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SHOULD WE FEAR QUANTUM TORMENT?

István A. Aranyosi

Published Aug 15, 2012• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The prospect, in terms of subjective expectations, of immortality under the no‐collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is certain, as pointed out by several authors, both physicists and, more recently, philosophers. The argument, known as quantum suicide, or quantum immortality, has received some critical discussion, but there hasn't been any questioning of 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. Based on some empirical facts, I argue for a conclusion that is much more reassuring than Lewis's terrible scenario. 1

DOI
10.1111/j.1467-9329.2012.00540.x

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•Sep 2, 2004•0 citations
Abstract The prospect, in terms of subjective expectations, of immortality under the no‐collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is certain, as pointed out by several authors, both physicists and, more recently, philosophers. The argument, known as quantum suicide, or quantum immortality, has received some critical discussion, but there hasn't been any questioning of 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. Based on some empirical facts, I argue for a conclusion that is much more reassuring than Lewis's terrible scenario. 1
Abstract Recently several philosophers including Huw Price, Peter Lewis, and David Lewis have argued that on one interpretation of quantum theory (genus Indeterminacy, species No Collapse) death is an illusion.1 Taking Schroedinger’s unhappy cat as the standard example, this interpretation tells us that it is as if the whole universe splits into two copies in one of which the cat survives and in the other there is a corpse. Fission into a living organism on the one hand and a corpse on the other is, most of us agree, a way of surviving.2 So we arrive at the first premise, namely that organisms survive situations like that of SchrÖdinger’s cat.
Abstract David Lewis cautions that although a no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics entails immortality for trans-world selves, the nature of the branching leaves us crippled, lonely, deathly ill (although never dead), and mentally infirm, meaning that immortal life, on such terms, amounts to an existence in eternal torment. This paper argues that the problem Lewis points to is in fact one of individuation and that a synthesis of Lewis’ own notion of perdurance and Robert Nozick’s closest continuer theory, when cast in the mould of a deterministic multiverse (as conceived by the Oxford quantum physicist David Deutsch), individuates trans-world selves in such a way as to allow to prune the infinitesimal expectation of a miserable eternal existence from the histories of most trans-world agents. Thus, contrary to Lewis’ warning that if personal identity is a trans-world notion, then we should all shake in our shoes, this paper argues that even if we are trans-world selves, we almost certainly have nothing to worry about.
It has become common in transhumanist circles to claim that quantum physics implies some kind of proof of immortality, of one kind or another. While these claims are met with widespread scepticism, there has been relatively little attempt to analyze them carefully. I critique some of these, and related, claims about quantum mechanics, from the perspective of algorithmic information theory, showing that they are mostly fallacious, due to reasons of thermodynamic instability. While some of the more minor claims are shown to possibly have substance, the claimed effects are not publically verifiable.
Observational evidence suggests that the universe is infinite, geometrically flat, homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. Hence, we should expect to find large numbers of identical copies of any object consistent with the laws of physics including conscious identities like people. Under suitable notions of continuity of identity, This would imply that immortality of these conscious identities is a consequence of functionalism. I argue that the same conclusion can be drawn using an Everett Deutsch interpretation of quantum mechanics. I also argue why this is the correct interpretation. Lewis’s “terrifying corollary” is reviewed and I discuss how Bostrom’s simulation argument, if correct, might mitigate our futures.
Abstract In ‘How Many Lives Has Schro dinger’s Cat?’ David Lewis argues that the Everettian no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is in a tangle when it comes to probabilities. This paper aims to show that the difficulties that Lewis raises are insubstantial. The Everettian metaphysics contains a coherent account of probability. Indeed it accounts for probability rather better than orthodox metaphysics does. On 27 June 2001, not four months before his untimely death, David Lewis delivered the third Jack Smart Lecture at the Australian National University. His title was ‘How Many Lives has Schro dinger’s Cat?’ > and he spoke on a topic which is absent from his published writings, the interpretation of quantum mechanics. More specifically, he discussed the ‘no-collapse’ interpretation of quantum mechanics pioneered by Hugh Everett III [1957]. Lewis allowed that this interpretation offers initial theoretical attractions, but also argued that it suffers from irremediable flaws. If you have heard of Everett because of his association with the ‘many-worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics popularised by Bryce Dewitt [1970; 1973], you might suppose that there is some affinity between the no-collapse interpretation and Lewis’s philosophical realism about possible worlds. But this would be a mistake. While Everett’s interpretation does add extra ‘branches’ to the reality recognized by common sense, these additions fall far short of Lewis’s multiplication of worlds. For a start, the extra ‘branches’ that Everett adds to reality all lie within the actual world that evolves from the actual initial conditions in line with the actual laws of physics-these branches by no means include all possibilities. Moreover, Everett’s branches are best conceived, not as sundering’s of the whole universe, but rather as entities that spread out causally at finite speeds, ‘like ripples on a pond’, as Lewis puts it. For example, in the Schro dinger’s Cat experiment, firstthe photon branches into a deflected and undeflected version when it passes through the half-silvered mirror; thenthe detector branches into a triggered and untriggered state when it interacts with the photon; thenthe poison bottle branches into a smashed bottle and an unsmashed bottle under the influence of the detector; and so on, culminating in the cat branching into a live and dead cat, and the human observer branching into a self who sees a live cat and a self who sees a dead cat. >