Or perhaps it only predicts that you will never observe being asleep.
Consider a person who plans to sleep from midnight to eight AM, but will stay up all night if a quantum coin comes up heads. At 11 PM the previous night, the person is awake no matter what, and the coin could be destined to come up either value. At 1 AM, only the people in the universes where the coin came up heads are still having conscious experiences, so they have some evidence that the coin came up heads. At 9 AM, everyone in both universes is having conscious experiences again, and a conscious observer is equally likely to have memories of the coin coming up heads or tails.
Really, all quantum immortality should be able to tell you is that at any moment you are having subjective experience, you are in a universe where events have proceeded in such a way as to keep you awake. So far, it’s been startlingly accurate on that account :)
(you should be able to prove quantum immortality with a quantum random number generator and a bunch of sleeping pills. Too bad the proof will only work for a few hours.)
you should be able to prove quantum immortality with a quantum random number generator and a bunch of sleeping pills.
so, you hook the pills up to a random number generator: if it outputs 00000000000 you get the placebo, if it outputs anything else, you get sleeping pills. Then check to see if you are awake an hour later. But if you did find yourself still awake, you would remember it in the morning, so the proof would last forever. But since I have already experienced sleep—and lots of it recently—I can conclude that the experiment would almost certainly conclude the boring way.
I suppose “you will experience a string of increasingly unlikley events that seem to be contrived just to keep you alive.” would have to include the possibility that you lose consciousness for a long time and then regain it.
But if you did find yourself still awake, you would remember it in the morning, so the proof would last forever.
But in the morning, there’d no longer be a link between the existence of your subjective experiences and the unlikely quantum event; you’d be having subjective experiences no matter how the quantum event turned out.
That makes it equivalent to the example where you commit quantum suicide fifty times, survive each time, and then ask another person in the same universe what their belief in quantum immortality is. Since that person saw an unlikely event (you surviving), but it was equally unlikely with or without QI (because your survival is not linked to their current subjective experience) that person can only say “Well, something very unlikely just happened, but it has no bearing on QI.”
Same is true of yourself in the morning. Because you’d be having the subjective experience no matter what, all you know in the universe where you stayed up all night was that an unlikely event happened that was equally unlikely with or without QI.
(I’m assuming here that experience doesn’t have to be continuous to be experience, and that I am the same person as I was before the last time I went to sleep).
In the morning the experiment’s a priori unlikely outcome would be evidence that something strange was going on involving subjective experience and probability; though perhaps something distinct from QI.
Or perhaps it only predicts that you will never observe being asleep.
Consider a person who plans to sleep from midnight to eight AM, but will stay up all night if a quantum coin comes up heads. At 11 PM the previous night, the person is awake no matter what, and the coin could be destined to come up either value. At 1 AM, only the people in the universes where the coin came up heads are still having conscious experiences, so they have some evidence that the coin came up heads. At 9 AM, everyone in both universes is having conscious experiences again, and a conscious observer is equally likely to have memories of the coin coming up heads or tails.
Really, all quantum immortality should be able to tell you is that at any moment you are having subjective experience, you are in a universe where events have proceeded in such a way as to keep you awake. So far, it’s been startlingly accurate on that account :)
(you should be able to prove quantum immortality with a quantum random number generator and a bunch of sleeping pills. Too bad the proof will only work for a few hours.)
so, you hook the pills up to a random number generator: if it outputs 00000000000 you get the placebo, if it outputs anything else, you get sleeping pills. Then check to see if you are awake an hour later. But if you did find yourself still awake, you would remember it in the morning, so the proof would last forever. But since I have already experienced sleep—and lots of it recently—I can conclude that the experiment would almost certainly conclude the boring way.
I suppose “you will experience a string of increasingly unlikley events that seem to be contrived just to keep you alive.” would have to include the possibility that you lose consciousness for a long time and then regain it.
But in the morning, there’d no longer be a link between the existence of your subjective experiences and the unlikely quantum event; you’d be having subjective experiences no matter how the quantum event turned out.
That makes it equivalent to the example where you commit quantum suicide fifty times, survive each time, and then ask another person in the same universe what their belief in quantum immortality is. Since that person saw an unlikely event (you surviving), but it was equally unlikely with or without QI (because your survival is not linked to their current subjective experience) that person can only say “Well, something very unlikely just happened, but it has no bearing on QI.”
Same is true of yourself in the morning. Because you’d be having the subjective experience no matter what, all you know in the universe where you stayed up all night was that an unlikely event happened that was equally unlikely with or without QI.
(I’m assuming here that experience doesn’t have to be continuous to be experience, and that I am the same person as I was before the last time I went to sleep).
In the morning the experiment’s a priori unlikely outcome would be evidence that something strange was going on involving subjective experience and probability; though perhaps something distinct from QI.