while you're waiting for the hammer to fall

2008-04-04T00:21:06Z

Almost all students of philosophy, even if they chose that field of study specifically to run as far away as possible from high mathematics, have at least a passing familiarity with the broad ideas behind quantum mechanics. This is in large part due to its ability to spit forth, with at least a token of scientific rigor, intriguing scenarios which toe the line between purely fantastic philosophical thought experiments and Stuff That Could Actually Be Happening. The most famous and over-analyzed example of this is Schrodinger's Cat, and especially one of its derivative hypotheses, quantum immortality.

Wikipedia probably does a better job summarizing this than I could, but here goes: according to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, virtually every non-deterministic event causes a parallel split in the universe where all possible outcomes happen. So to grossly oversimplify things, if I roll a six-sided die, I've just created six possible universes, one each for the possible outcome of the dice. Most people get this part fairly easily thanks to bad science-fiction.

Quantum immortality comes in when we look at it from the point of view of a human observer. Let's say you play Russian roulette and put a six-shot revolver with one loaded chamber to your head and pull the trigger. Since you can't observe your own death, from the point of view of the observer (i.e., you), the only universes that will remain in existence after that will be ones where you live. In theory, you could even fire all six shots, and while you'll be dead in most universes, from your point of view, some unlikely thing will happen, like the gun jamming during the loaded shot.

Sounds pretty neat, right? Well, not necessarily. All that's required of this hypothesis is that you survive and retain some observational capacity. Nobody's promising perfect health or eternal youth. (Philosopher David Lewis pointed out this funny little twist.) So maybe a more likely outcome is that you shoot yourself, and do terrible damage to your brain, but not enough to kill you. So you survive... as a drooling amateur lobotomy victim. And even if that's enough to dissuade you from actively pushing your luck, just think of what will happen when you get older. Most people survive to be 70 years old or so, and a diminishing percentage after that live to be 80, 90, whatever. Quantum immortality means that from your point of view, you'll always be one of the "lucky" few that keeps surviving into the triple-digits and beyond. Never dying, but always getting older. It's a real monkey's paw.

So, let's assume the worst, that the many-worlds interpretation is true, and we're all doomed to some form of quantum leprosy where we become increasingly crippled, shriveled, and disfigured yet unable to die. How can we change our ultimate destination to a universe other than a Stephen King story?

Let's start with the principle that, when you're existing as an observer along superimposing quantum realities, you're usually going to take the probabilistic path of least resistance. For instance, if I flip a coin, there's a roughly 50/50 chance it will land heads or tails, but also a very small chance it will land on its edge, and an infinitely small chance it will spontaneously disappear or something else very unlikely. Since the chances of outcomes A and B are so many orders of magnitude greater than outcomes C-ZZZ, from my point of view, it will almost always be one of the first two.

So all you have to do to ensure an immortality worth living is put yourself in a situation in which the odds of you living through circumstance are so infinitesimal that the most probable way of surviving is for you to suddenly discover that you possess some sort of incredibly unlikely superpower.

My first thought was that you could jump out of a plane without a parachute at a very high altitude, which might increase the likelihood that your observation will take you into an alternate universe where you could fly (or at least glide extremely well). But some quick research shows that there have been cases of people falling from very high altitudes and surviving, albeit with lots of broken bones. Since that's happened in my universe (and yours, too), but nobody has yet been able to fly, I can only surmise that the former is more likely and so you'd probably need to do better than that for superpowers.

My next thought was that you could attempt to drown yourself. Merely swimming straight down won't do, since the easy way out of that is for you to be knocked unconscious and then have a friendly nearby human perform CPR once you float to the surface. If you were serious, you'd lower yourself in a bathysphere to a VERY deep place (say, the Marianas Trench) and then pop open the hatch. It's difficult to imagine a circumstantial way out of that, so perhaps the only universes left for you to observe will be the ones where you become Aquaman.

And if you happen to be a Douglas Adams fan, there's always the old Vogon Special. Build a spaceship to put you into deep space somehow, go up alone (so you can't be rescued), then hurl yourself out of the airlock. Let the universe find a way to get you out of that! Either you'll be picked up by a passing alien vessel or you'll gain some really neat Doctor Manhattan type abilities. Either way, it would make for interesting times.

So that's that. If you really believe in quantum immortality, you should immediately start plotting the most grandiose attempted suicide possible. Set off a nuclear bomb in your lap and hope for the best. Hijack a spaceship and set the controls for the heart of the sun to see what happens. Infect yourself with every disease possible and marvel at your natural immunity. Since you, the observer, will always be stuck in universes where you live, it's just a matter of taking it far enough to where you can't possibly get screwed over by mere injury or circumstance.

So stop worrying about cheating death and start worrying about cheating immortality! (That is, assuming you believe all this bullshit.)

i've got another confession to make

2004-02-20T22:44:54Z

The whole "what are you listening to" trend that every online journal on the Internet now has a data field for?

I started that one. Back in '99.

I hope you guys can forgive me.

THE PICAYUNE TIMES

while you're waiting for the hammer to fall

i've got another confession to make