Episode 57: Quantum Immortality / Quantum Torment
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Transcript
[00:00:10] Blue: Hello Bruce cameo nice to talk to you. Hello. I’ve got to say that I am really Excited for this conversation. Maybe a little more than usual even today. We’re gonna be talking about quantum immortality When I first read the beginning of infinity This is one of the I would say the things that really Struck me as kind of a revelation and you know, this kind of relates to our religion Conversation last week where we spoke about parallels between Deugeonism and religion. This is kind of another one at least what I got from the beginning of an infinity And I think it would be hard not to make this Connection, I mean, it’s a really simple argument in a way a the multiverse is real Okay, I think we agree with that be death is soluble goes along with the principle of optimism pretty well My conclusion at least is that somewhere in the multiverse we live forever Hopefully in harmony with our loved ones. Hopefully I can bring back my dog whatever So after I read the beginning of infinity, I told my wife about this I told my kids about this told my friends my co -workers Not very many people care has been my experience. Yes They think it’s weird sounds really weird and I I don’t know. I mean Usually it will lead into a conversation about many worlds. I asked my wife the other day I said, well, are you at all convinced? You know, we’ve talked about this last few years.
[00:01:44] Blue: I’ve been into this and and Are you at all convinced that that many worlds is a possibility and she says well a little but I don’t really care and You know, I mean, I don’t you know, I don’t blame her She’s in her own thing music and art and you know, it’s just not something that she spends too much time about thinking about and most people are like that I mean from what I’ve experienced. It’s hard for me to understand. This is immortality and it’s real and it’s physics It’s not theology just on the level of basic curiosity. I want to know I mean in the same way. I want to know where humans come from do we evolve from from apes I want to know about Einstein’s theory of relativity and This is the what I would consider the most positive aspect of quantum immortality We’re also gonna get into some rather dark aspects of quantum and immortality quantum Torment. Oh, yeah, is we can we can discuss but let’s let’s stick with the positives. What are your thoughts, Bruce?
[00:02:53] Red: okay, so let me Let me just say that I’ve hung out for a while with people who are fans of David Doge and try to talk with them and things like that and a lot of the podcast ideas come from me arguing with them and I’m trying to Make my case I’ve asked a number of them. Have you given any thought to the idea of? You know quantum immortality that that there might actually be something like an afterlife a Pippler a mega -point light thing and every single one of them has told me no, I’ve never given it any thought at all so this is a group that believes in many worlds and loves David Doge’s books and They’ve really kind of not given this much thought and it just isn’t something that seems to ever cross their mind that You know, is this actually even do it himself Significantly down plays this in his first book the fabric of reality.
[00:03:46] Red: He almost seems to me like he’s arguing against it I’m probably reading too much in there, but he’s at a minimum He’s very neutral on the subject maybe even against it and he argues that that aspect of Tipper’s theory is based on the assumption that we know what they’re gonna choose to do with their knowledge As I argued in the previous episode, that’s not right Right because if we’re talking many worlds then it just has to be that it’s possible that someone decides that we can solve Death all the way bring back people who were previously dead And if you can do that then somewhere across the multiverse someone should do that And so I never understood that aspect of why David Doge was downplaying that or why it just doesn’t seem that interesting to People to me that was the single most interesting part of David Doge’s book For
[00:04:40] Blue: reasons we’re on the same page, too, and I’ve noticed that even on the Facebook group It’s been a little hard to get get discussions on on quantum immortality going It’s almost like an aspect of compared to like, I don’t know say free will or AGI or some of the other Issues that seem to generate a lot of thoughts For some reason Okay
[00:05:09] Red: Just a straight opinion. It’s and I apologize to my audience since a lot of them might not like this opinion I think it’s way too close to religion. I think it’s so close to religion I think it is religion and I think that the moment you really start taking it seriously You’re taking religion seriously and I think that’s not the way most people who are interested in these theories want to present Or think of themselves so I think it’s a line that only a religious person like myself can be comfortable crossing really easily And so to me it becomes this really interesting scientific question and I don’t have any concerns about oh, it feels really religious
[00:05:47] Blue: Yeah,
[00:05:48] Red: but I think that most people who would be interested in Dwayche’s for strands things like that into philosophy into science They probably want to present themselves as hard -headed atheists and this just across the line for that
[00:06:02] Blue: Yeah,
[00:06:02] Red: so the fact that it’s actually a real scientific question. I mean it is a scientific question Maybe it’s not right, right? Maybe we’re getting something wrong, but it’s like a totally legitimate scientific question Oh,
[00:06:14] Blue: yeah I mean once you accept the validity of many worlds, which is of course its own Conversation that you’ve had before You know then it just becomes a matter of well is death a soluble problem, which according to the principle of optimism all evils come from lack of knowledge and all problems that are interesting or Solvable and certainly that would include death. I would actually on a big picture I would consider think of that as maybe pretty easy one really We
[00:06:48] Red: may need to explain this to cameo a bit because she wasn’t in the last episode where we talked to make a point So we just listen to the make a point episode and then this one came out afterwards And so they know exactly what we’re talking about but cameo doesn’t have the advantage of that Okay, so let me let me just briefly explain So there’s this theory called the omega point theory came from a guy named Frank tipler Frank tipler is in fact the original Forstrander not David Deutsch but tipler is also depending on what time period you’re talking about a religious person and He equated the omega point theory with theology and so that really turned off other potential People that might otherwise find interesting David Deutsch being an interesting exception He wrote a book about the mega point in 19th tipler wrote a book about mega point in 1994 David Deutsch’s book fabric of reality comes out in 1995.
[00:07:41] Red: No accident He clearly had read tipler’s book and it inspired kind of brought together allowed him to Take the other things that do I should have been thinking about that are the strands throughout the book And he twines them all together at the end and he shows Really the four strands give us and totally new Non -pessimistic scientific cosmology So one of the things I talked about in the previous episode cameo Is that the normal cosmology of physics that almost every physicist you’re going to come across unless they’re religious is going to believe in is heat death and Heat death is about as pessimistic a cosmology as you could possibly imagine it is hellishly bad although nobody ever talks about that is I think if Scientists that are atheist physicists were to really stop and think through their cosmology all the way it would just be bad So they don’t and one of the things that attracted me to dutch’s For strands is it was his books was it was the first time I ever had the thought. Oh Science isn’t naturally pessimistic. That’s just the way we currently look at it There might actually be an optimistic way to look at science And so and that was what I loved about the fabric reality is that he had the final chapter He lays out this all may mean that the correct cosmology is something more like the omega point rather than like heat death Do the optimistic cosmology versus the pessimistic cosmology?
[00:09:10] Red: Now one of the things that comes out of that though is if you do have an omega point like Cosmology which basically boils down to never never mind the collapsing universe for the moment We talked about how white tippers theory is somewhat questionable But just the basic idea that progress continues forever that there’s an infinite amount of progress possible that We can keep making more slot goes on forever We can we can continually keep finding ways to increase the speed of our computations in such a world It’s not just that death. I mean like most people would agree death is just a problem to be solved even if they haven’t given it much thought the idea that we could solve individual death and Make ourselves live for very long periods of time as long as the universe exists, which in an omega point Cosmology that would be forever in heat death. It’s not forever Yes, you can solve that death in that sense, but can you solve it in a broader sense? Could you for example bring back everyone who died before us and bring them back to life again? Well if you have enough computation and you’ve got enough knowledge then it’s just a solvable problem, right?
[00:10:18] Red: It’s just a problem that’s just a matter of waiting until your computers you understand the universe well enough You understand physics well enough and then you could create a simulation of the entire universe Or really the entire multiverse and you can run it and you could find every single person that ever lived In our past and that has died and you could bring them back to life Which might be a really interesting thing to want to do to bring these other minds that have existed and might even have survival value for people in the future like If you had the option to bring back Einstein, wouldn’t that be a good thing, right? He’s got this really unique thinker that you probably want to have part of your society, right? And that would really be true for absolutely everybody though Even people that died unknown you’ve never heard of them cavemen or whatever How might they impact the search for knowledge if you brought a mind like that back from the dead and let them join a Modern society modern in this case meaning something way into the future way more advanced than what we have It seems very reasonable that if it is a problem that can be solved It will be solved in which case it would be very natural under the laws of physics for Some future sub far future society to start bringing back people from the dead And that’s really what Peter’s talking about in terms of quantum immortality This is the optimistic side of quantum immortality. There’s a downside that we have to talk about too.
[00:11:42] Green: Okay. All right That thing thank you for the recap.
[00:11:46] Blue: Okay. Can I ask you a question about the multiverse theory? Relevant to this Well, okay wait just to summarize. So yes, the multiverse is real death is soluble humans of today Presumably we’re at we’re at the right time in history. I would Imagine where at least somewhere in the multiverse. Maybe it’s just one branch, but I would imagine it’d be a lot They’re gonna figure out how to download our brains onto a computer or whatever They’re just discover the mystery of consciousness and we’re good On the Dyson sphere or it sounds like whatever, you know what at least until the heat the heat death Omega point stuff Is kind of its own thing, but at least for a while where we’re good But then, you know, what about people hundred or a thousand years ago, you know, how I interpreted the multiverse theory When I first read it about it was that everything that could possibly happen according to the laws of physics I know that’s a tautology, but I think you get what I mean plays out in in some branch of the multiverse, which would Most likely include someone in the Middle Ages figuring out relativity and quantum theory and you know inventing a computer and and Living forever, so there’s versions of earth where the enlightenment started hundreds or thousands of years earlier Absolutely, so we should have Really, okay humans have been around for I think two million years, right?
[00:13:29] Red: Okay, so do it when he talks about all problems are soluble I wanted to do an episode where we got a panel together and we’ll do that in the near future I don’t fully understand what he means by it and Lee Cronin He’s pointed out that these things take time like we’re in a search process You have to have certain kinds of knowledge before other kinds of knowledge can become possible So there is a certain amount of time or computation that must take place To be able to get to a certain advanced state of knowledge, right? You can’t just say Instantaneously it takes place. It just that just isn’t going to happen Not
[00:14:04] Blue: even it not even in a low -amplitude Universe in the multiverse it wouldn’t happen that some some you know some guy like Einstein to the tenth power wouldn’t have just thought of all the necessary knowledge All the ones on all the ones So there are there are things that don’t happen in the multiverse because that’s what I really wanted to get That’s
[00:14:28] Red: right So do I just argued he originally took the stance everything that can happen happens in the multiverse But there there are that’s really only true to whatever the actual limitations are right So he would have said limitations laws of physics, but really there are other kinds of limitations You can call them by the laws of physics or not But certain types of knowledge have to happen first takes a certain amount of computation There are and then there’s things that you don’t want to have happened So you put things in place and it would make sense that those would start to disappear out of the multiverse Those possibilities. There’s a certain sense in which yes You can say everything that can happen happens in the multiverse as long as it’s physically possible But exactly what we mean by that is far less clear, right?
[00:15:11] Blue: Okay, and
[00:15:12] Red: so in a lot of ways that’s what we’re still trying to figure out is what does it mean physically possible, right? It’s physically possible has to take into consideration Leave Cronin’s theories. It has to take into consideration the laws of physics It has to take into consideration the the very fact that we’re trying to do error correction So let me give you an example of this a lot of times the multiverse has been presented as every choice you could make you made Okay Well, that’s not really necessarily true that that’s like a very simplistic Understanding of the multiverse and not even necessarily a realistic one So for example, let’s take cameo as an example cameo is a decent person, right? So she could in theory Decide to do something really awful just kill somebody on the way home for work just for fun or something like that So does that mean that there’s some version of cameo in the multiverse where she did this? Well, no, right because because that’s not something that’s part of her program most likely it’s running in her brain and and so That would actually in some sense defy the laws of physics for her to choose to do that You might get around that by claiming that there’s this weird quantum event in her brain And it causes her to not be herself. Okay, but at this point she’s not cameo So we’re we’re kind of outside bounds of the original question, right?
[00:16:35] Blue: Okay
[00:16:35] Red: so So in a certain sense. Yeah, we can imagine A version of cameo doing something really awful But there’s it doesn’t necessarily happen in the multiverse because there’s a certain sense in which that would seem to Violate the laws of physics that it could happen if that
[00:16:51] Blue: So take home point. There are what do I think calls harry potter universes? I hope I didn’t make that up where really fantastical things happen But not every fantastical thing happens
[00:17:07] Red: So let me explain the harry potter universe. Okay, it’s a really weird concept so There so imagine that I take a wand and I say wingardom leviosa To cameo and I try to levitate her using that spell Well, there is no such spell wingardom leviosa, right? It’s denied by the laws of physics But there is some universe out there in the multiverse where the moment I say that Some weird set of quantum events happen and the wind comes and picks up cameo and then drops her again Okay, it’s actually just a total coincidence. Okay, but it really seems like that spell worked Now if you can buy that that universe exists Then you have to buy that there’s a universe where I try it again And the same coincidence happens and then I try it again and then the same coincidence happens Okay In that universe, which by the way do it doesn’t even call a universe I don’t know why but he doesn’t refuse to refer to them as universes There would be a some group of people where they really think I’m a magician Because it just so happens that every single spell I cast happens to take place. That’s the harry potter universe. It doesn’t actually Technically violate the laws of physics But it’s a universe in which just due to random Changes to quantum physics that just take place naturally anyhow Um, it’s sure there there is effectively a law a new law of physics that Wingardium leviosa works at least when I do it, right?
[00:18:44] Blue: Okay
[00:18:45] Red: shoot lightning bolts and things like that. It’s actually just total madness now Obviously that universe would would be increasingly improbable having me do it once would be highly improbable having me do it twice would be Exponentially improbable and then every single time having to happen would just be exponentially exponentially less probable.
[00:19:06] Blue: Okay And
[00:19:07] Red: yet it shouldn’t be that there’s some place out in the multiverse where just that weird set of coincidences actually did take place And that society would see the world very differently and they wouldn’t their their world would be inexplicable, right? It’s They would have this weird set of coincidences that seemed like universal laws And they would it would be completely impossible to explain them because they’re actually just coincidences So I think that’s why do I refuse to call it a universe is because those universes are inexplicable basically the idea of Explanatory universality does not exist in those universes.
[00:19:44] Blue: Okay, so we don’t have to worry too much about universes where we Decide to become serial killers or something like that or do something completely Reposterous.
[00:19:56] Red: Yeah, so I I don’t think so, but of course we’re still making assumptions, right? We’re but we’re we don’t fully understand how the human mind works How much it uses random effects so we don’t it’s hard to answer that question But but there’s no particularly good reason to believe we should we have to worry about it
[00:20:14] Blue: I mean, there’s a lot of universes. I guess I read someone I hope this is right someone someone said that if you Were to write out the number of of universes just just write it out just that act of of writing Would create so much mass that it would start another black hole and
[00:20:36] Red: Right destroy the universe. So it’s a big number
[00:20:43] Blue: So should we move on to quantum torment or
[00:20:46] Red: so quantum torment so let’s talk about Quantum suicide maybe first because that that really helps you understand the concept of quantum immortality The less optimistic version of it and then ultimately quantum torment the ultimately pessimistic version of it
[00:21:03] Blue: Was it tag mark who came up with the idea of quantum suicide?
[00:21:06] Red: You know, I have that right. I’m a little unclear if he actually came up with it Or if he is just the first one to popularize it. I think he may have came up with it
[00:21:15] Blue: Okay
[00:21:16] Red: So and he doesn’t believe in it by the way, at least according to the book of his that I listened to Okay, so it was an interesting thought experiment Tag mark is um, he likes kind of cool dumb stuff like this, right? I mean and it makes sense You want smart people really thinking out there beyond the edge of what makes sense Trying to push the boundaries Because that’s how you push the boundaries and more things make sense, right
[00:21:41] Blue: the mathematical universe hypothesis So I do recall him saying very clearly that that he does put many worlds in a different category than all the other other Multiverses
[00:21:54] Red: so any should so Like doge doesn’t really give credence to any of the multiverse theories except The quantum one so
[00:22:03] Blue: yeah,
[00:22:04] Red: you may not know this but there’s actually like if you look up max teedmark’s website There’s like four different classes of multiverse. Okay, and the quantum multiverse that we talk about in this podcast is only one of them The so like another one might be that the universe is just infinite. So there’s an infinite amount of matter so it’s guaranteed that that um, if you could somehow travel faster than the speed of light which you can’t if you were to go fly out Into the universe you would eventually find another planet Where matter happens to have come together where there’s a cameo and there’s a bruce and there’s a peter And they’re having exactly the same conversation that we’re having right now But and then it differentiates a little bit just like a quantum multiverse would So that would be like a totally different kind of multiverse that has nothing to do with quantum physics But has a lot of the same elements to it that the quantum multiverse has
[00:22:56] Blue: I think that brian green then expands it to about 10 different kinds. It brings in string string theory and all this so
[00:23:03] Red: Yeah, so straight theory makes some similar sorts of predictions. Here’s the thing though. These other types of multiverses are based on theories and cosmologies and such that aren’t best in class theories So if you if you do it based on string theory string theory as we’ve talked about it’s not even an empirical theory So it it it just does not get to be counted as In the same category as quantum physics. Okay, this is by the way the argument. I keep making to sodia over per theories is Certain theories that have been highly corroborated. They’re they are different. They that is what makes them different They’re they’re so good that they make tons of predictions They have really heavy empirical content and we’ve tested the heck out of them and we we can’t find counter examples to them, right? so Quantum physics is in its own little category string theory is not the same Inflation is not the same in none of these other theories that might lead to multiverses um, none of them are in the same category as uh, quantum mechanics and then you have to think you have to invoke a multiverse to be able to explain quantum mechanics, whereas you don’t have to invoke a multiverse to Say try to explain like you could have inflation but with a finite universe for example So there’s no particular reason why it has to mean that there’s a multiverse, right? So because of that, there’s really only one serious multiverse in science today. That’s quantum mechanics The others are just kind of out there interesting Speculations does that make sense?
[00:24:39] Red: Oh, yeah So, okay, so tick mark one of the things I really like about tick mark is that he’ll just explore anything One of the things I don’t like about tick mark is that he doesn’t do a great job of differentiating between Wild speculations in an actual good theory
[00:24:55] Blue: Yeah, it does occur to me that it must really confuse people who are interested in the multiverse when you suddenly have You google it and you’ll get 10 different kinds. It’s really really uh in some ways. That’s unfortunate that You know, I mean people when I tell people about the mini world’s interpretation They think it’s just something out of a marvel movie or something,
[00:25:17] Red: right because it is something out of a marvel movie
[00:25:21] Blue: Fair enough
[00:25:24] Red: So, um tick marks I don’t know like I said, I don’t know if he came up with it But either he came up with it or he popularized this idea of the quantum suicide So using quantum mechanics, you can imagine an experiment that’s something like this where You have a gun And the gun is connected to a quantum device the quantum device has the decay of a particle This is you know the scrounger’s cat experiment, but basically it’s that experiment, but you put yourself in the box Okay, so the scrounger’s cat scroting jurors cat. I did not say that right. I never say that, right You have a quantum event that breaks a vial of poison And it kills the cat in the box or it doesn’t kill the cat in the box Well, because the quantum event goes in is a superposition and The way you explain that’s through a multiverse then we would say that the cat is We’d say that the cat is in a Superposition of being both alive and dead until you open the box make an observation And then it then the wave function collapses and then the cat either becomes dead or it becomes alive Well, now if you take the multiverse seriously Then what actually happens is you open the box and then either you are you then split And either you see you’re this this is the version of you that sees the dead cat or this is the version of you that sees the live cat Okay, and then now you’re in superposition as well. Okay And based on this then what if you put yourself in the box?
[00:26:49] Red: What if you had a gun that goes off that shoots you and it’s going to do that based on the superposition of a particle A quantum particle then what you should So goes the argument what you should perceive is that if you’re not in the box And you’re just watching it The gun will sometimes go off and sometimes won’t so imagine that it Decays every second And so it’s basically a random event takes place every second 50 percent of the time The gun goes off 50 percent of the time the gun doesn’t go off so it goes So a click would be not going off a bang is going off So it would go click click bang click bang bang bang click click click bang And that’s what you would see if you’re outside the box if you get into the box And the gun’s aiming at your head now. We’re assuming the gun’s high enough power that you die instantly Then what you perceive is click click click click click click click click click click click click and the bang never happens because You’re dead in the universe where the bang happens.
[00:27:49] Red: So you you can’t perceive it So you the the you That you think of yourself as Can only ever perceive the click the the gun never going off Okay, so even though that’s highly improbable That would be what you would perceive and then t mark also throws in there at some point The odds of you having that many clicks is so low that it’s much higher probability that the um The power in the Building goes out and so suddenly you’d find the power goes out and your experiment can’t continue or something along those lines Okay, now if you were to try this experiment and let’s say it actually worked t mark later argues that maybe this is a misunderstanding of quantum Mechanics, but uh, let’s say that it worked You would then know that you lived in a multiverse
[00:28:38] Blue: You you might as well, uh, tie it into winning the lotto or something too. So We’ll wake up a millionaire or whatever. Yeah,
[00:28:45] Red: right so Because you’ve killed off all the versions of yourself in all the other universes You now the you that’s left now has pretty good Reason to believe that the multiverse is real. So it’s it’s an experiment to try to Prove to yourself the existence of the multiverse now nobody else is going to take you seriously Because you died in all the other universes, right?
[00:29:09] Blue: Yeah,
[00:29:09] Red: and so they just saw you die So they’ve got no reason to believe they live in a multiverse and so it’s It’s an experiment that is purely subjective You you can only even if it’s a real thing you can only ever prove to yourself that the multiverse is real
[00:29:25] Blue: But can I just throw out one one other thing about that is that it seems to me that What makes it nothing more than an interesting thought experiment is that um There’s always going to be universes where the bullet lodges in your brain and you don’t die Right the machine malfunctions and and you know, it’s it’s uh, it seems to me There’s always going to be a lot more of those universes than the one where you Wake up as a as a lotto winner or something so I just want to put that out there in case that some someone comes across this podcast and has actually thinking about Doing it or something like that which it probably would not be practical as as a test for for many worlds And in real life so
[00:30:12] Red: let me actually describe what you just said a little bit more clear because It’s actually a really fair point. Let’s say that you did a modification of the quantum suicide experiment where um, you’re going to reveal your lotto ticket and if you are A loser the gun goes off and you die And if you’re not a loser, then you’ve won the lotto. Okay, so so you could make the claim Well, I’m going to put myself inside the box I’m going to have the gun go off if I lost the lotto Then I’m absolutely guaranteed to perceive myself as winning the lotto And I’m going to get to live as a millionaire for the rest of my life And I don’t care about the other universes where I no longer exist, right? So you might think this is a legitimate thing for you to try to do But it’s not because there the odds of winning the lotto are so low that there’s a there’s a better chance that the gun doesn’t go off or So this experiment or that it just kills you slowly and painfully or something along those lines So because of that, um, this is more a thought experiment Then it is probably something that anyone should want to go out and actually try so
[00:31:20] Red: There’s and I think this is one of the reasons why teague mark doesn’t really believe in the quantum suicide experiment Or by the way quantum suicide experiment showed up in allen wake the video game They have uh when you go around playing the excellent game when you go around playing the game You come across televisions on every single television you come across There’s an episode of a show going on that’s a twilight zone parody And so they have very quickly in the middle of this game You have a little mini twilight zone episode that you can watch and one of them was about quantum suicides I just thought that was Interesting that it had become a popular enough idea that it had made it into a piece of popular media and um You’ve probably maybe even seen it. This is something that has shown up in other places as well. I’ve seen since then So, uh, it made its way into the media. So hey now we’re golden so If the quantum suicide experiment were correct, which we’re saying is questionable Then this raises a question. Isn’t everything isn’t all of life sort of like a quantum suicide event
[00:32:25] Green: Yeah,
[00:32:25] Red: so let’s say that um I’m walking across the street and I get I’m like steven king I get hit by a car and there’s a good chance i’m gonna die So in the universe is where I die I never become conscious again And so I stay dead But there’s some small percentage chance that i’m going to recover And so that’s the universe I wake up in so if I get hit by a car I’m not going to merely perceive myself dying because you can’t perceive yourself dying I’m going to perceive myself as having survived the encounter So basically under this way of thinking you can never actually perceive yourself dying This is the kind of darker side of quantum immortality where you you will always perceive yourself as living long enough That all your loved ones die And then you just keep getting older everyone around you dies and you never actually perceive yourself as actually dying So you could take this to its kind of extremological conclusions You could imagine that you just somehow always stay Just barely conscious barely yourself And you get older and you get more wounded and more bad things happen to you And finally you’re just in constant torment for eternity. That would be the idea of quantum torment Okay, and and it’s really a terrifying thought and the even just the fact that it kind of makes sense under the theory I’d never given something like quantum torment any serious thought prior to the realization that many worlds might actually Beat the truth, right and that we actually have a theory that says that it is And then I started wondering is quantum torment actually something I need to worry about
[00:34:01] Blue: one interesting thing I just learned this week is that apparently Hugh Everett was a believer at least according to his autobiographer was a believer in quantum torment So he the originator of the many worlds interpretation did Accept this as a natural conclusion of his theory The daughter who I think committed suicide herself in her note said that she was going to join him in the Multiverse or something, but
[00:34:28] Red: that’s sad.
[00:34:29] Blue: Yeah. Yeah, he’s he uh, I think a very troubled troubled person But his his his son is this is a complete side tangent But his son is an amazing musician too. Who’s who’s uh, you’ve seen that documentary, right about him Um discovering his father’s ideas
[00:34:47] Red: No, I I I have not I’ve seen as a documentary. I haven’t seen it.
[00:34:51] Blue: Yeah Yeah, again, he’s a he’s a singer for a band called the eels, which is a very in my opinion very good band And he’s an amazing songwriter and he the eels are great That’s crazy. Yeah. Oh, you like them good good. And yeah, and I think you know, his father was well The troubled person will say that and a genius but troubled person and did not Uh, he didn’t really he grew up not really knowing anything about his father’s ideas. And then he, um, I This documentary is about him meeting David Deutch is in it and and I think max tagmark and other other famous physicists explaining his father’s ideas to him and he Said that it was one of the most meaningful experiences of his his life was making this documentary
[00:35:39] Red: Everett was considered a failure, right? I mean, he he went into physics. He did this paper He got lucky that john wheeler backed it And then like he wasn’t really considered a good physicist after that it seemed like crap science at the time
[00:35:54] Blue: Yeah, yeah,
[00:35:55] Red: kind of just fell out of being a physicist and did other things with his life after that If I understand correctly, so yeah, it’s uh So Now is quantum torment something that we should worry about Honestly, I don’t know for sure So there is a little bit of worry in the back of my mind But let me let me talk about some of the things that like tagmark and others We also have this paper should we fear quantum torment that I sent to you guys By a name that I cannot pronounce istaban Are in are in yoshi yosi and they’ve talked through is this actually What would follow from the theory even if we’re just taking it seriously? So T mark points out something that actually makes a lot of sense to me that really there’s a kind of a halo That exists across the multiverse So Like let’s say that I get old and I start to turn senile. I don’t disappear all at once, but I do disappear, right? Um, my body may outlive my mind in a case like that So you would actually be able to perceive yourself Disappearing because a person who is going into senility. They they know that that’s what’s happening to them At least in the early stages, right? So because of that the idea that quantum immortality would apply here or quantum torment would apply here becomes a lot less obvious because And even the concept of a person starts to disappear as senility happens the person Might suddenly remember themselves, but they have no memory of the last five years, right? Just complete amnesia of everything that’s happened And the the dots aren’t connected anymore.
[00:37:31] Red: The memories aren’t connected anymore So you wouldn’t necessarily Be able to perceive quantum torment in a case like that So it would be possible on you by the same token If like you went out into outer space and you jetted and send yourself out into outer space There’s not some percentage chance you’re going to live, right? It’s like it’s it might be might as well be a hundred percent I think we can maybe talk about weird quantum events cause you to stay alive Let me address that in just a second because it’s actually an addressable case Um The odds of you dying go to 100 % and you’re just dead, right? So you couldn’t experience quantum torment in a case like that So it’s There’s and this it doesn’t even seem like like If you’ve seen hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy where they have the infinite Improbability drive where they they shove people into outer space. That’s actually why i’m using this as an example And then the odds of surviving that are one in You know five trillion or something and so they use the infinite Improbability drive and they hit one in five trillion and suddenly they’ve been saved, right? And it’s a big joke because of course hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy is not meant to be taken seriously There’s not actually a reasonable chance That that right after you your spaceship explodes and you go into outer space that aliens are going to there come by and Save you, right?
[00:38:57] Red: And that’s the universe that you wake up in presumably You’re just dead as per the laws of physics in that case So we can immediately see that there might be something wrong with the whole thinking with quantum immortality However, these are the most extreme cases. What about a less extreme case? You’re just living normal trust real life You’re you’re getting older. You have a heart attack There’s some percentage chance that you wake back up again Maybe in 90 % of the universes you have a heart attack and you die and in 10 % you wake back up again You only perceive yourself in the 10 % you could keep playing that trick And what you’d end up with is what this guy in this paper Refers to as he has names for the various other competing hypotheses So he referred first to quantum torment as the terrifying terrifying corollary and as opposed to the comforting corollary He says okay, so the real truth is that the odds that you’re going to actually Be you know as you get older and as more bad things happen to you The odds that you will not remember any of it that you’ll have amnesia are much higher than the very very low odds of Having memories of it. So what you should really expect to happen in a case like this Is that yes, you may perceive yourself as living forever But what you’ll actually happen is that you’ll you’ll there’ll be this big period of blank and then suddenly you’ll find yourself Coming to and you’ll find you know, you’ll find yourself in a world where all your loved ones have died.
[00:40:26] Red: That’s bad That’s terrifying maybe even But suddenly the doctors are helping you and you get to put yourself back into life again by now Who knows maybe the the knowledge state is gone where they can reverse aging And so it it even in a case like this where quantum immortality were actually being taken seriously It doesn’t necessarily follow that quantum torment would be the most probable outcome, right?
[00:40:51] Red: And when you’re trying to do this with branches across the multiverse based on Probabilities, which is really just the percentage of the multiverse that that world is in The expectation would be whatever is the highest probability There may be some universe where there’s some version of you that is in quantum torment But that’s a very improbable state So you should expect yourself to instead find yourself in something more probable than that which would be the comforting Hypothesis, okay He gives several others that are slightly different from that this probably gives at least the basic understanding of what he’s trying to get to That uh, there’s no particular reason why you should we should assume that the quantum torment state is more probable than some of these other states That we could imagine so now here’s the thing though This still strikes me as fairly terrifying and he mentions that he says it seems like it would be better to just be able to die rather than to Be forced to live in a Aging body forever even if they could have technology to try to help you if you just couldn’t perceive yourself dying You would keep experiencing having all your loved ones die over and over again It doesn’t really seem like this would be a great state of living And so while it isn’t quantum torment, it isn’t the hell of quantum torment It still seems like it’s maybe not a very good outcome And he kind of leaves the paper like that or does anybody read the paper differently than me? Peter you read the paper, right? Oh, yeah
[00:42:16] Blue: I will say that I came away from it more convinced that this is a real concern But you know, I mean the natural it’s kind of like what we were talking about before about harry potter universes and all that I mean, is it really true that there’s a universe where there’s a caveman or a Brontosaurus or I mean you could go back. I don’t know. It’s still just that just doesn’t seem right to me But you know, the basic idea just to sorry if this is repetitive I just want to make sure we bring this home is that the We’re at the end of our life and the probability that we’re going to die It just keeps going up, but it’s never never reaches 100 percent So, you know, there’s always going to be a branch of this this Unimaginably big multiverse where we are are surviving It seems to me the question the paper really tries to explore Is is this distinction between like living and consciousness? Okay, so are we still conscious in these highly improbable Events or are we Yes, consciousness is really what matters. I guess I mean if you can you can be alive and not conscious And it does kind of ring true that may be perhaps in this state of torment We are not conscious, but but maybe still alive. I mean even that in itself actually Now that I say say this all out loud It sounds less probable than I was thinking five minutes ago, but I don’t know
[00:43:53] Red: So let me use the example of the Pushing yourself out into outer space. Okay.
[00:43:59] Green: Yeah,
[00:44:00] Red: so we could argue You’re going to die within you know seconds, right? But there’s how long you’re going to last out there in outer space is going to differ based on a series of quantum events So there’s going to be some set of universes where it takes you Two seconds to die somewhere. It takes you three seconds somewhere. It takes you four seconds and it becomes less probable But as the numbers stretch out, but there’s always some universe where you perceive yourself living a bit longer So this is the strongest argument Stealed man version of quantum torment that I can make, right? so Imagine then that just due to really weird quantum improbabilities That you just do not die when you go out into space and you just suffer in space Feeling like you’re dying For the next billion years or until heat death is reached in a trillion years or something like that You’re just being tormented the whole time. Okay This is almost identical to the Boltzmann brain argument. In fact, it is the Boltzmann brain argument and sodia covered that well in the problem of physics episodes that we did But the Boltzmann brain argument You know what let me dive into this a little bit because I actually think this is really interesting So we’re dealing with really really highly improbable events. Okay So why there should be some universe where just by chance Adams smashed together and if a copy of peter appears in that universe Okay, there’s nothing else in that universe except peter. He’s just in the void, right?
[00:45:40] Red: And it’s not just peter’s DNA It’s it’s happens to be the atoms smashed together in such a way that it’s a version of peter that Exactly remembers has memories identical to the peter. I’m talking to right now. Okay So why doesn’t peter at every single moment suddenly find himself in the middle of quantum torment in the middle of a void, right? Because there’s some universe in which this is supposedly happening
[00:46:08] Blue: And you can think that it would be much more at some level that would be much more probable than the you know, the entire Evolutionary history aligning just right to create my brain in this reality.
[00:46:19] Red: Okay, so so yes So let me let me quote penrose on this. All right. So penrose I found this really fascinating. I couldn’t find all the quotes So i’m gonna have to go a lot off of memory, but roger penrose talks about the concept of entropy, okay Now entropy is probabilistic The the current theory is probabilistic. That’s one of the things that caramorletto Kind of criticizes about the theory and is trying to completely construct your theoretic version of it to solve that problem But if you really think about it Like we say that we always move towards disorder But there’s some weird set of of really improbable circumstances where like if I let a gas out into a Jar, it will not stay up in the corner like I let it out and it’s in the corner of the jar It’s going to slowly spread into a state of disorder where it’s even across the jar, right? That’s that would be the the just the regular second law of thermodynamics But if I left that jar there forever, then just by chance You would have some loop where all the particles go up to the corner of the jar again and then have to move back Okay, because disorder is probabilistic So there there’s always some chance that order will form just by chance. Okay So this is kind of where penrose is starting with is this idea that that entropy is probabilistic So he talks about he’s trying to explain how entropy relates to us So let me see if I can find the the quote here that I liked he says The question is how do we keep ourselves alive throughout our normal mainly adult lives?
[00:47:58] Red: For that we do not need to add to our energy content So he points out that we often talk about how we need to eat for energy And he’s saying that’s really not technically true because our energy our state of energy actually always stays the same He says however, you do need to replace the energy that we continually lose in the form of heat Indeed the more energetic that we are the more energy we actually lose in this form all this energy must be replaced Heat is the most disordered form of energy that there is i.e. It is the highest entropy form of energy We take in energy in a low entropy form food and oxygen and we discard it in a high energy form heat carbon dioxide Etc We do not need to gain energy from our environment since energy is conserved But we are continually fighting against the second law thermal dynamics entropy is not conserved It is increasing at all times to keep ourselves alive We need to keep lowering the entropy that is within ourselves And we do this by feeding on low entropy combinations of food and atmospheric oxygen Combining them within our bodies And then discarding the energy that we would otherwise have gained in high entropy form in this way We can keep entropy in our bodies from rising and we can maintain and ever and even increase our internal organization. Okay So This is really why you need energy. It’s really not that you need energy. It’s that you need Low entropy energy. So he kind of asked the question Where does this end? Where does this low entropy come from?
[00:49:25] Red: Well, you’ve probably never thought of that before you’ve probably always thought in terms of where does the energy come from? Oh, it comes from the sun But what that really means is that the sun is in a low entropy state It is in a highly improbable low entropy state now So based on this um Penrose then tries to do a calculation and he says, okay Just how improbable if we if we just take Entropy theory on its face. We’re not using any other theory. We don’t have any other theory. We can reference here What is the probability of our? Of our universe existing in the low entropy state that it’s actually in and he works out the math and it turns out to be 10 to the 10th To the 123rd In one to one is the odds, right? It’s it’s a number He says this is an extraordinary figure. One could not possible even write the number down in full in the ordinary Denitary notation it would be one followed by 10 to the 123rd successive zeros Even if you were to write a zero on each separate photon on each separate neutron in the entire universe you you could And we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure You would fall fall far short of writing down the figure needed. Okay, so the universe is in a incredibly Improbable state and we don’t know why it’s a it’s a mystery basically
[00:51:01] Blue: Now Bruce am I am I correct that he and he he intended this as sort of a reductio ad absurdum So it was supposed to be a thought experiment to illustrate how preposterous this is but then Some people seems like read it a little differently like take it. So
[00:51:19] Red: he’s actually trying he’s trying to build up to his His his own theory. So let me see what was the name of his theory penrose cyclic theory The conformal cyclic cosmology theory Now he never actually gets there in the book. I’m reading from in this book. It’s it’s uh the emperor’s new mind He’s trying to just prove that you can’t build a computer that can think I’m
[00:51:41] Blue: sorry when I said he I meant boltsman I got a little lost. Oh, sorry Okay, boltsman thought of it as more of a reductio ad absurdum.
[00:51:49] Red: I think boltsman did yeah, so let’s let’s let’s work boltsman in here so If the universe is in such an improbable state penrose points out that we don’t need evolution that that the odds of the atom smashing together into a boltsman brain That happens to be peter with memory peter’s memories right now is far more probable like Way more probable than finding yourself in a universe that’s in such a low entropy state So Based on that and if we take that idea seriously then we should all find ourselves in the state of quantum torment right now Right, I mean like there shouldn’t be a world where we’re just living our lives That you can’t explain our current experience trying to use this whole line of thought Because quantum torment should be the most common state that there’s the atoms smashed together peter’s there He dies then the atoms smashed together and by chance It’s the version of peter that didn’t die just before he died So now he has to die again and peter lives forever in the void Suffocating to death in quantum torment forever, right? and This may seem like a reasonable argument based on what we’re saying But then why aren’t we there now is basically what penrose is trying to say, right?
[00:53:03] Red: And so there’s clearly something just wrong with the whole line of thought which is the what you’re saying about boltsman Right, he was trying to show that this is a ridiculous thing I should probably point out though That the history of physicists try to do uh reductio ad absurdum and then turning out to actually have made a fair point Like einstein he he did the whole epr paradox And the point was to show that quantum mechanics was wrong But today everybody takes the epr paradox as a serious outcome of of quantum mechanics that is real There’s a real effect Precisely because we’ve now been able to go do the experiment and we know it works, right? I mean it’s quantum mechanics Actually does work and einstein was trying to show it was ridiculous and it turns out it’s not ridiculous, right? But yeah, physicists and by the way Scrodinger’s cat was meant to show that quantum physics was ridiculous But everybody takes it seriously today because we don’t really have an alternative explanation So we have to take seriously the idea that a cat can be in a quantum state of Dead and not dead at the same time. How do you accept that and then not go on to buy many worlds? I don’t know I sat down with a physicist friend who teaches his students about the Scrodinger’s cat and will tell them the cat’s in a state of being dead and alive at the same time And yet he rejects many worlds
[00:54:29] Blue: It’s
[00:54:29] Red: like, no that that is many worlds you you you’re there, right? it’s Based on this then there’s kind of this question of Is that really why aren’t we all just in the state of quantum all the time already? And if I knew the answer to that then I would probably know the answer to do I need to worry about quantum format? But I don’t know the answer to that that there’s clearly something more going on that Just our current physics theories can’t yet explain. Um, why are we such a low entropy state? How did that happen? You know, it’s funny, uh, Penrose in one of the books Shadows of the mind. I think it was he uh, he draws a picture of Of god putting the world into this really low entropy state To try to illustrate what he’s trying to get at and say you got this picture of god like Sticking the a pin into this all the different possible states that the universe could be in and picking the one that happens to be our universe And it’s this little tiny point, you know, I thought that was rather humorous So this is then kind of where we’re getting to the end of what we can actually meaning fully say about quantum torment quantum immortality It’s hard to know in many ways.
[00:55:47] Red: We just don’t understand the theories well enough And they may connect to other theories that we just don’t have yet and it’s We’re not quite sure what to make of it Now let me tie this now into Where peter started because this is where the interesting twist comes in I’m emitting my ignorance and I’m emitting that we don’t know but just let’s continue to along the line The thought of quantum immortality and quantum torment anyhow. Let’s let’s accept it as true for the sake of argument So which is more probable? Is it more probable that you will find yourself in a quantum state of quantum torment? Or is it more probable that you’re going to die and wake up in the omega point or an omega point like cosmology? quantum torment is such a hugely improbable state it it’s exponentially growing every moment Near the end of death where you should be dying if there’s anything like a omega point like cosmology out there It should be far more probable that you’re going to wake up in the omega point This is why the two concepts that we’re talking about the darker side and the lighter side of this are actually all one thing right it’s it’s That in many ways One of the best possible most optimistic escapes from quantum torment would be omega point that you can in fact See yourself dying you die and then the most likely scenario Is that you wake up in the far future in a society that can reverse all the damage and can bring you to back to life and And you’re going to be able to live a decent life after that and they’ve got the ability to love ones too, right? But
[00:57:18] Red: of course bringing someone back to life based on their dna is not really bringing someone back to life Right.
[00:57:24] Blue: I mean because there’s no memories. I mean that’s right
[00:57:26] Red: No, the way you would have to do it is Is you’d have to do something like dutch suggested where you’ve got the technology to be able to simulate the entire universe Or the multiverse and then basically in the simulation You see when each person dies and then you you bring them into the mega point at that point And so it wouldn’t just be based on their dna. That was dutch’s version Tipler’s version was That there’s only a finite number of you know the size of a brain It’s finite how large a brain can be right? So there’s a there’s a set bound a c bounder. I forget what it’s called that determines how many human brains could possibly exist So you simply instantiate all of them and then everybody who has ever lived comes back from the dead Basically, so that’s actually a lot easier than trying to simulate the entire universe
[00:58:16] Blue: So
[00:58:17] Red: there’s there’s more than one way you could go about this It’s way beyond our current knowledge or technology, but we can already see that it’s at least a tractable problem Right and with enough with powerful enough computers and enough knowledge In theory you could do it
[00:58:33] Blue: And then if we’re all universal explainers, what why does it matter what our dna says? I don’t know just something I just thought of
[00:58:41] Red: Yeah So, you know, it’s it’s interesting. There’s actually maybe even a decent answer to that question So we talked about in the last episode Kelly hard to charten and how he had this idea that we can take control of evolution It’s kind of the same thing. There’s still a path that evolution sets out for us that our dna sets out for us Who you are is largely made up by your genes at the initial state as a universal explainer Yes, you can then make decisions that affect that and in fact in the end with the right Which may be knowledge and technology that doesn’t exist today You can choose who you’re going to be Right, it’s eventually you’ll be able to say, you know what? I don’t like this aspect of myself Even let’s say it’s let’s even just say it is caused by genes, right? I I have a genetic problem where I get too angry with my friends and I lose all my friends because of that or You know, I’m autistic or just whatever you want to blame the genes for whether that’s accurate or not I don’t care at the moment Eventually the the technology and the knowledge will exist where I can say Okay, I can overcome my autism. I can overcome my anger management problem These are things that don’t have to be with us forever and at this point Whether the genes are causing it or not almost doesn’t matter because you know In an ultimate sense you could upload yourself into a computer with the right knowledge You could then tweak your DNA as you see fit.
[01:00:12] Red: You could do that with engineering I mean at some point it doesn’t not matter if the genes are causing whatever it is You don’t like about yourself or not. You can make a choice to change it
[01:00:21] Blue: So
[01:00:21] Red: in the end the genes can’t possibly be the determining factor However, let’s say that einstein’s genes played a really big role in him being and A lot of people think that he was like asperger’s or autistic or something, right? We’ve got it’s really hard to diagnose somebody who’s dead But um, there’s there’s some signs that that might have been a decent diagnosis diagnosis for him It’s very likely that you need somebody who has something that we might consider a disorder to be able to think uniquely enough To come up with something like einstein’s theory of general relativity in this sense It might be a very good thing that the genes cause us to go down weird paths
[01:01:01] Blue: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah the history of scientists who are probably on the autism spectrum is I think quite large I mean, there’s there’s a lot.
[01:01:11] Red: All right That’s actually that’s about all I think I know. Do you guys have
[01:01:16] Blue: anything else? Take home point. I think maybe you’ll agree with me that the optimistic version of the Quantum immortality is much more plausible than the more pessimistic interpretations
[01:01:30] Red: I sure hope so.
[01:01:32] Blue: Okay Well, I’ll I’ll go with that thing
[01:01:42] Red: The theory of anything podcast could use your help We have a small but loyal audience and we’d like to get the word out about the podcast to others So others can enjoy it as well to the best of our knowledge We’re the only podcast that covers all four strands of david doitch’s philosophy as well as other interesting subjects If you’re enjoying this podcast, please give us a five star rating on apple podcasts This can usually be done right inside your podcast player Or you can google the theory of anything podcast apple or something like that Some players have their own rating system and giving us a five star rating on any rating system would be helpful If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on facebook or other social media to help get the word out If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that The first is via our podcast host site anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands f o u r dash s t r a n d s There’s a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations If you want to make a one -time donation go to our blog, which is four strands.org There is a donation button there that uses paypal. Thank you
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