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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today we're going to be talking about broadly a

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Speaker 1: topic that we've touched on a number of times here before,

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Speaker 1: and that is immortality. We've touched on it in terms

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Speaker 1: of religion and mythology. We've touched on it from the

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Speaker 1: standpoint of our our great fear of mortality and death

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Speaker 1: and therefore our longing for immortality and basically every aspect

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Speaker 1: of our lives. And we have also talked about it

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Speaker 1: a little bit in terms of improving human longevity. And

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Speaker 1: I'm sure we've talked about it a good bit in

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Speaker 1: reference to Highlander, because Robert, you've been watching that movie

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Speaker 1: for about thirty five years, I think since you started

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Speaker 1: it in like three second increments or something. Yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: watching it on a streaming service in five to ten

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Speaker 1: minute sections. It's a race against time to see if

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Speaker 1: I can finish Highlander before it's removed from this particular

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Speaker 1: streaming service. You know what they call that kind of

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Speaker 1: lunch break, it's the quickening. I tend to call it

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Speaker 1: a squatt and gobble because you're just kind of like

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Speaker 1: squatting in your in your living room, just eating as

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Speaker 1: fast as possible and watching just a little bit of

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Speaker 1: Highlander and then going back to work. Now, how does

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Speaker 1: the Highlander version of immortality stack up against all the

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Speaker 1: normal kinds of immortality you find in mythology and religion.

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Speaker 1: I think you would probably agree with me that it's

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Speaker 1: not the deepest treatment of immortality and mortality in in

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Speaker 1: in our collective storytelling. But it does hit on some

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Speaker 1: of the main points, right, Like, oh, immortality sounds great,

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Speaker 1: but then when you actually have to do it, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of a pain. Um. Well, I'd say a lot

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Speaker 1: of religious visions are actually like that. They tell you,

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Speaker 1: you know, a lot of religions include some version of immortality,

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Speaker 1: whether it's a sort of linear survival after death of

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Speaker 1: the soul, or there's a kind of eternal cycle of

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Speaker 1: reincarnation or something like that. In any event, it very

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Speaker 1: often is not necessarily encouraged for you to look too

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Speaker 1: closely at the details of immortality. Right, But this Highlander

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Speaker 1: is essentially another version of the wandering immortal story where

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Speaker 1: they're kind of stuck with it it what seems like

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Speaker 1: it would be a blessing is kind of a curse.

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Speaker 1: I feel like human perceptions of immortality, they tend to

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Speaker 1: break down to this imagined things that would normally terminate

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Speaker 1: or undergo a phase shift but magically don't have to.

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Speaker 1: So the desire to for immortality is often either a

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Speaker 1: reaction to just the reality of death and mortality itself,

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Speaker 1: which is very understandable. Uh, kind of defines our existence

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Speaker 1: is modern humans, or it comes from a desire for

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Speaker 1: a certain state of existence to continue unchanged. But it

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Speaker 1: does often kind of come back to this idea of stagnation,

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Speaker 1: you know. Um, Like the thing I want is really stagnation.

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Speaker 1: The thing I'm afraid of is change, um you know

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Speaker 1: I and I wonder if if that's what we see

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Speaker 1: in Highlander, you know, in these characters like Connor McLeod

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Speaker 1: and Ramires. You know this Connor changed? Is he changed

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Speaker 1: by his experience in the film? I mean certainly that

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Speaker 1: the Kurgan, the villain isn't. Um. It seems like it

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Speaker 1: would be more interesting if you like switched around backgrounds

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Speaker 1: and had like the Goody two shoes becomes the villain

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Speaker 1: and the and the the ancient villain becomes the modern hero,

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Speaker 1: that sort of transformation, but instead these are very stagnant characters. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's actually part of the ancient mythological tradition of immortality

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Speaker 1: that if it comes with too much change, it's actually

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Speaker 1: a curse rather than a blessing. Uh. Think about Aos

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Speaker 1: and Tiffannus in Greek mythology. We we've talked about them

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Speaker 1: recently or where the ideas Aos, the goddess of Dawn,

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Speaker 1: has this lover, this mortal human lover named Tiffanus, and

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Speaker 1: she wants him to be able to live forever. So

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Speaker 1: she cries to Zeus and says, please grant him and

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Speaker 1: more to Lity, and Zeus, being the jerk that he has, says, okay, done,

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Speaker 1: makes Tiffanness an immortal, but doesn't grant him eternal youth.

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Speaker 1: So he's gonna live forever, but he's just gonna get

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Speaker 1: older and older, and that seems to be implied to

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Speaker 1: be a fate worse than death. Yeah. You know another

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Speaker 1: treatment on this that I really like Richard K. Morgan

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Speaker 1: in his book Altered Carbon uh, and then also in

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Speaker 1: the Netflix series that just recently came out, that that

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Speaker 1: is basically that first book brought to life on the screen.

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Speaker 1: In this show, you have essentially immortality via digital consciousness,

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Speaker 1: digitized human consciousness moved from body to body, and typically

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Speaker 1: you have a very grim vision of what that would mean.

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Speaker 1: It basically means that the the worst, you know, richest

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Speaker 1: decrepit individuals in society, they're just gonna grow more and

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Speaker 1: more awful because they have more they have an increased

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Speaker 1: lifespan in which to be awful and become jaded to

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Speaker 1: their various uh um, you know, inappropriate pleasures. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: have a concept that the elderly tend to become wise

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Speaker 1: in their old age. I mean, who knows if that's

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Speaker 1: actually true, but well there's at least an impression along

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Speaker 1: those lines. But it seems to be premised on the

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Speaker 1: knowledge that death is coming. What if wisdom is contingent

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Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, it takes me back to our episode

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Speaker 1: on Chinese immortality and some of these Dallas concepts of

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Speaker 1: like the the elder enlightened being where you're aging is

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Speaker 1: a transformation into a different state. But so many of

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Speaker 1: these ideas of immortality, it's like, yeah, you get to

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Speaker 1: remain young forever, uh forget without really thinking about what

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Speaker 1: that would do, how that might warp the individual. But

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Speaker 1: what if there was a concept of immortality that in

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Speaker 1: fact didn't imply any of these changes, right. It didn't

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Speaker 1: say that you're going to make a phase transition to

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Speaker 1: another kind of being. It didn't say that your soul

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Speaker 1: is going to leave your body. It didn't say any

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Speaker 1: of that. It was just a literal, physical, straightforward statement

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Speaker 1: that everything is going to be normal. There's no magic,

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Speaker 1: except you'll just happen to never die. What sounds good

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Speaker 1: is their catch, Whether or not it sounds good. This

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Speaker 1: is what we want to talk about today, a physical

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Speaker 1: possibility of immortality presented as a thought experiment with a

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Speaker 1: lot of perhaps flawed underlying assumptions. So you're unfortunately not

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Speaker 1: going to walk away from today's episode probably with the

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Speaker 1: assumption that yes, all humans will live forever based on

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Speaker 1: the laws of physics, but we do want to explore

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Speaker 1: that as a possibility. Yeah, nothing we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about here today is actually going to impact your life,

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Speaker 1: except in the way maybe you think about your existence.

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Speaker 1: Quite true, unless it does impact your life, in which

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Speaker 1: case this is going to be very important. We're barely

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Speaker 1: talking about quantum mechanics, and it's already tangled up it

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Speaker 1: or not here, right, So we should make the transition

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Speaker 1: to talking about physics, because this is going to be

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Speaker 1: a physics spaced episode talking about interpretations of quantum mechanics. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and so I guess we should begin with just a

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Speaker 1: little bit of the discussion of weirdness of scale sale.

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Speaker 1: If you listen to this podcast, you've probably heard at

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Speaker 1: least a little bit about the deep strangeness of physics

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Speaker 1: at scales much bigger or smaller than the energy, mass, distance, speed,

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Speaker 1: and so forth that we deal with on a day

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Speaker 1: to day basis. On, for example, vast scales, we live

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Speaker 1: in a universe apparently dominated by dark matter, these gigantic

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Speaker 1: gravitational anomalies that can't be seen or touched except by

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Speaker 1: the way that they've been space time and hold galaxies together,

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Speaker 1: and on these huge scales, the dominating physics regime, the

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Speaker 1: kind of physics that makes the biggest difference is not

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Speaker 1: the kind of physics that governs our everyday lives, but

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Speaker 1: of Einstein's general relativity, where time is not a universal

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Speaker 1: measure and can appear to slow down or speed up

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Speaker 1: from different vantage points. Where mass changes the geometry of

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Speaker 1: space time itself and can warp or even trap light itself.

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Speaker 1: Now shrink down to roughly human sized scales, and suddenly

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Speaker 1: the laws of physics appear or to change. They don't

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Speaker 1: really change, but different physical phenomena become the most salient,

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Speaker 1: become the most important types of calculations to do when

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Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out how things are moving and

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Speaker 1: how one physical thing is affecting another. So this normal scale,

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Speaker 1: general relativity doesn't matter very much. We can throw baseballs

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Speaker 1: and shoot cannons and smash watermelons and all that stuff

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Speaker 1: without taking general relativity into the equation. And this scale

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Speaker 1: is generally best described by Isaac Newton's classical mechanics. This

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Speaker 1: is also the realm which physics is intuitive. Right at

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Speaker 1: this scale, everything seems to fly and fall and push

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Speaker 1: and resist in a way that makes sense to us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is the This is the room in which we

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Speaker 1: we have evolved to thrive exactly. That's the important point.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to remember this, but we should

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Speaker 1: do our best to internalize the fact that this middle

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Speaker 1: scale of physics, the Newtonian scale, does not actually make

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Speaker 1: any more sense in an objective point of view than

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Speaker 1: the other scales do. It's just the scale at which

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Speaker 1: our brains evolved. So presumably, if we happen to be

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Speaker 1: evolved star sized organisms, things like general relativity would be

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Speaker 1: intuitive and would make natural sense to us, and Newtonian

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Speaker 1: physics would be crazy, weird stuff that goes on down there. Well,

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Speaker 1: one way that I like to think about it is

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Speaker 1: the explanation that you can think of classical physics as

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Speaker 1: the Earth's crust and quantum physics as the underlying mantle,

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Speaker 1: and then you have to keep in mind that there

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Speaker 1: are things about Earth's mantle. They only make sense if

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Speaker 1: you take into account Earth's in our core. I think

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Speaker 1: that's a good analogy, because if we do keep zooming down,

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Speaker 1: we of course get get to what you just mentioned,

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Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, this next realm where things change. Yet again,

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Speaker 1: you get too extremely small scales on the scale of

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Speaker 1: elementary particles and tiny objects like atoms, protons, electrons, photons

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Speaker 1: of light, and at this scale the physics regime changes

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Speaker 1: so that things stop behaving in a way best described

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Speaker 1: by either general relativity or classical mechanics, and they int

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Speaker 1: behave according to a theory we now know as quantum

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Speaker 1: mechanics or quantum physics. And this came about because, you know, originally,

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Speaker 1: say the dawn of the twentieth century, scientists were trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out how things like atoms could behave as

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Speaker 1: reconciled by classical mechanics. They were trying to look at

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Speaker 1: things like the orbit of electrons around the nucleus of

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Speaker 1: an atom and say, okay, does that work in a

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Speaker 1: classical mechanics way, like the way planets orbit around a star,

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Speaker 1: And it just didn't work. So they had to figure

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Speaker 1: out what's actually going on here, and eventually they came

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Speaker 1: up with the theory of quantum physics, which is now

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Speaker 1: predicted mainly by what is called I've been saying his

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Speaker 1: name wrong my whole life. I think that the Shreddinger equation.

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Speaker 1: I've been calling him Schrodinger. I've been saying Schrodinger as well.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I've heard Schrodinger from everybody. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think I've heard it, but I don't know. I think

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Speaker 1: shredd Shreddinger is shredding. It's hard to even say. I

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Speaker 1: want to go Schrodinger Shreddinger. It's all because of Shreddinger.

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Speaker 1: It does it sounds more wholesome than than than cats

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Speaker 1: and boxes, uh, than that are neither dead nor alive,

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Speaker 1: or are both dead and alive at the same time. Yeah, so, well,

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Speaker 1: you'll probably hear us say it both ways in this podcast.

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Speaker 1: I apologize for that, but there's gonna be just no

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Speaker 1: getting around it. I guess it depends on how the

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Speaker 1: wave function collapses each time, but um so anyway. It

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Speaker 1: is named after the Austrian physicist Irvin Shreddinger, and Shreddinger

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Speaker 1: derived the equation in the mid nineteen twenties and ever

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Speaker 1: since then it has been profoundly useful and profoundly confusing.

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Speaker 1: And this is because quantum mechanics is simultaneously one of

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Speaker 1: the best most predictive theories in all of science, and

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Speaker 1: at the same time it clearly implies a reality that

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Speaker 1: makes absolutely no intuitive sense to us mammals that evolved

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Speaker 1: to deal with classical physics on the Newtonian scale. It

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Speaker 1: is bonkers and completely defies our expectations of how the

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Speaker 1: world should work. And there are a bunch of different

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Speaker 1: ways you could explain this, but just to pick the

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Speaker 1: simplest version for now, that the Shreddinger equation can be

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Speaker 1: used to predict the behavior of tiny particles like atoms

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Speaker 1: and electrons over time. So just the way that you

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Speaker 1: can use Newtonian equations to predict something like the arc

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Speaker 1: of a cannonball or the force of a falling boulder,

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Speaker 1: you can use the Shreddinger equation to predict the behavior

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Speaker 1: of tiny particles like electrons or photons. But a Newtonian

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Speaker 1: a single solitary object with one starting point a single

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Speaker 1: ending point in a clear trajectory. A particle on the

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Speaker 1: quantum scale does not behave that way at all, but rather,

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Speaker 1: according to the shredding Ear equation, it behaves a lot

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Speaker 1: like a pattern of waves in a fluid, and this

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Speaker 1: means it can have what can seem like multiple contradictory properties.

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Speaker 1: For example, a particle can, from our point of view,

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Speaker 1: appear to have multiple different positions, velocities, or spin directions

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Speaker 1: at the same time. And this range of possible simultaneous

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Speaker 1: behaviors is what's known as the wave function. The wave

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Speaker 1: function is all of these potentialities that seemed to be

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Speaker 1: simultaneously true about a quantum object or system, and this

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Speaker 1: wave function exists in an abstract infinite dimensional space that's

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Speaker 1: known as the Hilbert space. Now again, of course this

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Speaker 1: makes no sense to us, but it's proven to a

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Speaker 1: degree that's almost beyond dispute. Like one of the most

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Speaker 1: classic proofs of the wave function behavior of quantum scale

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Speaker 1: objects is the double slit experiment. Yes, this is where

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Speaker 1: we get the same. When you're out of slit, you're

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Speaker 1: out of peer. Right now, that's a different situation. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about. Old beer ad slit

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Speaker 1: speer sla. We've actually just been looking at old beer

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Speaker 1: ads here on the podcast. There apparently was an old

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Speaker 1: Miller ad that had gigantic monsters in it where they

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Speaker 1: grab a truck full of miller and just chugged the truck. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: now that one's awesome. I think that was that was

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Speaker 1: from from when I was a kid, or in junior

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Speaker 1: high or something. I remember seeing that one, the Schlitz

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Speaker 1: beer ad where they have this whole when you're out

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Speaker 1: of slits, you're out of here. Uh, it's one I

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Speaker 1: never actually saw, but was referenced on Mystery Science Theater

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Speaker 1: three thousand. Growing up. So one of these these these

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Speaker 1: many pop culture references that I have no direct experience with,

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Speaker 1: only a secondhand experience with them from watching MST. Isn't

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Speaker 1: it sweet that all of these beer commercials are imprinted

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Speaker 1: on your childhood? Yeah, well it's some of them were

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Speaker 1: not too bad. Some of them had monsters in them.

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Speaker 1: But the double slit experiment to get to get it

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Speaker 1: back to quantum mechanics here, the basic idea is pretty simple.

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Speaker 1: The experimenter shines a light on a barrier that has

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Speaker 1: two narrow slits in it, and then the experimental studies

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Speaker 1: the interference pattern produces on a screen. So you've got

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Speaker 1: like two walls in order, and the first wall that

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Speaker 1: the light has to go through as the two slits,

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Speaker 1: and then the back wall has a screen on it

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Speaker 1: that the light can be projected on after it goes

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Speaker 1: past the first wall. Right, And I should also add

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Speaker 1: that this was first performed by Thomas Young in eighteen

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Speaker 1: o one. Now, light has a dual nature, it's both

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Speaker 1: wave like and particle like. In the experiment, light travels

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Speaker 1: through both slits and creates this interference pattern. And if

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Speaker 1: you send a single photon through photon being the light particle, right,

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Speaker 1: the single unit of electromagnetic energy. So you send a

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Speaker 1: single photon through it still forms an interference pattern as

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Speaker 1: if the single photon travels through both slits simultaneously. If

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Speaker 1: you hear me laughing, it's because at this point in

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Speaker 1: our notes, Robert has inserted an image from the movie

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Speaker 1: Time Cop two of what actor Ron Silver, Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: played the villain. And here we have two different the

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Speaker 1: villain from different time periods encountering each other and kind

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Speaker 1: of looking at each other with amusement and or confusion.

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Speaker 1: And I think both of these responses are are apt

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Speaker 1: when contemplate and quantum mechanics. I mean, basically, though this

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Speaker 1: is a simple experiment. Who observes something that should not

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Speaker 1: be at least as far as classical physics is concerned. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the idea that at the quantum level, a single

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Speaker 1: object can appear to inhabit multiple places at one time.

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Speaker 1: It produces this wave of like effect when it should

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Speaker 1: be more like, you know, we think on a classical level,

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Speaker 1: would be like a ball thrown at something. It's one object,

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Speaker 1: but it's not. And you have to wonder how can

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Speaker 1: this be true? Like objects in our experience never appear

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Speaker 1: to be in more than one place at one time.

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Speaker 1: A baygel does not behave like a wave pattern in

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Speaker 1: which you know their peaks and troughs at different locations. Right.

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Speaker 1: A bagel is just a single solid object that doesn't

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Speaker 1: move unless you move it. Yeah, I think, I mean

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Speaker 1: we we we mentioned time cop in passing here, and

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Speaker 1: I don't think a deep scientific reading of time cop

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Speaker 1: is is essential here. But this in other films do

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Speaker 1: kind of get into this territory when you have the paradox,

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Speaker 1: right of of the same character encountering themselves from a

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Speaker 1: different time. Um, well, anytime something that is I mean,

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Speaker 1: how can that be, right, something somebody is in two

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Speaker 1: places at once. Yeah, it's used in fiction because obviously

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Speaker 1: it never happens on a macroscopic scale and reality. So

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Speaker 1: the contradiction here is between the fact that the Shreddinger

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Speaker 1: equation is obviously correct and the fact that it predicts

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Speaker 1: stuff that makes no sense and we never see. And

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Speaker 1: so it's led to the need for what are called

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Speaker 1: interpretations of quantum mechanics. Pretty Much everybody accepts the underlying

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Speaker 1: theory of quantum mechanics. You'd be a fool not to.

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Speaker 1: It's incredibly experimentally verified and very predictive, but there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of disagreement about what it means and how it

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Speaker 1: actually connects to our experience of reality. So, Robert, you

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Speaker 1: mentioned the dead cat in the box earlier. Yes, this

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Speaker 1: is going to be a feature of what's been for

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Speaker 1: a long time the leading interpretation of quantum mechanics. So

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Speaker 1: you've got different interpretations that we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: two mainly today, but there have been actually a bunch

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Speaker 1: of different interpretations. The two we're gonna be focusing on

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Speaker 1: are the Copenhagen interpretation and what we will later discuss

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Speaker 1: as the many Worlds interpretation. But the Copenhagen interpretation was

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Speaker 1: created in the nineteen twenties by the physicist Nil Spoor

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Speaker 1: and Werner Heisenberg, and the Copenhagen interpretation essentially postulates a

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Speaker 1: world governed by quantum mechanical probabilities, and these probabilities get

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Speaker 1: decided on through a process known as wave function collapse.

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Speaker 1: So you've got these multiple possibilities at the same time.

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Speaker 1: That's the way of function. Uh. And then they're going

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Speaker 1: to say it collapses, So what does that mean? So

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Speaker 1: imagine you've got a quantum level particle like an electron,

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Speaker 1: and you're trying to figure out where is it going

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Speaker 1: to be? Is the electron going to be on the

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Speaker 1: right or is it going to be on the left.

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Speaker 1: What the Copenhagen interpretation says is that this wave function

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Speaker 1: is in a state of unresolved potential called superposition, and

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Speaker 1: the electron could be on the right, and it could

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Speaker 1: be on the left, and in fact it's neither one.

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Speaker 1: But it's in this state where there's a fifty percent

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Speaker 1: probability of each And here's where it connects with our

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Speaker 1: world of solid macroscopic objects that are in only one

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Speaker 1: state in one place at a time. The Copenhagen interpretation

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Speaker 1: says that the wave function collapses into only one of

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Speaker 1: its potential configurations once somebody observes it. Now, this has

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Speaker 1: led to a lot of people reading all kinds of

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Speaker 1: crazy esoteric things about consciousness into quantum mechanics, right right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: basically what is the role of the observer and everything? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But I think a lot of those, uh, those consciousness

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Speaker 1: type ideas are based on a misinterpretation of the grounding

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Speaker 1: of the Copenhagen interpretation and a misinter misunderstanding of the

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Speaker 1: fact that the Copenhagen interpretation is not a sure thing

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Speaker 1: that it is an interpretation, not the theory itself. But

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Speaker 1: this is again, this is where the cat comes in

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Speaker 1: the idea that the cat is simultaneously dead and alive

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Speaker 1: inside of this box where where random life or death

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Speaker 1: is going to occur. Right, So that, yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: going to be how they map it up from the

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Speaker 1: quantum realm into the macroscopic world and how does our

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Speaker 1: reality connect with these probability distributions on the quantum level. Uh, So,

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Speaker 1: you've got an electron. It's neither on your left nor

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Speaker 1: on your right, but in a state of superposition where

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Speaker 1: there is simultaneously a fifty probability of finding it on

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Speaker 1: each side if you look with precision, and it just

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Speaker 1: stays this way, suspended it with these possibilities until somebody

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Speaker 1: observes it, meaning you use some kind of device or

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Speaker 1: method to figure out exactly where that particle is. And

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Speaker 1: then the once somebody does that, then it's actually only

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Speaker 1: one place it was in superposition. Then you looked at it.

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Speaker 1: Now it's on your left. It's not crazy. That crazy

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Speaker 1: situation to to really wrap your head around. If you

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Speaker 1: sort of think of it in terms of like TV

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Speaker 1: production or something. You know, if you're on one of

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Speaker 1: these shows, we have to guess what's behind the curtain,

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Speaker 1: and there's something behind each curtain, but only one curtain

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Speaker 1: is actually gonna be opened. Oh yeah, and a kind

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Speaker 1: of solipsistic way. It's almost not hard to believe that

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Speaker 1: the universe only only matters when I look at it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, So, despite the fact that many physicists have

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Speaker 1: felt fine relying on this interpretation for the decade since then,

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Speaker 1: I mean, one thing we should point out is that

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Speaker 1: you can do all kinds of useful quantum mechanics science

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Speaker 1: and and even use it for technology without knowing which

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Speaker 1: interpretation is correct. And in fact, it sometimes doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: which interpretation is correct. The math of the theory works

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Speaker 1: either way, right, Yeah, absolutely, But many continue to protest

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Speaker 1: that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsensical and it leads to

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Speaker 1: these apparent absurdities like as as you mentioned, Robert the

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Speaker 1: cat in the box, the famous Schrodinger's cat or Shreddinger's cat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we've we've already referenced a couple of times. You should

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Speaker 1: probably just lay it out for us here exactly how

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Speaker 1: this experiment goes. Uh, However, you know I do have

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Speaker 1: a soft spot for cats. Yeah, let's let's get rid

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Speaker 1: of cats. Don't want to kill a cat again. We

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Speaker 1: people talk about killing cats way too much in science.

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Speaker 1: Maybe they're anti cat. I'm going to bring in a

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Speaker 1: unicorn because we've established that maybe unicorns aren't as perfect

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Speaker 1: as everybody thinks they are. This particular experiment funded entirely

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Speaker 1: by Tim Curry, Lord of Darkness. Full disclosure. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: I've got a unicorn in a box. This box is

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Speaker 1: totally opaque and nobody can see what's happening inside. There

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Speaker 1: no cameras inside. You don't know what's going on there.

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Speaker 1: And there is a device inside the box that will

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Speaker 1: instantaneously incinerate the unicorn if it's triggered. And the device

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Speaker 1: gets triggered based on a quantum superposition event. So there's

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Speaker 1: a particle that has a fifty chance of spinning clockwise

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Speaker 1: and a fifty chance of spinning counterclockwise. And if when

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Speaker 1: you check the particle, it's spinning clockwise, the unicorn dies,

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Speaker 1: and if it's spinning counterclockwise, the unicorn lives. But this

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Speaker 1: would mean that the unicorn is both literally alive and

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Speaker 1: dead at the same time inside the box until somebody

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Speaker 1: looks inside the box to observe what happened. And at

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Speaker 1: the moment somebody looks inside the box, then suddenly the

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Speaker 1: unicorn is actually just either alive or dead, but until

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Speaker 1: somebody looked, it was both. Robert, do you think that

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Speaker 1: describes the universe we live in? Um? I don't think it.

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Speaker 1: It does not really describe the universe that we perceive.

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Speaker 1: That's the thing. Yeah, the universe we live in is

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Speaker 1: vast beyond our abilities to process it. Yeah, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's the answer is kind of yes and no at

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Speaker 1: the same time. I mean, I feel kind of despose. Again,

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Speaker 1: we want to be clear that we think the universe

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Speaker 1: does not need to adhere to our intuition. So just

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Speaker 1: the fact that something seems unlikely to you or to

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Speaker 1: me doesn't make it actually unlikely to exist in the world.

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Speaker 1: But just going on a gut level, one does has

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Speaker 1: come to feel less and less right to me, And

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Speaker 1: so I'm kind of disposed against the Copenhagen interpretation. I

430
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:09,640
Speaker 1: think all that means is that it doesn't necessarily feel

431
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: right to me. That doesn't mean it's not true. I

432
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 1: feel like it lines up well with like with with

433
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 1: with personal anxiety, you know, because it's essentially because when

434
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: when you're anxious about the future, you the bad things

435
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:25,440
Speaker 1: that can happen are as real as the good things

436
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,119
Speaker 1: or just the mediocre things that could happen, and the

437
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: bad thing is only really gone when you actually reach

438
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:36,479
Speaker 1: the point where where the particle has spun left. You know.

439
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: So there is something about about the about this particular

440
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 1: explanation that I think does match up with some of

441
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:48,239
Speaker 1: the ways we perceive our world. Yeah, definitely lines up

442
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: with some emotional realities. Maybe less so with physical objects. Definitely.

443
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, well we'll see. I mean, again, we

444
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:58,719
Speaker 1: can't rule it out. It it's still been the the

445
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:02,240
Speaker 1: interpretation that's been fa by the majority of physicists since

446
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: the advent of quantum mechanics. But like we said earlier,

447
00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:08,439
Speaker 1: it's not the only way, And to get to our

448
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:12,439
Speaker 1: discussion of physical immortality, we're gonna have to explore another

449
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,879
Speaker 1: interpretation of quantum mechanics that arose in opposition to the

450
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 1: Copenhagen interpretation. We will start looking at that when we

451
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: get back from a break than alright, we're back, so

452
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:27,680
Speaker 1: we're gonna start talking here about the many worlds interpretation,

453
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:31,240
Speaker 1: which I believe we've we've probably touched on on the

454
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 1: show before, because it is one of these that spins

455
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: off into very uh fantastic comic book realms, right, the

456
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: idea of alternate realities, other worlds where other things have happened,

457
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 1: essentially the Library of Babble, yes, but with a specific

458
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: physical mechanism causing it to come into existence. And so

459
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: we will do our best to try to explain this here. Now,

460
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:55,640
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the Copenhagen interpretation, the idea that

461
00:25:55,920 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 1: you've got a quantum mechanical system that's in superposition sort

462
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: of both in a simple way, it's both left and

463
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: right literally at the same time until you look at it,

464
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: at which point it becomes just one or the other.

465
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: And so observation causes the collapse of the way of function,

466
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: and it just becomes a normal physical reality, just like

467
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 1: the kind of single, solitary reality that we're used to

468
00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:23,479
Speaker 1: looking at. Here's the main difference between that and what

469
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,359
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, the many worlds interpretation. In

470
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: this interpretation, a particle does not exist in superposition between

471
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: two possible outcomes and then collapse into one. Outcome or

472
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 1: the other. When we look at it instead, it exists

473
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: as a wave function in this superposition where there it

474
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: has multiple different qualities at the same time, it's both

475
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: left and right. It's in this state as a wave

476
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 1: and then it stays that way, and it just keeps

477
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:53,120
Speaker 1: staying that way, and that's how it works. So it's

478
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: another way the bad thing that ends up not happening

479
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 1: actually does happen, but it's in essentially another timeline. Yeah,

480
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 1: pretty much. So this was first proposed by the physicist

481
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: to you ever at the third when he was a

482
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:09,880
Speaker 1: graduate student at Princeton in nineteen fifty seven. And it's

483
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 1: not the core of the theory that there are multiple universes,

484
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: but you cannot deny that. When you take this theory

485
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,919
Speaker 1: to its logical conclusion, it puts us in and a

486
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: multiverse of infinite timelines, right, infinite timelines, infinite parallel universes,

487
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 1: each different from the last. Now, and some of these universes,

488
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: it again comes right back to basically what we described

489
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,880
Speaker 1: in the Library of Babel, and some of these universes,

490
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: the difference is going to be really slight, such as

491
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 1: a parallel universe where everything is exactly the same, except

492
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: you had a bagel for breakfast instead of cereal. Um.

493
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 1: Then there's also one, for instance, there's a universe where

494
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: Highlander one Best Picture of the fifty nine Academy Awards. Well,

495
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: now I want to take issue with you there for

496
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: a second. It predicts that you could possibly have every

497
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 1: variation on the universe that is allowed by the laws

498
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: of physics. I'm not sure if the laws of physics

499
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 1: rule out to Highlander best Picture win. Well, there's papers

500
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: will have to be written about that, so we'll have

501
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: we'll have to see some peer viewed papers on that

502
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: that question, Joe. Basically, the idea, though, is for each

503
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 1: possible outcome to a given action, the world splits into

504
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: copies of itself, instantaneous processes that Everett calls decohesion. But

505
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: before I move forward on on the oscars, I guess

506
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 1: a better argument would you could say that there's a

507
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 1: version where that year the Academy awards Children of a

508
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:34,880
Speaker 1: Lesser God one as opposed to Platoon, which actually won. Yeah. Well,

509
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: I mean, so what it would actually mean is that

510
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: the outcomes of these universes split every time there are

511
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: different possible branches of a quantum superposition. Now, the question

512
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: would be how often are differences in reality determined by

513
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: a quantum superposition going into its different possibilities. Presumably the

514
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: answer to that is a lot, because I mean, quantum

515
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: mechanics underlies all kinds of stuff that's happening all the time.

516
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: It underlies things that are happening inside people's brains, It

517
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: underlies things that are happening in physical reality and the

518
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: interactions between objects. Small random differences in how a quantum

519
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 1: superposition event breaks off could lead to macroscopic effects down

520
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: the line, and some of these effects could be rather severe.

521
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: So you could have other universes which would differ in

522
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: ways that alter reality on a grand scale. For instance,

523
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 1: imagine a parallel universe with no gravity um. Some cosmologists

524
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: use the theory is that handy explanation for why life

525
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: evolved in our universe at all? Their answer is simply, well,

526
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: they're ac countless universes where life never evolved, and various

527
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: universes in which it evolved along similar lines as ours.

528
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 1: It's kind of a way to get around the Copernican principle, right,

529
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 1: the idea that Earth and and therefore earth life and

530
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: the human experience should not have a privileged position in

531
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: the cosmos, right, Uh yeah, I mean it's essentially that's

532
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: sort of anthropic reasoning, the anthropic principle like why do

533
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: we live on a planet that's capable of supporting life?

534
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: The idea under that is like, well, where would you

535
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 1: expect to live? Would you expect to live on a

536
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: planet that couldn't support life? Um? Yeah, And there are

537
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting questions about whether that type of

538
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: reasoning is valid or not. I'm not up. I used

539
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: to read about this kind of stuff, but it's been

540
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: a while since I did. Well, it's it's like, how

541
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: how is it possible that I'm alive and I haven't

542
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: been killed by Jason Vorhees. Well, there there are multiple

543
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: alternate realities where I have But where else could I

544
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: be thinking about this at this point in my life

545
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: than a universe in which I have not. Now, that

546
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: kind of reasoning will come up again in a big

547
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: way in a minute. So we should be clear that

548
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:45,360
Speaker 1: the existence of possibly infinite parallel universes is a consequence

549
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: or an implication of Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics, not

550
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: the core assumption of it. The core assumption is just

551
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: the universality of the wave function. It just says the

552
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: wave function is real. All of the different possibility of

553
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: the wave function are real. They actually exist, and they

554
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: never collapse. But Everett believe that if you follow the logic,

555
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: if you extra polate that out to the macroscopic scale

556
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: that we live on, the only way to make sense

557
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 1: of it is that bifurcating realities constantly split off from

558
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 1: one another and exist independently. Uh. And just just a

559
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: few interesting biographical notes. Everett recounted in the nineteen seventies

560
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 1: that the many World's interpretations sprang up one night when

561
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 1: he was talking with a couple of Princeton classmates about

562
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: the implications of quantum mechanics. It was quote after a

563
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: slash or two of sherry, And that seems kind of right, right, Like,

564
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: the many worlds interpretation has got to be a sherry

565
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: based interpretation. It is like, not a vodka based interpretation.

566
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: Nor is it a beer induced interpretation. Yeah, it does.

567
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: It does sound like the sherry is essential here. Yeah.

568
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: And another thing that's essential is the simplicity of it. Right.

569
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: The core selling point of the many worlds interpretation is

570
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: that we've tested the mathematical reality of quantum theory. We

571
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: pretty much know it's right. So what does the math say.

572
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: Despite how outlandish the physical implications of the many worlds

573
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 1: interpretation seem, you can make a pretty strong argument that

574
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: it is the simplest possible interpretation of the math of

575
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:21,280
Speaker 1: quantum theory. If you just look at the mathematical features

576
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: of the way of function and you try to take

577
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: away all your intuitions about how things should work, it's

578
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: the simplest possible way to make sense of it, and

579
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: about it being the simplest theory Evert actually wrote in

580
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: a letter to the physicist Brice de Witt in nineteen seven, quote,

581
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: I do believe, however, that at this time the present theory,

582
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: meaning the many worlds interpretation, is the simplest adequate interpretation.

583
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: The hidden variable theories are to me more cumbersome and artificial,

584
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: while the Copenhagen interpretation is hopelessly incomplete because of its

585
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: a priori reliance on classical physics, excluding in principle any

586
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: deduction of classical physics quantum theory, or any adequate investigation

587
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: of the measuring process, as well as a philosophic monstrosity

588
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: with a reality concept for the macroscopic world and a

589
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: denial of the same for the microcosm. So that's kind

590
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: of a strong argument he's saying, right, like the Copenhagen

591
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: interpretation says, Oh, yeah, the macroscopic world is real, but

592
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: there's something about the quantum realm that isn't as real

593
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: as our world is. Yeah, it kind of relegates it

594
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: to like a ghost realm. Yeah. One of the books

595
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: we're going to be referring to in this episode is

596
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: Max tag mark book Our Mathematical Universe, and tag Mark

597
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: writes about de Witt. He says, quote, when I later

598
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:40,000
Speaker 1: met Bryce, he told me he'd at first complained to

599
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: you Everett, saying that he liked his math, but was

600
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: really bothered by the gut feeling that he just didn't

601
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: feel like he was constantly splitting into parallel versions of himself.

602
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: He told me that Everett had responded with a question,

603
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: do you feel like you're orbiting the Sun at thirty

604
00:33:55,560 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: kilometers per second? Touche? Bryce had exclaimed and conceded to

605
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: fee done the spot just as classical physics predicts that

606
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 1: we're zooming around the Sun and we won't feel it.

607
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: Everett showed that collapse free quantum physics predicts that we're

608
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: splitting and that we won't feel it now, despite the

609
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: fact that it does seem to make sense to a

610
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:16,719
Speaker 1: lot of people now. Unfortunately, it did not catch on

611
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 1: in Everett's lifetime. When the Copenhagen interpretation remained dominant, and

612
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: Everett was reportedly bitter about academia's rejection of his work,

613
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: he left academic physics. He went to work at the Pentagon,

614
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: where he was apparently involved in some Cold War nuclear strategy,

615
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: and over time friends and colleagues reported that he had

616
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: a lot of bitterness and negative affect and that he

617
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,879
Speaker 1: also struggled with alcoholism, and he eventually died pretty young.

618
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: He died at the age of fifty one in nineteen

619
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: eighty two. And just as a side note about his family,

620
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 1: one of Everett's children is actually Mark Oliver Everett, who's

621
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: the singer of the rock band called Eels. Interesting, well,

622
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:56,919
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if he has any songs about

623
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 1: his his father. Yeah, he apparently does, as Actually I

624
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: haven't listened to them. I haven't listened to a lot

625
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: of Eels, but I remember I remember getting some mixed

626
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 1: CDs when I was in high school that had some

627
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 1: Eels songs. Eels fans will have to chime in and

628
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:12,640
Speaker 1: let us know, Yeah, let us know what we should

629
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:16,240
Speaker 1: listen to. But anyway, since Everett's death, the many World's

630
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: interpretation has gradually become much more popular. Actually, the Polish

631
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: American physicist of void check Zurich, has said, quote Everett's

632
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: accomplishment was to insist that quantum theory should be universal,

633
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: that there should not be a division of the universe

634
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 1: into something which is a priori classical and something which

635
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,720
Speaker 1: is a priori quantum. He gave us all a ticket

636
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:40,439
Speaker 1: to use quantum theory the way we use it now

637
00:35:40,560 --> 00:35:43,799
Speaker 1: to describe measurement as a whole. So essentially, it's a

638
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: way of looking at quantum quantum theory and saying, no,

639
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: it's all real, it all works, and it totally applies

640
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 1: to the universe as a whole. It's not some weird

641
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: special realm that we have to invoke strange types of

642
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: causation to understand. But here's the question. If it's true

643
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: that the wave function is real and universal and it's

644
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: reality has effects that hold sway over the macroscopic world,

645
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: that the world we live in. What does this mean

646
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 1: for us? What should it be like to be a

647
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 1: person living within a mini worlds universe? Yeah? Because it

648
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:20,920
Speaker 1: seems like, Okay, it's one thing to say that every

649
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 1: time I make a choice, the timeline splits, but I

650
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:28,720
Speaker 1: still I still feel like I am an object moving

651
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 1: along a timeline, even if even if I'm splitting, I

652
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,879
Speaker 1: have this singular experience unless I'm bringing in some sort

653
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 1: of uh you know, magical, uh you know, religious idea

654
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:44,439
Speaker 1: of what my my, my consciousness is doing in other lives. Yeah,

655
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 1: I mean we we can't have access to that, right,

656
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:50,320
Speaker 1: And here's actually the question. Here is the really interesting question.

657
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 1: Why don't we have access to that? Right? What is

658
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 1: actually happening in the physical realm? If the Many World's

659
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 1: interpretation is correct, what is actually happening that puts those

660
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:04,479
Speaker 1: in another place and keeps you separate from them? Which

661
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 1: is essentially the same as saying why does the wave

662
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 1: function branch into separate realities? And the answer, as best

663
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: I can tell, appears to lie in a quantum physics

664
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: concept known as decoherents now. I mentioned earlier that Max

665
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: Tegmark book that our mathematical universe, and he has a

666
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 1: pretty good discussion of decoherents in his book Um. But basically,

667
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: the way it works is this, as long as a

668
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: quantum system in superposition remains physically isolated, all of its

669
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 1: potential states can continue to interact with one another. But systems,

670
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:37,759
Speaker 1: of course, almost never stay isolated for long. I mean,

671
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: how often would you expect a system in reality to

672
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 1: stay isolated from any contact with the outside. If even

673
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: a single photon from the outside of the system interacts

674
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,280
Speaker 1: with it, then the system undergoes what's known as decoherence.

675
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 1: We mentioned this concept earlier, which means that it's potential

676
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: states can no longer interact with each other. If they

677
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:03,479
Speaker 1: can know longer interact with each other, they essentially branch off.

678
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: They become causally separate timelines, whereas before they were intertwined. So,

679
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: in a basic sense, imagine you've got an isolated quantum

680
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: system where you've got a particle on the left and

681
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: the right at the same time in superposition. But if

682
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 1: anything touches it, decoherence happens, and then it splits into

683
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: different branches of the universe that can no longer affect

684
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: one another. Thus, the wave function does not collapse. Decoherence

685
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: just prevents these branches from messing with each other anymore. Now,

686
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: we teased at the beginning that this would be coming

687
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:38,360
Speaker 1: to the concept of immortality. How do you get immortality

688
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:40,880
Speaker 1: out of any of the physics concepts we've been discussing

689
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: so far. Well, I know the answer to this question,

690
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: and I'm still not convinced that you do. But um,

691
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: But basically, and you're gonna have to pull out a

692
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: thought experiment. Yeah, and you're gonna have to have a machine.

693
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: And as it seems to be this the running trend

694
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: with with quantum mechanics thought experiments, it's going to somehow

695
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: involve lethal violence. Yeah. One way this has been described

696
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: we're about to get to something known as the quantum

697
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 1: suicide experiment. And one way this has been described as

698
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: Schreddinger's cat. From the cat's perspective, you make yourself the cat.

699
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: So several physicists, apparently beginning with two independent lines of

700
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 1: work by Hans Morevac and Bruno Maschaal in the nineteen

701
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: eighties and then later by Max tag Mark, have proposed

702
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 1: an apparently ingenious and perhaps flawed way to test whether

703
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: the mini worlds interpretation is correct, and how that would

704
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: affect personal subjective consciousness. We do not recommend this method

705
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,240
Speaker 1: at all. You should not try it out. But here's

706
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 1: the method that's been described. You have to build a

707
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: machine that will kill you. All Right, we're gonna take

708
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: a break and when we come back, we will assemble

709
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:57,479
Speaker 1: this machine or a version of this machine than alright,

710
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've been discussing how the man world's

711
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,240
Speaker 1: interpretation would affect the subjective experience of life and death.

712
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:06,919
Speaker 1: And there has been a type of experiment proposed by

713
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,439
Speaker 1: some physicists to test for the reality of the many

714
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: worlds interpretation by experimenting with one zone life and death

715
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: subjective experience. This is known as quantum suicide or the

716
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 1: quantum suicide experiment. Now, Robert, you have come up with

717
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: a a more a more fun version of this experiment

718
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: than the usual one. The usual one involves creating some

719
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: kind of gun that is designed to shoot you or

720
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:35,000
Speaker 1: not shoot you, based on a quantum event. Yeah, and

721
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:38,440
Speaker 1: this is this is max tech marks uh concept. Right,

722
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 1: there's a there's at you said a machine gun in

723
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: the original version. Yeah. He so he's got the idea

724
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: of a machine gun that that has a trigger pull

725
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: that's initiated by a potential quantum superposition that could go

726
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: one way or could go the other. Like, You've got

727
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: a particle that could be spinning right and it could

728
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 1: be spinning left, and it's got a fifty percent chance

729
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: of being either one. And if you check it and

730
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: it's spinning right, the gun fires, and if you check

731
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: it and it's spinning left, the gun does not fire.

732
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: And it does this once per second. And then he says,

733
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: the test is you put your head in front of

734
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 1: the gun. Yeah, that's just I don't know, it just

735
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: feels a little too too violent um for this podcast

736
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: for some reason. So I thought, yeah, let's let's try

737
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: something maybe a little more science fiction, a e uh

738
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: in nature, a little less gun centric, and maybe a

739
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: little more Dune inspired. Uh So, my apologies to to

740
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:32,560
Speaker 1: Max for for alterations here. Also, I guess, you know,

741
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:36,359
Speaker 1: apologies to Frank Herbert as well, just in case. But

742
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:38,879
Speaker 1: this is this is how it's going to roll out.

743
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: We're gonna take you through the experiment. You're gonna start

744
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: with a man or a young man. This is gonna

745
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,840
Speaker 1: be polo trades right essentially. Yeah, you can Okay, you

746
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: can essentially think of it as polo trades and uh,

747
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: he's gonna sit before a machine, a non thinking machine,

748
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,880
Speaker 1: mind you. This is designed to jab him in the

749
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 1: arm with a meta cyanide poison needle, a k A

750
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: M jabber based on the spin of a quad un

751
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: quantum particle, so that gom jabber hits him, the jabber.

752
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: It's gonna be instant death, just no no chance, okay.

753
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: And it is instant. He won't even know it happened. Right.

754
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 1: So the machine again is gonna gonna look at that

755
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: quantum particle and and study its spin. If there's a

756
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 1: clockwise spin on the quantum particle, then the gob jabber

757
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 1: is gonna strike. If there's a counterclockwise spin on the

758
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: quantum particle, the gom jabber just buzzes, threatening lee. The

759
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: young man here keeps pushing the button and the gom

760
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: jabber buzzes, buzzes and buzzes, but it doesn't move. Each

761
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: time he pushes the button, it buzzes, but it doesn't strike. Well, yeah,

762
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: so what's happening here in this experiment? As you can tell,

763
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: the experiment has a probability based outcome. After the first

764
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: button push, there's a fifty percent chance that Paul is

765
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: Paul will live in a fifty percent chance that he's

766
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 1: going to die, and then this repeats. On the second try,

767
00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: there is a cumulative chance that he'll live, and by

768
00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:02,840
Speaker 1: the third try half of that, and it just keeps

769
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: going down until probability virtually guarantees that Paul Trades has

770
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: been struck dead by the gom Jabber. But from Paul's

771
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: own subjective point of view, this experiment actually might have

772
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 1: a very different flavor assuming, and there are some assumptions

773
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 1: underlying this, assuming that consciousness ends immediately at death. Now,

774
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: of course, if consciousness survives death were obviously in a

775
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,239
Speaker 1: whole different ball game. But for Paul himself, there is

776
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,240
Speaker 1: only one option for Paul to discover. After each push

777
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 1: of the button, he discovers he has survived. If the

778
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:44,280
Speaker 1: gom jabber strikes and he's instantly killed, he will never

779
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: be aware of it. But in a universe in which

780
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: the Many World's interpretation is correct, there is no opportunity

781
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: for him to be the one who dies, since his

782
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 1: subjective experience of those branches of the wave function does

783
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 1: not exist. So if Paul is any thing, he can

784
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: only be the version of himself that survives, and thus,

785
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: if he starts performing this experiment, the only versions of

786
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,359
Speaker 1: him that exist to continue the experiment will be the

787
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: ones that continually route his consciousness into branches of the

788
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 1: way of function in which he survives. So he'll just

789
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:24,480
Speaker 1: keep pressing the button over and over and over again,

790
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: and the only thing he'll ever experience is survival and

791
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 1: this will happen an infinite number of times if necessary. Yeah, now,

792
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: what are the drawbacks to this experiment? Well, there are

793
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: obviously theoretical objections to the validity of the experiment, reasons

794
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: to think that even if the Many World's interpretation is correct,

795
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: the experiment wouldn't actually work, and we can explore those

796
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: in a moment. But on top of that, there are

797
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 1: some big problems, like you have to be willing to

798
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: kill yourself, and you can never use this test to

799
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 1: prove the Many World's interpretation to people other than yourself.

800
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: It's not actually a scientific experiment because a scientific experiment

801
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: needs to be able to be objectively verified, and this

802
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 1: is experiment that, by necessity can only be subjectively verified.

803
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 1: Even if it works as proposed, it would only be

804
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: valuable to you yourself. The vast majority of people throughout

805
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 1: the quantum multiverse watching you perform this experiment will just

806
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: witness you killing yourself on the first try, or the

807
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: second try, or the third try, and so on. And

808
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: each time you press the button, a greater proportion of

809
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: the people watching you throughout the quantum multiverse will just

810
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: be watching you kill yourself. Plus, it's a perfect waste

811
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: of a good con jabber, in my opinion. Now, assuming

812
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 1: for a moment that the logic of this experiment is valid,

813
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: and there are potentially strong reasons for thinking it's not,

814
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:48,879
Speaker 1: but just go with us for a second, it gets

815
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: weirder because let's extend the reasoning beyond the confines of

816
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: the experiment. Here are a few thoughts to consider in

817
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:00,760
Speaker 1: any dangerous real world situation that might lead to death.

818
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 1: Whether you maybe just got a blast of neutron radiation

819
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: in the face, or somebody tries to drop a garbage

820
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 1: truck on you from a great height or whatever, there

821
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 1: is always a small chance that something will happen to

822
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: prevent you from dying. Would you agree Robert with me

823
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: so far? Yeah, I would say, broadly speaking, that's true.

824
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,959
Speaker 1: It might be a very small chance, but there's always

825
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:24,319
Speaker 1: a small chance Superman could appear and jump in front

826
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 1: of the bullet of the train it set. Well, okay,

827
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: maybe not that, Maybe not that, because we don't want

828
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 1: to violate the laws of physics. So there's always a

829
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: small chance that without violating the laws of physics, something

830
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: will happen to prevent you from dying in this scenario, right,

831
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: there's always some sort of freak occurrence that could prevent

832
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 1: it from happening. Yes, yes, So if there's a chance

833
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:47,239
Speaker 1: of survival that's consistent with the laws of physics, there's

834
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: at least some branch of the universal wave function in

835
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:55,720
Speaker 1: which that chance becomes reality. So at some level, all

836
00:46:55,840 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: threats to survival are quantum threats, and thus, if on

837
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 1: these assumptions, if the Mini World's interpretation is correct, you

838
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:08,879
Speaker 1: should always expect to continue surviving, no matter how improbable

839
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: the odds, because subjectively you have no choice but to survive.

840
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: If there is anything that you are, you are the

841
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:19,440
Speaker 1: version of you that has survived, and so the vast

842
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: majority of the versions of you throughout this quantum multiverse

843
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:26,760
Speaker 1: will die, but the subjective version of you will always

844
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: live on in the branches of reality that break in

845
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: favor of your survival. Now again, just to clarify, we're

846
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: not advocating this as necessarily the truth about reality. But

847
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: if you consider this this is a possibility, it is

848
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:44,319
Speaker 1: very strange to contemplate, right, Oh yeah. And I mean

849
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: the thing is, though, I always wonder what stuff like this.

850
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 1: Are we really talking about immortality here or just a

851
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: mere thought experiment variant. It's kind of kind of worthless

852
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: when you really think about it. You know, well, what

853
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? I mean, well, simply, for

854
00:47:57,640 --> 00:47:59,399
Speaker 1: one thing, it doesn't it doesn't match up with those

855
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:04,359
Speaker 1: magical ideas of of of being forever young, of of

856
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:07,960
Speaker 1: of living your life across the span of centuries, etcetera.

857
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: It's more about um narrowly, narrowly avoiding death as long

858
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:16,239
Speaker 1: as possible, and there is a there's a fixed term

859
00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: limit there, Yeah, exactly. I mean you could imagine that

860
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 1: this is the quantum mechanics version of being tiffanous, right

861
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:27,919
Speaker 1: that you essentially and pretty much all universes decline as

862
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: normally the laws of physics would dictate into a state

863
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:33,720
Speaker 1: where you are no longer in good health or whatever.

864
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:38,960
Speaker 1: But things just keep preventing you subjectively from dying, right,

865
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: and then in that in most universes you would keep dying,

866
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: you just subjectively would never experience it because you just

867
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:49,280
Speaker 1: keep getting funneled more and more into that smaller minority

868
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 1: of universes where you go where you go on now.

869
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 1: According to Everett biographer Keith Lynch quote, Everett firmly believed

870
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 1: that his many worlds theory guaranteed him immortality. His conscious knows,

871
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:03,280
Speaker 1: he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever

872
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:06,400
Speaker 1: path it does not lead to death. That's interesting, and

873
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: especially it's strange since Everett died so young. Yeah, yeah,

874
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:13,880
Speaker 1: and you know it, it's interesting to come back to done.

875
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 1: I feel like the weirdly enough that's This is exactly

876
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:20,879
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that's touched on in Frank Herbert's done,

877
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 1: the idea that humanity should take this golden path instead

878
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: of the path to stagnation, which is chosen by taking

879
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: the safest route, by always making the safest small choice,

880
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: instead of figuring out what is the what is the

881
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: ideal long term route? Well, does this play into the

882
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: choice to take Spice in the Dune universe, Because in

883
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: the Dune universe, Frank Herbert wrote that, you know, one

884
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:49,720
Speaker 1: of the main uses of spice, the stuff that's produced

885
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: by the makers um, is that it prolongs life, right,

886
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: it is the geriatric spice, that's true. Yeah, But but

887
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: then it's also you see its use with the Spacing Guild,

888
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 1: where the idea is of the space acent could has

889
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: their way. You know, they're just gonna always I mean,

890
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 1: they navigate space by figuring out how what path avoids

891
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:10,800
Speaker 1: every possible catastrophe. And that's it's kind of like the

892
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: quantum immortality model here, except of space travel. There's a

893
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:17,760
Speaker 1: quote to this effect from Laude deep In Frank Herbert

894
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,799
Speaker 1: Stone quote the vision of time is broad, but when

895
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door. And

896
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,760
Speaker 1: always he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course,

897
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: warning that path leads ever down into stagnation. Well. Yeah,

898
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: if you look at life as um as sort of

899
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: you always have to take a risk in order to

900
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:42,520
Speaker 1: do something meaningful, right. I mean, there's very rarely a

901
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: thing you can do that's very powerful and meaningful that

902
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: doesn't risk at least some small part of your your

903
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: at least sense of safety. Right. That might just be

904
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 1: psychological safety. But if you you extend that to the extreme,

905
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: would you become in this quantum multiverse in the many

906
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: worlds interpretation, and a progressively more boring person because you're

907
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: always being limited to the options of your life that

908
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: are always narrowing into this window of worlds where you've

909
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: taken the safer route, and the versions of you that

910
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: took the more dangerous route and took risks didn't make

911
00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: it as far. Yeah, you can only lead to stagnation

912
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: that way, Like the only way to lead the golden

913
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 1: path is that all other paths were platinum, right, which

914
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:28,360
Speaker 1: is kind of a depressing way to think about life.

915
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:31,360
Speaker 1: But this is a strange thing because it doesn't It

916
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 1: doesn't even give you the opportunity. If you were to

917
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:38,879
Speaker 1: assume that the mini worlds version of quantum immortality is real,

918
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:41,520
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even have a choice in the matter, because

919
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 1: you could take risks. But subjectively, we know that you're

920
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: not going to do that because the versions of you

921
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 1: that did that will eventually disappear and you will have

922
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:55,760
Speaker 1: no choice but to be funneled into this the safe,

923
00:51:55,760 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: stagnant existence spacing guild winds. Again. Uh so we should

924
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:05,000
Speaker 1: definitely talk about problems and criticisms of this idea. Uh,

925
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: there are a lot of reasons to think that this

926
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: might not be the case, so as as we said earlier,

927
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 1: But we just want to stress again we are not

928
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 1: advocating the idea that you are immortal according to the

929
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,360
Speaker 1: laws of quantum mechanics. Correct. We cannot be anymore clear

930
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: on that at that point, and even some of the

931
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 1: original authors of this experiment that they've come to doubt it.

932
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:26,879
Speaker 1: Like Max teg Mark, the m I T physicists we've

933
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:30,440
Speaker 1: been talking about. He proposed quantum suicide and quantum immortality

934
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: as thought experiments, but he acknowledges the tenuous nature of

935
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,759
Speaker 1: the premises under them and actually doubts it could be

936
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: a reality based on plenty of concerns he has, Like

937
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:43,520
Speaker 1: one problem is that tag Mark has these caveats to

938
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:46,400
Speaker 1: the quantum suicide experiment and says that it would only

939
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: even work in theory if the determination of whether the

940
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 1: machine kills you is truly quantum, as in depending on

941
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: a quantum particle in superposition. It wouldn't necessarily work if

942
00:52:57,480 --> 00:52:59,760
Speaker 1: you were letting it depend on say a coin flip,

943
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: could be purely deterministic. Also, the machine must be guaranteed

944
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:07,000
Speaker 1: to kill you on the kill setting. It couldn't. It

945
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:10,840
Speaker 1: couldn't have a possibility of just injuring you. Also, it

946
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:13,799
Speaker 1: would need to as we mentioned earlier, if it does

947
00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:16,839
Speaker 1: kill you would have to do so instantly, not gradually,

948
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: because you can't have the you can't have a chance

949
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: that it takes you a while to die after the

950
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:26,439
Speaker 1: quantum coin toss and uh, and you're just sitting there

951
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: waiting to find out what happens, because then your consciousness

952
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 1: could get routed into that universe. So, just from like

953
00:53:32,239 --> 00:53:36,680
Speaker 1: a design standpoint, it would it sounds extremely difficult, if

954
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: not impossible, to create the right kind of technology. You

955
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 1: certainly could make it in your garage. Because it would

956
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 1: need to depend on the quantum. It would need to

957
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 1: never fail, like it could absolutely. If it could malfunction,

958
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: that would destroy the whole experiment, right, it at least

959
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: should have a very very small chance of malfunctioning. Now,

960
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 1: in criticism of the general idea of quantum immortality extending

961
00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:00,399
Speaker 1: beyond the quantum suicide experiment itself, but just like does

962
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 1: this apply to reality as a whole, should we all

963
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: expect to subjectively live forever um. Even though tag Mark

964
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 1: does seem to subscribe to the many worlds interpretation, teg

965
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:14,880
Speaker 1: Mark says that most accidents and cause common causes of

966
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:18,480
Speaker 1: death do not satisfy all three of these criteria, and

967
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:22,400
Speaker 1: plus there's a bigger problem about tag Mark talks about

968
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:26,880
Speaker 1: the fact that most life and death scenarios don't actually

969
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: break down into a clear life or death binary where

970
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,919
Speaker 1: you've got continued consciousness on the one hand and non

971
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: continued consciousness on the other. But he says, you know,

972
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:40,520
Speaker 1: it seems to be that there is a gradual reduction

973
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:44,879
Speaker 1: of consciousness as one progresses toward death. And if this

974
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:47,840
Speaker 1: is the case, then you could have the assumptions of

975
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 1: this violated, right if you can gradually ratchet down your

976
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:54,800
Speaker 1: level of consciousness, you know, I mean it's true, I

977
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: mean we we in fact, I mean I don't sit

978
00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 1: around fearing the termination of my consciousness. I fear all

979
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: the things leading up to it and surrounding it, you know,

980
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: all the consolation prizes. Yes, certainly, I mean, especially on

981
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:09,279
Speaker 1: this view, because if you take the view that there's

982
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:12,439
Speaker 1: literally nothing after death, there's nothing to fear there. Yeah,

983
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:15,120
Speaker 1: I mean exactly. But that also brings up another big

984
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:18,760
Speaker 1: problem is that we don't actually know exactly what happens

985
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:21,600
Speaker 1: to consciousness at the time of death. And I'm not

986
00:55:21,640 --> 00:55:24,160
Speaker 1: saying that you have to propose, you know, religious type

987
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: answers about souls and afterlife and stuff like that. Obviously

988
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:29,160
Speaker 1: some people believe in things like that. But even if

989
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:33,600
Speaker 1: you don't believe in anything uh spiritual, supernatural, anything like that,

990
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:36,920
Speaker 1: there's still things that could happen with the subjective phenomena

991
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: of consciousness other than just it blips out of existence, right, yeah,

992
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: like you come back as a goat, or or there

993
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 1: could be I mean, if consciousness is some kind of

994
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: process or substance, there's a there's perhaps some some way

995
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 1: in which it lingers or winds down slowly after death,

996
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 1: or is reduced to some kind of other, you know,

997
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:58,879
Speaker 1: liminal or peripheral state after death. I mean, it's we

998
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 1: we just don't really know what happens. There's no evidence

999
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 1: about what exactly happens there also, to be honest, we

1000
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: don't actually really know. If we're gonna pick nits, I

1001
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: don't know what it means to survive from one moment

1002
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 1: to the next as a being experiencing consciousness, except that

1003
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:18,319
Speaker 1: we all generally tend to be under the impression that

1004
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 1: this is happening to us. I'm under the impression that

1005
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,240
Speaker 1: I'm surviving. But if we live in a universe where

1006
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:29,200
Speaker 1: constantly we're branching off into different branches, you know, out

1007
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:32,880
Speaker 1: of a quantum superposition and different timelines, how does the

1008
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:36,439
Speaker 1: baton get past? Does that make any sense? Late? Yeah,

1009
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:38,240
Speaker 1: I know. I mean this gets down to the basic

1010
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 1: naval gazing that we've engaged in before. Regarding the present moment?

1011
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:46,799
Speaker 1: Am I now who I was a minute ago? Am

1012
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:48,879
Speaker 1: I now who I will be a minute from now?

1013
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:51,279
Speaker 1: I mean, when you start really focusing in on that,

1014
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 1: it starts becoming it starts feeling disjointed, perhaps disjoined, it

1015
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: in a way that could match up with this idea

1016
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,920
Speaker 1: of branching realities. Yeah, how does the now you pass

1017
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:04,839
Speaker 1: the token of subjective experience to the you of one

1018
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:06,960
Speaker 1: moment in the future. Yeah, And what happens when the

1019
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: baton has dropped? Right? Yeah? Exactly? So? Uh, And again

1020
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that presents a problem. I just say

1021
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 1: that's something that we're not certain we've really worked out yet, Right,

1022
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:20,960
Speaker 1: What does it mean? For experience to exist across time,

1023
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: especially if that experience is branching into clones or copies

1024
00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 1: of itself. Yeah yeah. When you start actually lining it

1025
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:32,240
Speaker 1: up with the human experience, things are a little as certain.

1026
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: It's it's often easier to line it up with created things,

1027
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 1: like looking at chapters in a book or levels in

1028
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: a video game. Yeah yeah. So I don't bring that

1029
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: up to say that it like disproves the validity of

1030
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 1: the quantum suicide or quantum immortality thought experiments, But I

1031
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: just want to suggest that the periphery assumptions underlying these

1032
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 1: thought experiments are not as simple as and straightforward as

1033
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:56,800
Speaker 1: they seem. Not even the physics assumptions, but just the

1034
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 1: assumptions about death and life and consciousness and survival uh

1035
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:04,120
Speaker 1: as as even more doubt to throw on here. Max

1036
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,160
Speaker 1: Tegmark himself explains that he later came to doubt the

1037
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 1: validity validity of his own quantum suicide experiment um, but

1038
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: for totally different reasons. He came to doubt the validity

1039
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: based on doubts about the concept of infinity as applied

1040
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:21,200
Speaker 1: to physics, which he is in some sense skeptical about.

1041
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: Uh though he admits to being in the minority of

1042
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: physicists on this point. Now, I mentioned video games earlier

1043
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: and uh, and that's because I wanted to talk just

1044
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:31,600
Speaker 1: a little bit about saves scumming. What does that mean?

1045
00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:35,480
Speaker 1: So I was familiar with save scumming from playing a

1046
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: fair amount of x COM and XCOM to the most

1047
00:58:37,920 --> 00:58:40,600
Speaker 1: recent incarnations of the x COM video game. I've never

1048
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 1: played these, so you've got to explain to me. So

1049
00:58:42,720 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: x Com is basically it's aliens have invaded or are invading,

1050
00:58:47,200 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 1: and you have to fight them using a squad of soldiers.

1051
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: And if you're playing just kind of like the vanilla

1052
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:57,000
Speaker 1: version of the game, then each time you start playing,

1053
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: you get a random bunch of recruits and they level

1054
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: up as you a and then in each tactical mission

1055
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 1: you can lose the various men and women in your service,

1056
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 1: and the ones that survive they level up and get stronger,

1057
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 1: and you proceed through the game in an attempt to

1058
00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: save the world, to outlast the doom counter uh and

1059
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 1: win the game. Now, the real hardcore fans like to

1060
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:24,080
Speaker 1: play um an iron Man version of this. So this

1061
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:27,600
Speaker 1: is where you have only one save file and no

1062
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 1: matter what happens on a given mission. You just keep going.

1063
00:59:30,520 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 1: You just lost your best guy due to something like

1064
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:36,040
Speaker 1: freak accident or a terrible shot or a terrible choice

1065
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: on your part. Too bad. You just have to keep

1066
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:41,440
Speaker 1: playing the game until you either reach the point where

1067
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: you cannot win, whether where the doom counter catches up

1068
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:47,400
Speaker 1: with you um or you just get to the final

1069
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:50,080
Speaker 1: encounter and you're not strong enough to beat it. But

1070
00:59:50,200 --> 00:59:53,320
Speaker 1: you can also do what is called saves coming and

1071
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:55,080
Speaker 1: this is more in line I think with the way

1072
00:59:55,080 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: of a lot of people have played video games in

1073
00:59:56,960 --> 00:59:59,600
Speaker 1: the in the past, especially once, where you get to

1074
00:59:59,640 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 1: save as often as you want, as many times as

1075
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: you want, and in doing this, you simply go back

1076
01:00:05,080 --> 01:00:08,880
Speaker 1: to a previous save file every time something bad happens.

1077
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, so it's kind of yeah, it's kind

1078
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: of like the saving function serves as like a place

1079
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 1: where you can save the timeline of the world before

1080
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:22,600
Speaker 1: it branched off into its different many worlds. So it's like, oh,

1081
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 1: I just lost my best dude by having them look

1082
01:00:25,240 --> 01:00:27,680
Speaker 1: around this corner. I'll go back to a previous save

1083
01:00:27,760 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 1: game and I'll have him look around the other corner instead. Yeah,

1084
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: going between the different save files is like getting away

1085
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 1: to navigate the many worlds from above, and it leads

1086
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:41,600
Speaker 1: to a certain kind of quantum immortality. Yeah. I mean,

1087
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 1: even in a normal game, not like the one you're describing,

1088
01:00:44,920 --> 01:00:49,560
Speaker 1: you can't get to the final boss, say, in a

1089
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:51,960
Speaker 1: version of the game where you died on the first level,

1090
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: like you you know, and that's all you did. You

1091
01:00:55,080 --> 01:00:58,160
Speaker 1: can't keep going on. You have to use a version

1092
01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:01,560
Speaker 1: where you survived and progress. Yeah, and uh, you know,

1093
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:04,360
Speaker 1: And of course I don't want to imply that one

1094
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: way is better than the other when you're playing a

1095
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:09,800
Speaker 1: video game. My approaches play the video game, however, makes

1096
01:01:09,840 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: you happy. But you know, Richard K. Morgan also got

1097
01:01:13,320 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 1: into this little bit in Altered Carbon because you have

1098
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:20,600
Speaker 1: these these uh these super rich Methuselah as they call them,

1099
01:01:20,640 --> 01:01:25,440
Speaker 1: the meths who who put their consciousness in different bodies, um,

1100
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 1: different sleeves as they call them, and you have characters

1101
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:32,040
Speaker 1: who will end up essentially saves coming with their body.

1102
01:01:32,160 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: Something happens that either you got them killed or drives

1103
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:39,880
Speaker 1: them mad or makes them feel you know, too much guilt. Well,

1104
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:42,680
Speaker 1: then they just revert to a previous save file. A

1105
01:01:42,720 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: previous version of their own consciousness, and they keep going.

1106
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if some people, I wonder about

1107
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:51,640
Speaker 1: psychological effects of video games that could put you in

1108
01:01:51,720 --> 01:01:54,720
Speaker 1: that state of mind without the ability to physically do

1109
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: what you're describing with the sleeves and the bodies. I mean,

1110
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:00,760
Speaker 1: is somebody who plays a whole lot of video games

1111
01:02:00,760 --> 01:02:06,560
Speaker 1: with save files conditioning themselves too to act like that

1112
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,000
Speaker 1: is the way the world works, even though it is

1113
01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:11,400
Speaker 1: not the way the world works. Now that that's an

1114
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:14,160
Speaker 1: interesting question. I mean, we've certainly discussed on the show

1115
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 1: how things like you know, language is the sequential aspects

1116
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:24,280
Speaker 1: of language might impact our our experience of reality. So yeah,

1117
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:26,480
Speaker 1: why not? Maybe there's a book out there, the Mario

1118
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:31,600
Speaker 1: and the Goddess, Uh, to get serious. I do think

1119
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:33,680
Speaker 1: one thing that we should say before the end is

1120
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:36,640
Speaker 1: I we've taken pains to try to highlight all of

1121
01:02:36,680 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: the reasons that you can't just trust that the quantum

1122
01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 1: immortality thing is real, that the quantum suicide experiment would

1123
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:46,160
Speaker 1: actually work. Um, there are a lot of reasons to

1124
01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: doubt it, but we just want to emphasize again for

1125
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:52,000
Speaker 1: serious reasons that the idea of quantum immortality is highly

1126
01:02:52,040 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: speculative and relies on a lot of assumptions which could

1127
01:02:55,200 --> 01:02:58,680
Speaker 1: be wrong. Maybe the many worlds interpretation is wrong. Even

1128
01:02:58,680 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 1: if the many worlds interpretation is correct, many of the

1129
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 1: assumptions underlying the experiment and how consciousness and survival and

1130
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:09,320
Speaker 1: death and branching works could be wrong. So we should

1131
01:03:09,320 --> 01:03:12,320
Speaker 1: acknowledge that if somebody puts too much confidence in this

1132
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:14,800
Speaker 1: view of the world, it could actually be dangerous. And

1133
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:19,800
Speaker 1: I read a tragic story in nineteen whoever It's daughter Elizabeth,

1134
01:03:19,800 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: actually did commit suicide, and she reportedly left a note

1135
01:03:23,800 --> 01:03:27,360
Speaker 1: saying that she planned to join her father in another universe.

1136
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if that means her suicide was motivated

1137
01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:33,440
Speaker 1: by a belief in many worlds immortality. It might not

1138
01:03:33,520 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: have been, But in any case, quantum immortality wouldn't work

1139
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:39,000
Speaker 1: like that. But it seems to me that it's worth

1140
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:42,520
Speaker 1: clarifying that even though this is an interesting thought experiment,

1141
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: it's by no means a good reason to attempt suicide

1142
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: or to throw caution to the wind and count on

1143
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:52,040
Speaker 1: many worlds consciousness funneling to save you your Your life

1144
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:55,280
Speaker 1: is valuable, how it is, pursue it, how it is yeah,

1145
01:03:55,280 --> 01:03:56,720
Speaker 1: and we we'd like to remind you that if you

1146
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:59,240
Speaker 1: are troubled by suicidal thoughts, you are not alone. A

1147
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,640
Speaker 1: sympathetic year is only a phone call away. In the

1148
01:04:01,720 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: United States, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at

1149
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:09,760
Speaker 1: one to seven, three, eight to five five, and visit

1150
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:14,880
Speaker 1: suicide at Prevention Lifeline dot org for additional resources tailored

1151
01:04:14,880 --> 01:04:17,720
Speaker 1: toward general and specific needs such as those of youth,

1152
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 1: disaster survivors, Native Americans, veterans, loast survivors, l g B,

1153
01:04:22,440 --> 01:04:25,920
Speaker 1: t Q, and attempt survivors. And you'll also find a

1154
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:30,120
Speaker 1: list of international suicide hotlines at suicide dot org. If

1155
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:33,040
Speaker 1: you're actually thinking about it, get in contact. It matters.

1156
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:35,320
Speaker 1: All right. That's the episode and we'll be back for

1157
01:04:35,400 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: more in the future. But in the meantime, you can

1158
01:04:37,120 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 1: check out all past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your

1159
01:04:39,640 --> 01:04:42,080
Speaker 1: Mind at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You'll

1160
01:04:42,120 --> 01:04:45,040
Speaker 1: also find links out to our various social media accounts.

1161
01:04:45,040 --> 01:04:48,520
Speaker 1: They're huge, thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers

1162
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Tary Harrison. If you would like to

1163
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:53,880
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly by email and let

1164
01:04:53,920 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: us know feedback on this episode, or any other or

1165
01:04:56,240 --> 01:04:58,240
Speaker 1: just to say hig, gain in touch, let us know

1166
01:04:58,280 --> 01:05:00,440
Speaker 1: what you like about the show, maybe suggest to topic

1167
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: for the future. You can email us at blow the

1168
01:05:03,320 --> 01:05:15,520
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

1169
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:18,080
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff

1170
01:05:18,080 --> 01:05:30,480
Speaker 1: works dot com the biggest