The same argument refutes quantum immortality, or at least removes its attractiveness. Suppose I am facing imminent death. For example, I have a terminal illness and within a few days I am sure to expire. What hypothetical being differs from me in a single piece of quantum uncertainty resolving one way rather than another? Someone with that terminal illness who in a few days will expire almost as certainly as I will. You have to go very far from that person on the death ward to reach someone who is hale and hearty, and what does that person have to do with me? The most similar person to me who is still alive when I die is one who is just about to die. And there I will be stuck, endlessly dying until some other outcome rises to greater probability than my increasingly unlikely survival, and will that outcome be any more welcome? That is what quantum immortality would look like. I believe this point has been made by others, that QI should be considered horrifying rather than an escape from death.
The closest we have to coexisting but identical persons in this world is identical twins. I have never heard of anyone going to sleep as one of a pair of twins and waking up as the other.
There is non-zero measure on a branch that starts with you terminally ill and gradually proceeds to you miraculously recovering. So if you consider normally recovered you to be you, nothing stops you from considering this low-measure you to also be you.
I have never heard of anyone going to sleep as one of a pair of twins and waking up as the other.
According to MWI everyone wakes up as multiple selves all the time.
The point of the third assumption is that those revival simulations are not just similar to you, but actually “you”. “You” of this instant is a particular observer-moment that is being computed in a multitude of quantum branches or universes.
What we want is orthogonal though, right? Unless you think that metaphysics is so intractable to reason about logically that the best we can do is go by aesthetics.
I believe this point has been made by others, that QI should be considered horrifying rather than an escape from death.
I agree, though this misses the point since I never rendered a value judgment on whether being immortal this way is “good” or “bad”. I was simply stating a neutral argument as to why we are probably immortal if we accept the three assumptions I laid out.
The same argument refutes quantum immortality, or at least removes its attractiveness. Suppose I am facing imminent death. For example, I have a terminal illness and within a few days I am sure to expire. What hypothetical being differs from me in a single piece of quantum uncertainty resolving one way rather than another? Someone with that terminal illness who in a few days will expire almost as certainly as I will. You have to go very far from that person on the death ward to reach someone who is hale and hearty, and what does that person have to do with me? The most similar person to me who is still alive when I die is one who is just about to die. And there I will be stuck, endlessly dying until some other outcome rises to greater probability than my increasingly unlikely survival, and will that outcome be any more welcome? That is what quantum immortality would look like. I believe this point has been made by others, that QI should be considered horrifying rather than an escape from death.
The closest we have to coexisting but identical persons in this world is identical twins. I have never heard of anyone going to sleep as one of a pair of twins and waking up as the other.
There is non-zero measure on a branch that starts with you terminally ill and gradually proceeds to you miraculously recovering. So if you consider normally recovered you to be you, nothing stops you from considering this low-measure you to also be you.
According to MWI everyone wakes up as multiple selves all the time.
To adapt Woody Allen, I don’t want to achieve immortality by imagining that someone else is me, I want to achieve immortality by not dying.
The point of the third assumption is that those revival simulations are not just similar to you, but actually “you”. “You” of this instant is a particular observer-moment that is being computed in a multitude of quantum branches or universes.
Well, that is your third assumption. But it requires that the multiple instances are identical: if one is dying, all are. If one is revived, all are.
What we want is orthogonal though, right? Unless you think that metaphysics is so intractable to reason about logically that the best we can do is go by aesthetics.
I agree, though this misses the point since I never rendered a value judgment on whether being immortal this way is “good” or “bad”. I was simply stating a neutral argument as to why we are probably immortal if we accept the three assumptions I laid out.