What if there is a perfect clone of you not sitting next to you, but sitting in another part of the universe that is atom-by-atom identical to this one throughout the span of a 46 billion light-year diameter sphere (the size of our observable universe) whose history has been identical to ours since the big bang.
Every thought you have had over the course of your entire life this clone has had too. And what’s more, they’ve had them for the exact same reasons. The chain of events leading up to each of their thoughts is identical to the chain for yours.
Suppose in fact that there are billions such clones (or even infinitely many) spread (unimaginable far apart) all across our giant universe. A moment from now due to quantum events the copies’ experiences will diverge. Some will experience one sensation, and some another, so at that point only a fraction of them continue to have histories identical to yours. But can you say which one of them you will be?
If there is no way to distinguish one copy from another, then perhaps it makes sense to say that they are all the same thing—so that all of the clones with identical histories to you are together ‘you’ right now, but as their experiences diverge going forward, they split into different possible future versions of you.
That’s all true, but I think the fact that I can’t see more than one of their points of view is enough to distinguish between them. The only difference I can think of that pertains to a reductionist universe is location. I know the “inner listener” to be an illusion, but still can’t shake the fact that if I died in this universe, but not in another one, then I wouldn’t experience “waking up”. Its possible that I’m being irrational and misinterpreting the way the brain works, but I think it is clearly observable that I don’t feel that I’m experiencing more than one universe, and this feeling is the thing that I care most to preserve.
I think you’re missing the part where “their points of view” are exactly the same. What would it mean to see more than one of them when they’re exactly the same. Are you picturing them lined up next to each other in your field of view so you can count them?
Similarly there is no “I just definitely died” feeling that we know of. (How would we know?) You shouldn’t picture “dying and then waking up in another universe.” You should picture “I experience passing out knowing I may die, but that there is a least one of me that probably doesn’t. So when I wake up it will turn out that I was one of them.”
Does this make more sense? I think the barrier to intuition is in just how indistinguishable,” indistinguishable” is. You can be a billion exact copies and you’ll never notice, because they’re exact.
I meant that the “me” in a different universe is different from me in this one. The distance between universes is not trivial. I might never notice the difference between a million “me”s and a billion, but the overall number of “me”s is significant. If multiple versions of myself live side by side, and one dies, then that one does not really continue living, unless it i replaced. Does that make sense? Its not very easy to word ideas regarding this topic.
I suppose you mean they have different positions. But if indistinguishable particles in quantum mechanics can freely switch places with each other whenever, and which is which has no meaning, then what argument do you have that the universe can even keep different versions of you apart itself?
Not very formal, but I’m trying to convey the idea that certain facts that seem important have no actual meaning in the ontology of quantum physics.
What if there is a perfect clone of you not sitting next to you, but sitting in another part of the universe that is atom-by-atom identical to this one throughout the span of a 46 billion light-year diameter sphere (the size of our observable universe) whose history has been identical to ours since the big bang.
Every thought you have had over the course of your entire life this clone has had too. And what’s more, they’ve had them for the exact same reasons. The chain of events leading up to each of their thoughts is identical to the chain for yours.
Suppose in fact that there are billions such clones (or even infinitely many) spread (unimaginable far apart) all across our giant universe. A moment from now due to quantum events the copies’ experiences will diverge. Some will experience one sensation, and some another, so at that point only a fraction of them continue to have histories identical to yours. But can you say which one of them you will be?
If there is no way to distinguish one copy from another, then perhaps it makes sense to say that they are all the same thing—so that all of the clones with identical histories to you are together ‘you’ right now, but as their experiences diverge going forward, they split into different possible future versions of you.
What do you think?
That’s all true, but I think the fact that I can’t see more than one of their points of view is enough to distinguish between them. The only difference I can think of that pertains to a reductionist universe is location. I know the “inner listener” to be an illusion, but still can’t shake the fact that if I died in this universe, but not in another one, then I wouldn’t experience “waking up”. Its possible that I’m being irrational and misinterpreting the way the brain works, but I think it is clearly observable that I don’t feel that I’m experiencing more than one universe, and this feeling is the thing that I care most to preserve.
I think you’re missing the part where “their points of view” are exactly the same. What would it mean to see more than one of them when they’re exactly the same. Are you picturing them lined up next to each other in your field of view so you can count them?
Similarly there is no “I just definitely died” feeling that we know of. (How would we know?) You shouldn’t picture “dying and then waking up in another universe.” You should picture “I experience passing out knowing I may die, but that there is a least one of me that probably doesn’t. So when I wake up it will turn out that I was one of them.”
Does this make more sense? I think the barrier to intuition is in just how indistinguishable,” indistinguishable” is. You can be a billion exact copies and you’ll never notice, because they’re exact.
I meant that the “me” in a different universe is different from me in this one. The distance between universes is not trivial. I might never notice the difference between a million “me”s and a billion, but the overall number of “me”s is significant. If multiple versions of myself live side by side, and one dies, then that one does not really continue living, unless it i replaced. Does that make sense? Its not very easy to word ideas regarding this topic.
I suppose you mean they have different positions. But if indistinguishable particles in quantum mechanics can freely switch places with each other whenever, and which is which has no meaning, then what argument do you have that the universe can even keep different versions of you apart itself?
Not very formal, but I’m trying to convey the idea that certain facts that seem important have no actual meaning in the ontology of quantum physics.