On Friday, 7 November 2014, Peter Sas <[email protected]> wrote:
> O.K. so here is a question to which there is perhaps an easy answer... > I've been searching the net for an answer, but I can't find one... So > please enlighten me! > > On this forum MWI is probably the most popular interpretation of QM. As > Moravec, Bruno Marchal and Tegmark have argued, WMI implies quantum > immortality. Every event that could cause my death has in the universal > wave function multiple outcomes, which are all realized in different > parallel worlds. In some of these worlds I die; in other worlds I survive. > Subjectively I should feel myself immortal. So far so good... But now my > question is: why aren't there any immortals (or at least absurdly old > people) in our world? Our world is just as much a possible world as all the > others. So if there are possible worlds with immortals in them, why not > then in our world? Where are the Methusalems? Isn't the absence of > Methusalem's a disconfirmation of WMI? > > One answer I've come across is that even if quantum immortality is true, > we would still die of old age, due to inevitable cell decay... But I feel > there are still some problems with this answer. First, isn't cell decay a > classical process based on more fundamental quantum processes, so that even > cell decay should have multiple outcomes realized in multiple worlds, > including worlds where my cells decay abnormally slowly? Second, most > people don't die just of old age, rather as they get older they become more > vulnerable to accidents, falling, diseases etc. hence events which have > multiple possible outcomes. > > In short: isn't the absence of Methusalems in our world evidence against > MWI? > > Perhaps you have already discussed this extensively elsewhere... if so > could you please give me the link to that discussion? > MWI doesn't imply that there will be lots of very old people, just that you will ultimately find yourself a very old person. But the question then becomes, why are you a relatively young person? If your life stretches out ahead trillions of years isn't it amazingly unlikely that you will find yourself in the first hundred years of your lifespan? One answer is that there are many more instances of you who are younger rather than very old, since the proportion of worlds in which you survive becomes smaller as time goes on. These questions were discussed extensively earlier in the history of this list. It's not so easy to look up threads on particular topics of the list but a good summary is found in this source: http://www.higgo.com/qti/arguments.htm James Higgo was an early member of the list who, tragically, died young in a plane crash in 2001. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
