On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 12:26 AM Giulio Prisco <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Giulio >< "If technological resurrection needs a perfect copy of a quantum state] >> you'd become a different person many trillions of times every second" > > > *"**This contradicts what you just said about deterministic evolution". * I don't see the contradiction. Yes it's possible, even probable, that a single air molecule bumping into you could change you enough that one year from now your history and your conscious experience will be very different from what it would've been if that particular air molecule had not bumped into you, but that doesn't change the fact that right now, at the instant the air molecule hit you, your conscious experience will not have changed nor would that of anybody else. And if Hugh Everett's Many Worlds idea is basically correct, which I think it probably is, then "you" DO split trillions of times every second and they will all eventually have different histories, but NOT at the instant of the split. Up until that instant they all will have had identical conscious experiences, and it would be nonsensical to ask which one is really "you". They would all have an equal right to call themselves Giulio Prisco. By the way, if the things that we already understand about quantum mechanics ever start to sink into the zeitgeist of the general population then the English language is going to need to make some big changes, especially about the way it handles personal pronouns. And I suspect other languages are going to have to do the same. >* "**The quantum state (of you + the environment) evolves > deterministically and contains all those changes."* Yes, if everything evolves according to the Schrodinger Equation then that must be the case. There have been some very sensitive experiments which try to find circumstances where the prediction of the equation does not exactly conform to the results of experiment; some competitors to the Many Worlds idea, such as objective collapse theories, claim that the equation needs modification, but so far at least the unmodified Schrodinger Equation has passed all tests with flying colors. But if experimenters ever do find an example where the original Schrodinger Equation doesn't work then they will have proven that Everett's Many Worlds idea is dead wrong. Personally I don't think they're going to find anything but I've been known to be wrong. >"*But we agree that technological resurrection does not need a perfect > copy of a quantum state."* Yes. >>< "I believe that if someday we build a Jupiter brain [-> God]...>" > > *> "What if some alien civilization has already done so?"* If that were the case then the Galaxy, if not the entire observable universe, would look radically different from what we see; and I'm not talking about anything subtle, you wouldn't even need a telescope. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> nnr -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1Xx%2BTN0zn%2B0QqmJ7TUdEtpdBgMwPnzhw7LqJekEz7iXA%40mail.gmail.com.
