Bob Hearn wrote (from [EMAIL PROTECTED] question): >I asked Tegmark what he thought about the idea that one could view >life as a quantum suicide experiment, in the sense that if it is at >all possible that I will be alive in, say, 100 years, then I will >experience this - by definition, I won't experience the branches in >which I'm not! This could mean everyone is immortal in their own >world. Tegmark did not agree.
But I do agree. I have even shown that a minimal platonistic assumption together with mechanism (the doctrine that I'm finitely descriptible) entails a similar form of immortality. I have also developped the quantum suicide idea in my 1988 and 1991 paper. (ref. in my thesis http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal). I also derive in the thesis a Quantum Logic from the (godelian-like) arithmetisation of the idea that "by definition, I won't experience the branches in which I'm not". More about Mechanist or Quantum immortality, related to the idea that Everything Exist (but then what is a thing?) can be find in the everything list discussion at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/. Not all everythinger agrees with such form of immortality (to be sure). I'm not quite sure I *like* the idea but I don't believe it is easy to logically escape it when you accept either QM-without-collapse, or just Digital Mechanism. See also James Higgo web page on that question: http://www.higgo.com/quantum/qtidebate.htm About [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s original question: >Can an observer really decide if the Copenhagen interpretation is >false by performing a quantum suicide experiment as proposed by >Tegmark (See http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/9709032 )? I think that if a CopenhagenQM repeats quantum suicides, and survives, then he will either become an Everett fan or he will become a quite a-la-von-Neumann solipsist (believing he is the only one able to reduce the wave packet!). Bruno
