/sci/ - Science & Math

4The merge of observer-identity and memory-identity

Identity could also be presented as two types of identity: identity as a chain of memories (which is a copy-friendly view, as any exact copy will have the same chain of memories), and identity as a chain of connected observer-moments (which is more dependenton the nature of consciousness). Moreover, both types of identity can be separated, as demonstrated in a thought experiment by Parfit, where the memories of one person are transplanted to another (Parfit 1984). These two types of identity could result in two types of QI: one as an amnestic observer, and one involving my memories in some other observer. The interaction between these two types of immortality is complex, but it may be assumed that they will eventually merge: the amnestic observer will regain her memories in some timeline, and thus it eventually will be just one type of immortality.

We, humans, experience such a merge of observer-identity and memory-identity every morning when we become awake after bizarre dreams and are remembering who we are. The same logic is applicable to the QI situation of very long and debilitating illness: there will be timelines where I will regain full memory of who I am, and, in some sense, I will jump over periods of minimal or bizarre consciousness.

Some suggested counterargument to QI of “impossibility of sleep”: QI-style logic implies that it is impossible to fail asleep, as in the moment of becoming asleep there will be timelines where I am still awake. However, for most humans, night dreaming starts immediately at the moment of becoming asleep, so the observations continue, but just don’t form memories. But in case of deep narcosis,the argument may be still valid with terrifying perspective of anesthesia awareness; but it also possible if the observer-states will coincide at the beginning the end of the operation, the observer will “jump” over it.

“Dust theory” (Egan 2009) seems to be the next step in the developing the idea of QI, similar in significance to the step from the “eternal return” in the 19th century to the “quantum suicide” thought experiment. In dust theory, something similar to quantum immortality happens in every observer-moment;such moments could exist completely separately from each other, as random patterns in dust, or as Boltzmann brains, but could look subjectively connected “from inside” based on their similarity. An important conclusion of such a theory is that there is no need for an external reality, and that each observer-moment could have many pasts and many futures. The mathematical theory of such a world was recently suggested by (Mueller 2017). The validity of such theories is out of the scope of this paper; in this work,the actual existence of an objective world governed by observer-independent laws of physics is assumed.

Loew suggested a similar to the dust theory idea of “Boltzmannian immortality”, which is basically a reincarnation of the eternal return which takes into account Boltzmann brains randomly appearing from vacuum ifan empty universe lasts for an infinitely long period(Loew 2017).

There is nothing strange in the idea of the multiverse immortality, when simpler objects and beings are considered:

Numbers are immortal. All numbers appear over and over again in multiple worlds, and it could be said that any given number is “immortal”. The same is true for number series:the number 27 will appear again and again, but we are not surprised by this, as the number is small compared to the size of our world, where we can find, for example, 27 ships and 27 sheep. However, the repetition of longer numbers in the world becomes more and more surprising –only because theworld seems to be too small for such repetition. In the infinitely large and random world, any number will repeat.

Simple molecules are immortal. A molecule of water will appear again and again, because it is very simple, and consists of abundant components. But more complex compounds are rare. Some short organic molecules are likely to repeat rather often,while a molecule with around 100 randomly connected atoms will be so rare that it might appear once in our Hubble volume. In other words, the simpler the object, and the more stochastic is its environment, the more likely it will have something like multiverse immortality.

Biological viruses. Even some living beings could enjoy this type of immortality in an observable way. Biological viruses of one species are all functionally equivalent to each other (barring mutation) and the death of one copy is not the death of the virus.

It should be noted that a different meaning of the term “quantum immortality” is sometimes discussed.In it, QI is some form of near-death experience (NDE) after which a person jumps back in his life and relives the moment of a dangerous situation without dying (typically, a car accident)3.While some people experience this form of NDE as a hallucination, it is not the original idea of QI, where there are no jumps back in time and which cannot be reported to outside observers. QI does not require a “quantum mind” or other quantum woo: it is based only on themany-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It does notrequire any quantum effects except the existence of observer copies in other branches of a multiverse.

Ifdeath is impossible, someone could be locked into a very bad situation where she can’t die, but also can’t become healthy again. It is unlikely that such an improbable state of mind will exist for too long a period, like millennia, as when the probability of survival becomes very small, strange survival scenarios will dominate(called “low measure marginalization” by(Almond 2010).One such scenario might be aliens arriving with a cure for the illness, but more likely, the suffering person will find herself in a simulation or resurrected by superintelligence in our world, perhaps following the use of cryonics.

Aranyosi summarized the problem: “David Lewis’s point that there is a terrifying corollary to the argument, namely, that we should expect to live forever in a crippled, more and more damaged state, that barely sustains life. This is the prospect of eternal quantum torment” (Aranyosi 2012; Lewis 2004). The idea of outcomes infinitely worse than death for the whole of humanity was explored by Daniel (2017), who called them “s-risks”. If MI is true and there is no high-tech escape on the horizon, everyone will experience his own personal hell.

Aranyosi suggested a comforting corollary(Aranyosi 2012), based on the idea that multiverse immortality requires not remaining in the “alive state”, but remaining in theconscious state, and thus damage to the brain should not be very high. It means, according to Aranyosi, that being in the nearest vicinity of death is less probable than being in just “the vicinity of the vicinity”: the difference is akin to the difference between constant agony and short-term health improvement. However, it is well known that very chronic states of health exist whichdon’t affect consciousness are possible, e.g. cancer, whole-body paralysis, depression, and lock-in syndrome.

>>10403657
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7e1nZ-9nF4

>>10403736
I want to have a beer with that guy and discuss the meaning of life.

However, the person could awake from the dream about QS experiment not in his timeline. I mean that after the experimenter actually performed QS experiment, he will find in the most probable intstance of (I, T+1) in the universe, and many such moments will be the false awakening dreams of another experimenters in another world, who are not yet started the experiment. That is, actual timeline could continue in someone’s dream.(Remember, that it still not enough to explain reports about respawning, as classical big world immortality doesn’t allow any information transfer or premonition visions, which often described in the respawning cases. Only if some form of evolutionary evolved ways of orchestrating quantum collapse (Penrose and Gardner 2002) exists for probability manipulation (Yudkowsky 2009), it could become possible. However, rigorous thinking on this topic is not easy as it is field of quantum woo and out of scope of this article.)
The less likely is the survival in QS experiment, the more likely is the outcome of it is which the next observer state will be in the world where he (or his copy) only hallucinated about the experiment.
Almond about time resetting: “if you had somehow lost track of how old you were – say you had severe amnesia – you should find it unlikely that you were in one of the observer moments in a category with a low combined measure, if these exist, corresponding to being, for example, millions of years old” (Almond 2011d).

Multiverse-immortality and Boltzmann brains
There is a dangerous thought – what if I am just a Boltzmann brain? There is popular objection to this idea, that most of BBs have very random experiences, but I am not, so I am not a BB. However, it doesn’t work, for two reasons.
First, is similar to the reasons why QS experiment is not an evidence of MWI: that is, non-random BBs also exists and the fact that I am nonrandom one is not the evidence for that I am not BB. It is also similar to the Sleeping Beauty thought experiment, in which the Beauty is told that she is non-random mind and has to estimate the probability that she is BB. For one-theirder solution of the Sleeping beauty, she can’t update its estimation to be a BB based on non-randomness of her environment.
Another reason that randomness argument doesn’t work is that a BB is not able to make coherent conclusions about its own randomness. So, BB could think that he has non-random experiences, but still have random experiences, as most BBs are not logical.
So where is no way for BB to prove that he is not BB, and it seems to be bad as he will disappear after a microsecond. However, Multiverse immortality gives a solution. For any BB-observer-moment exists another next observer-moment in the real life, and if we agree with Multiverse-immortality, my mind will jump from BB to the real me. Loew presented similar theory (Loew 2017).
It is not hard to see that “real me” is not necessary state here, as the next observer-moment could be also BB (let’s call it BB2), if it has memories about last moment equal to BB1 and the continuous line of experiences.This idea is known as flux-universe and will be discussed in the next subsection. However Mueller showed that it is possible to create a stable solution with observable physical laws just assuming existence of observer-chains (Mueller 2017).

dude, you're either a schizo or just have really bought into a mountain of stupidity. quantum immortality and quantum suicide are very silly ideas, and it's easy to see why they're silly if you know a little bit about quantum mechanics. i suspect you have no formal training in quantum mechanics since despite your mountain of textblobs, i see neither a bra nor a ket anywhere in your argumentation.

if you want to talk about it i can explain it to you (physicist here) but i can't read this crap you've dumped. so how about you boil it down to something with a more limited scope and we can discuss the QM and interpretational stuff in a more specific way.

>>10404001
>if you want to talk about it i can explain it to you (physicist here)
i don't need YOU to explain anything to me.
i experience QI myself.
im just dumping a good book on the topic for those interested in it.
you can't really debunk what I posted.

>>10404016
how about this: aging never stops for any copy of a person in any branch of the universal wavefunction, so at best a person in "our" branch who dies has a living copy in another branch (which is fully decohered, so of course the person in our universe is dead and there is no mechanism for the other copies to be relevant to our dead guy), and that living copies in the other branches of the multiverse still wither away (and die eventually or else be like a pile of nearly dead bones that somehow are still technically "alive")

>>10404021
technology shall soon bring aging to an end

>>10404067
more ridiculousness. either way the point about how decoherence makes it impossible for copies of people on different branches of the universal wavefunction to have effects on one another still debunks you

>>10404072
No,it does Not "debunk me"
i dont need to affect other copies of me for my own self to be immortal

>>10404080
well then you're implying that "you" actually consists of not just what I would consider "you", but also an infinite number of copies of you in the universal wavefunction that neither one of us could ever interact with. whatever you say boss. under your assumptions, then, "you" also posted
>Yes, it does "debunk me", true, thanks for the /sci/pill
just on another branch of the multiverse, so i guess i win anyway

>>10404090
I have outlined at least 3 theories on personal identity

>>10404098
well they're all nonsense -- probably all philosophers who couldn't solve a square well if their life depended on it

have you ever opened a physics textbook and seen anything about "theories of personal identity"? most definitely not, and not just because you've probably never read a physics textbook. that's some philosophy of mind/psychology garbage that has nothing to do with physics

for the purposes of this discussion i think it is best to think of a particular individual as associated with one particular branch of the ever-splitting "tree" of decoherent paths inside the universal wavefunction. if you argue that you inhabit more than one branch then you're way outside common sense

>>10404109
no,they are not.
Common sense isn't needed to reach the truth.
i died once.
this isnt my original branch.

>>10404116

>>10404001
>dude, you're either a schizo or just have really bought into a mountain of stupidity.
>you're either a schizo or
>schizo

>>10404152
i Deny being a shizo.

>>10403657
There exist universal states where it is impossible for the next state to result in you remaining alive.

>>10404226
Such as?
im sure my brain can think a way for surviving anything

>>10403736
>the diagram assumes you were born in the 90s

>>10404239
While you may have the ability to plan ahead, given a predetermined scenario, it may very well be that you are destined to die of old age at this current state. Perhaps you COULD think of a way to cure old age, but you wouldn't be able to come up with it without prior knowledge. Thus, within this continuum, you are fucked like the rest of us.

>>10404256
No, I am not "fucked"
fucked woyld imply old age is bad.
i don't beliebe you can die,so ill keep on aging.
i Embrace it.

>>10404261
I misjudged you. Sage

>>10404268
il counter your sage with a bump

>>10403739
>101 views
>I want to have a beer with that guy and discuss the meaning of life.
he's you, isn't he anon?
This is what the average /sci/ poster actually looks like, isn't it?

>>10404310

>>10403739
>>10403736
>>10404310
Wait sorry I take it back this kid is based as fuck.
Anon I misjudged you.

>>10404322
fml he's a legit omegachad

>>10404329
I'm getting really into this guy

>>10404322
>>10404329

>>10403657
Personally I would interpret the "Privileged original" more as a gradual collapse of different parallel versions of a person as the variants are reduced.

If we look at the existence of a person as a vector expanding outwards in possible realities from their birth, it's clear that the only thing that reduces these versions from their existence in the multiverse is their death.

Consciousness, or some aspect of consciousness, extends over all versions of a person. That's why the claim of quantum immortality is that when you would have usually died in a situation, you instead assume the identity of a version of you that did survive.

So, as best as I can look at it, it seems like only the version of that person which will ultimately survive for the longest is the one who will ultimately assume the role of all other possible versions of themself.

I would say that identity is the only thing we carry through this process. We continue believing we are "I", the version that of that is us now, alive. We don't consider the differences of memory that may result from this transferral of perspectives because the immediate "I" does not remember that.

In this case, are we really surviving? Not really, to be honest. Nothing of what we were is still there. We get to keep playing, but it's on a different save. But, if this even occurs, it is suggestive of some substrate across the fifth dimension on which parallel consciousnesses interact.

>>10404398
oh shit bro good poetry jam man

yo bro we're gonna go smoke a blunt out back, you in?

>>10404247
It also implies I'm gonna die in 20 years. Finally.

>>10404398
Good.
Ill be chad next time.

bump