If the many worlds of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics are real, there's at least a good chance that Quantum Immortality is real as well: All conscious beings should expect to experience the next moment in at least one Everett branch even if they stop existing in all other branches, and the moment after that in at least one other branch, and so on forever.
However, the transition from life to death isn't usually a binary change. For most people it happens slowly as your brain and the rest of your body deteriorates, often painfully.
Doesn't it follow that each of us should expect to keep living in this state of constant degradation and suffering for a very, very long time, perhaps forever?
I don't know much about quantum mechanics, so I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion. I'm just terrified, and I'd like, not to be reassured by well-meaning lies, but to know the truth. How likely is it that Quantum Torment is real?
Okay, this is the kind of argument that, if true and correct, would actually convince me that quantum torment is not real.
My extremely limited, incomplete, and non-mathy understanding of QM makes me suspicious of your explanation because it talks about things like macroscopic measurements affecting the fundamental level of reality, and about fundamental events only happening sometimes in special circumstances.
But since my understanding is so incomplete, I don't actually trust it. I'll have to rely on other people who understand QM, or give Eliezer's sequence and my physics books another shot! Since this has become such an important topic to me, I don't think I have a choice anymore, anyway.
Thanks for the reply.
World-splitting in MWI is not a fundamental event. "Worlds" themselves aren't fundamental objects in the theory. They are imprecisely defined macroscopic entities that emerge from decoherence. So nothing I say involves macroscopic processes affecting the fun... (read more)