fantastical speculation that contradicts known physics, I have good reason to consider the former a good scientific hypothesis and doubt the latter even makes good science fiction.
 
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

JohnEmmett

Well-Known Member
Jan 21, 2017
5,139
454
Salt Lake City
Visit site
✟130,312.00
Country
United States
Faith
Buddhist
Marital Status
Celibate
Strictly speaking, I'm following the evidence; but of course, given the choice between a well-supported, well-tested explanation, and an untestable, inexplicable, ill-defined, fantastical speculation that contradicts known physics, I have good reason to consider the former a good scientific hypothesis and doubt the latter even makes good science fiction.

Such is your perspective influenced by doubt.
 
Upvote 0

FrumiousBandersnatch

Well-Known Member
Mar 20, 2009
15,258
8,056
✟326,229.00
Faith
Atheist
Such is your perspective influenced by doubt.
Rational doubt based on reason and the criteria of argument to the best explanation (testability, fruitful predictions, consistency, explanatory power, unifying scope, specificity, coherence with current knowledge, etc). An 'explanation' that invokes the inexplicable or raises unanswerable questions is not a good explanation. An 'explanation' that can explain anything is not a good explanation.

Unless you're the White Queen and practice to believe six impossible things before breakfast, a hypothesis that satisfies the common criteria above is, by definition, better than one that satisfies none of them. Two others that fail to satisfy any criteria for a good argument or explanation are deities and magic.
 
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums
Status
Not open for further replies.