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?
I'm not sure how I am going to cite that, there has never been conducted a gigantic poll on this matter, but the fact that the leading "experts" in the field who are the only ones doing work on Everett says that it's less than 10% (Deutsch's new book Beginning of infinity) should be revealing enough.
As for branching and divergence, Alastair Wilson and Simon Saunders disagrees: http://alastairwilson.org/
Ah! But here's the rub. Consider a physicist who thinks Everett - or anyone who published after, for that matter - nailed it. Is this person going to publish anything on that subject? No. They're going to go off and work on some other physics topic. The experts are generally those who think there's something wrong with what's out there so far!
In my little corner of condensed matter, it looks a whole lot more popular than that. In two consecutive groups I've had occasion to say something like, "Well, think of what a 'measurement' IS - your detector, an... (read more)