timeless quantum immortality

Algernoq

Summary: The world looks normal despite Quantum Immortality, because the most likely Universe in which you're immortal is one where your immortality doesn't require much luck.

Recap of Quantum Immortality: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics states that every time some event is observed (e.g. a coin flip), the Universe splits into separate universes, one for each possible outcome (e.g. Heads universe and Tails universe), and the conscious observer will find themselves in one of these universes (e.g. either see the coin come up Heads or see it come up Tails) with a likelihood proportional to the number of ways this event can happen (e.g. you'll probably never see a coin land on edge). Quantum Immortality states that my consciousness will follow the path of branchings in which it survives (e.g. if I set up a highly reliable system that will kill me if the coin ever comes up tails, I can flip and flip the coin and I will only ever see it come up heads).

New idea: Let's take a timeless perspective, and ask "what entire life path am I most likely to observe, from the set of all possible life paths?" Quantum Immortality restricts me to observing life paths in which I do not die. Some life paths are more probable than others. It's not clear what this probability is, but simpler life paths seem more likely than others (e.g. I'm more likely to observe a life path that can be described with any of many sets of physical laws and initial conditions, and less likely to observe a life path that requires a unique, complicated description.) I'm most likely to observe a world that follows physical laws all the time, in which many different sets of simple physical laws could create the world I see. I'm less likely to see a world in which I get improbably lucky.

Thus, I expect to live forever but I don't expect to get lucky.

2nd new idea: Let's generalize this timeless perspective across multiple individuals and lifetimes. Zooming out again and looking at the set of all possible evolutionary paths for a lifeform: it's most likely that I'm one of a lifeform that exponentially grows about as rapidly as possible. Over a long time horizon, the most numerous lifeform is the one that has the highest rate of growth. Thus, because I am conscious and Quantum Immortality appears to be correct, there's a good chance that I will spawn huge numbers of conscious immortal beings during my infinitely-long life.

Summary: The world looks normal despite Quantum Immortality, because the most likely Universe in which you're immortal is one where your immortality doesn't require much luck.

Thus, I expect to live forever but I don't expect to get lucky.

(Rather than start with the main point I'll follow your responses and conclude)

1 - word definitions. This was one of those that was not wrong, but unclear.

2 - another point that was kind of sketchy-looking. It wasn't directly wrong, but it looked overly simplified. You'll see why in a few points.

I'm guessing no more than the volume of the Universe divided by the cube of the Planck length

A better limit would be not more than 2 to the power of that. Hilbert space is very, very large.

3 - this seems to be going out of order.

Quantum Immortality means I will not experience death during that 10 minutes

Regular old Quantum Immortality takes as an axiom that you cannot experience death. If you could, then the whole thing falls to pieces.

As for the universe putting you in a safe place, well then, you are fortunate. How does this argument apply to people who die? Did they not have subjective experiences? What makes them different from you?

4 - the heart of the matter

Since my consciousness only collapses the universal wavefunction once every 1/10th second

This is seriously, majorly wrong, and the reason I complained about point 2. Your brain decoheres a zillion times per second. Your consciousness is far, far, far into the classical regime.

Observing does not cause collapse. Events which cause the wavefunction to split into dynamically separate parts do, and those happen at the same rate in a system regardless of how you cut it.

QI seems to predict that I would never fall asleep

Depends on how you formulate it, doesn't it? Anyway, arguing against regular QI does not argue for your variant.

QI is all about the timeless perspective because it requires looking at worlds splitting into other worlds from a perspective outside of time

That doesn't look like immortality to me. It looks like you dying eventually. You look at the history of your lifeline and it peters out, little by little, sometimes more at once than other times. Those decreases? Those are dying. The only way QI works is if you ignore the parts that died, and the only justification I've seen for doing that is by locking your viewpoint to your subjective experience. That's what allows you to discard any cases where you don't survive. If you're looking from a distance, you see a whole lot of dead you-s out there.

As for the universe putting you in a safe place, well then, you are fortunate. How does this argument apply to people who die? Did they not have subjective experiences? What makes them different from you?

I believe the argument goes that they, too, are immortal... from their own perspective. Your consciousness traces its worldline, taking branches where you stay alive, and theirs does the same, but picking worlds where they stay alive. In other words, you can see them die, and they can see you die, but the consciousness, the qualia of the person who's su... (read more)

0Algernoq10y

Thank you again for the thoughtful reply. [...] Eh? Observing is the only thing that causes collapse. I agree that there are constant tiny thermodynamic events that, if observed, could cause decoherences a zillion times a second. But, usually these events are not observed. Decoherence is me finding out which world I end up in, and this only happens as quickly as I think, once every ~1/10 seconds when I'm awake. I'm guessing you would say that decoherence is my brain ending up in some world, and this happens every time any entropy-increasing chemical event happens. How can I experimentally tell the difference between these? It's not obvious because even a high-speed detector requires me to read the readout with my (slow) brain. From my perspective, the detector doesn't collapse any wavefunctions until I look at it. I agree with you that if I looked at another brain I would see that brain decohering / doing thermodynamic stuff all the time. I also agree with you that if I looked at my own brain I would see my own brain doing a bunch of stuff really rapidly. You would say that my brain decoheres as quickly as a detector measures it. I would say that my brain decoheres only as quickly as I notice detector readouts. Until I look at the detector, my brain and the detector are in a superposition of states with different possible detector readouts. I don't know how to test this.