A wonderful dream
A wonderful dream that fails to recognise extinction of the universe
Prediction 163
Duration 20 years (02004-02024)
Predictor
Brendan McAuliffe
Challenger
TBA
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The ' many worlds ' hypothesis of quantum mechanics is correct and ' quantum immortality ' obtains.
If that's the case, you will live, no matter how unlikely that is, esstenially forever. You're going to live unitl ' machine transcendence ' is achieved and you are ' uploaded ' into a computer and become essentially immortal ( or whatever form it may take, The Second Coming happens, The Singularity, The Omega point, etc )
I may die in your world and you may die in mine, but you will live forever in yours. But it's possible that after this transcendence that You will not be the same You that You are Yous to.
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Jack Schere: McAuliffe is referring to "Quantum suicide and immortality", as described in the wikipedia entry of the same name. Consider Schrödinger's cat. We open the box and find it either dead or alive. But under the many worlds interpretation, the collapse of a superposition is actually a bifurcation of the universe - one in which outcome A occurs, and one in which outcome B does instead. So, regardless of what state you find the cat in, the cat itself will "find" itself in the branch in which it survives.
Quantum suicide and immortality suggests one could experimentally test the many world interpretation by repeatedly putting oneself in the cats position. Surviving n rounds would have an improbability of 0.5^n. Of course you would not survive to observe negative evidence, and McAuliffe hasn't suggested any alternative experiments. I don't see an argument here.
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