You live in an unending hell, and the only way to escape is by calling your nearest quantum physics lab.
This is a totally half-baked notion based on a layman reading of quantum mechanics, but it’s fun to bring up anyway. We talked about it a bit at yesterday’s meetup.
Anyway, according to this theory, you might be stuck in a literally infinite hell, and you have to call your nearest quantum physics lab ASAP in order to escape. The reason is this: Given the 99.9999...% chance that you are not alive at any given point in the universe’s (or multiverse’s) timeline...it’s extremely unlikely that you would be alive right now, let alone that you would ever have existed in the first place. One way to explain this is to say that the infinite number of universes being generated (either through multiverse bubbles or what-have-you), INEVITABLY and CONTINUALLY create you. With perhaps quintillions of years in-between each creation...thus it’s trivial to explain why you happen to be alive and conscious right now. You always are, from your perspective. When you die, you are non-existent for the quintillion kajillion years, and the moment your particular universe reoccurs, bang, you pop up again in your crib, which from your perspective is instantaneous. You have no memory of course of any of this, but it means you live an infinite number of times.
Now here’s the kicker. IF by some unfortunate chance, something happens to you and you are killed or end up spending the rest of your life in pain, IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU AN INFINITE NUMBER OF TIMES. In every life. BUT, if the macro world is deterministic and quantum physics isn’t, you can escape this by calling your nearest quantum physics lab, getting a non-deterministic bit of information from them (“would you mind checking if a certain particle decayed in the last minute?”), and using their to dictate an action that changes the course of your day and your life. Even something as simple as deciding which route to take to work.
This way, you break the deterministic pattern of your life, including a potential infinitely recurring disaster, and can live multiple versions of your life.
That is all and I hope this nonsense is at least a bit fun or interesting. Nice to meet all of you.
Given the 99.9999...% chance that you are not alive at any given point in the universe’s (or multiverse’s) timeline...it’s extremely unlikely that you would be alive right now, let alone that you would ever have existed in the first place.
There is an arrangement of pieces of clementine peels on my desk right now; it’s exceedingly unlikely that that particular arrangement would happen right now at exactly this place. Therefore there must be an infinite amount of universes in which that arrangement exists or something.
Hi savageorange, I’m far from an expert in quantum mechanics. But I was led to believe it by a couple sources I came across recently. Particularly the Youtube vid from Minutephysics called “Can we predict everything” which mentions that non-determinism has been proven, and another video, I think from Lawrence Krauss, that mentioned that Einstein’s “god does not play dice” was proven wrong by one of Einstein’s contemporaries.
By the way, this is the first post I made on the site, I tried not to present it as a topic for formal discussion and mentioned that it was just something fun to ponder from a very layman perspective. The neg votes are a bit of a dismay.
My advice is to avoid discussing quantum physics for a while. Especially if your knowledge on the topic comes from short slogans from youtube videos. That kind of stuff really gets downvoted here.
(I don’t know what was your motivation for that, so I will just guess wildly. It is not necessary to discuss “smart topics” in this forum. That’s the kind of signalling that would probably seem cool in Mensa. Here, you could get better results by saying the obvious. Discuss the difficult topics when you feel confident that you understand them; otherwise, it may be better to ask questions.)
Any other topic you may consider interesting to discuss on LW? (In a new top-level comment.) For example, what is the thing you care about that you hope LW might be somehow helpful for? Or just generally, what are the things you care about?
You live in an unending hell, and the only way to escape is by calling your nearest quantum physics lab.
This is a totally half-baked notion based on a layman reading of quantum mechanics, but it’s fun to bring up anyway. We talked about it a bit at yesterday’s meetup.
Anyway, according to this theory, you might be stuck in a literally infinite hell, and you have to call your nearest quantum physics lab ASAP in order to escape. The reason is this: Given the 99.9999...% chance that you are not alive at any given point in the universe’s (or multiverse’s) timeline...it’s extremely unlikely that you would be alive right now, let alone that you would ever have existed in the first place. One way to explain this is to say that the infinite number of universes being generated (either through multiverse bubbles or what-have-you), INEVITABLY and CONTINUALLY create you. With perhaps quintillions of years in-between each creation...thus it’s trivial to explain why you happen to be alive and conscious right now. You always are, from your perspective. When you die, you are non-existent for the quintillion kajillion years, and the moment your particular universe reoccurs, bang, you pop up again in your crib, which from your perspective is instantaneous. You have no memory of course of any of this, but it means you live an infinite number of times.
Now here’s the kicker. IF by some unfortunate chance, something happens to you and you are killed or end up spending the rest of your life in pain, IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU AN INFINITE NUMBER OF TIMES. In every life. BUT, if the macro world is deterministic and quantum physics isn’t, you can escape this by calling your nearest quantum physics lab, getting a non-deterministic bit of information from them (“would you mind checking if a certain particle decayed in the last minute?”), and using their to dictate an action that changes the course of your day and your life. Even something as simple as deciding which route to take to work.
This way, you break the deterministic pattern of your life, including a potential infinitely recurring disaster, and can live multiple versions of your life.
That is all and I hope this nonsense is at least a bit fun or interesting. Nice to meet all of you.
-Ernie
There is an arrangement of pieces of clementine peels on my desk right now; it’s exceedingly unlikely that that particular arrangement would happen right now at exactly this place. Therefore there must be an infinite amount of universes in which that arrangement exists or something.
I don’t understand why you believe quantum mechanics is non-deterministic. Do you, perhaps, believe probability functions are non-deterministic?
Hi savageorange, I’m far from an expert in quantum mechanics. But I was led to believe it by a couple sources I came across recently. Particularly the Youtube vid from Minutephysics called “Can we predict everything” which mentions that non-determinism has been proven, and another video, I think from Lawrence Krauss, that mentioned that Einstein’s “god does not play dice” was proven wrong by one of Einstein’s contemporaries.
By the way, this is the first post I made on the site, I tried not to present it as a topic for formal discussion and mentioned that it was just something fun to ponder from a very layman perspective. The neg votes are a bit of a dismay.
I understand your feelings.
My advice is to avoid discussing quantum physics for a while. Especially if your knowledge on the topic comes from short slogans from youtube videos. That kind of stuff really gets downvoted here.
(I don’t know what was your motivation for that, so I will just guess wildly. It is not necessary to discuss “smart topics” in this forum. That’s the kind of signalling that would probably seem cool in Mensa. Here, you could get better results by saying the obvious. Discuss the difficult topics when you feel confident that you understand them; otherwise, it may be better to ask questions.)
Any other topic you may consider interesting to discuss on LW? (In a new top-level comment.) For example, what is the thing you care about that you hope LW might be somehow helpful for? Or just generally, what are the things you care about?