While I'm certain all of this is fascinating to those who are fascinated by
such things, I find myself reacting similarly to the way I did when you brought
up the fellow who wanted to spend his last moments before dying rectifying the
mistakes he'd made in the past. That just does not compute for me.
Similarly, the concept of someone becoming so distraught that another version
of themselves is more successful or having more fun in another universe than
they are does not compute for me. How lame would a person have to be to even
*think* like that, much less commit suicide over it. If this scenario is
reasonable to you, could you explain it to me?
From: "[email protected] [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2015 3:27 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Ramayan in Human Physiology-with video links
Re my post from a while back: "Someone (I forget who) wrote a sci-fi book
in which the multiworlds quantum theory has been finally proved true and there
is a mass outbreak of suicides as people realize that elsewhere there are other
"themselves" who made the right career choice, made the right choice of
partner, etc, and they can't bear the thought they're stuck in this universe as
failures.":
I just now came upon the title. It's All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven.
>From Wiki: In the eponymous story contained within, Niven attempted to craft a
>response to stories featuring the many-worlds interpretation as a key plot
>point, taking the social implications of infinite realities to a depressing
>conclusion. A police detective, pondering a rash of unexplained suicides and
>murder-suicides occurring since the discovery of travel to parallel universes,
>begins to realize that if all possible choices that might be made are actually
>made in parallel universes, people will see their freedom of choice as
>meaningless. The choice not to commit suicide, or not to commit a crime, seems
>meaningless if one knows that in some other universe, the choice went the
>other way. They therefore kill themselves or commit the crime, because they
>abandon the sense of choice.
I'm reading a book at the moment called Our Mathematical Universe by Max
Tegmark (described on the cover as "one of the rock gods of cosmology") which
argues that the many-worlds theory is our best explanation for our physical
universe. As a bonus he includes an experiment that could prove the many-worlds
theory true! It involves playing Russian roulette with a gun that would fire or
not depending on a 50/50 quantum uncertainty. Here's an explanation of "Quantum
Suicide" from a web page. It's
neat!http://io9.com/5891740/quantum-suicide-how-to-prove-the-multiverse-exists-in-the-most-violent-way-possible
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