4 ms·

As long as anyone else can observe you dead, you will be dead.

by jeromec 17y ago

rw 17y ago
Hermit life-insurance policy.
chrischen 17y ago
Yes but if I'm not dead in another reality, then I'm only conscious there. And since supposedly the LHC would kill everyone, that's why no one will see it work right?
- jeromec 17y ago
  This only means the LHC can't kill you; it doesn't make you immortal. The LHC will continue to fail, but you're free to leap from the Empire State Building and have several people observe you die in that particular reality.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    But the LHC can't kill you is because if it does, it would be unimportant since I wouldn't be around to observe such a reality right? So all realities I observe are those which I am conscious in right? So if I jump of the Empire State Building, I die. However that reality no longer matters because my consciousness no longer exists in it. But another reality where I didn't jump off, I'm still conscious, therefore it's all I remember. Am I getting this right guys?
    - jeromec 17y ago
      It depends. The problem with the many worlds theory (which I don't subscribe to) is there are many variations. One would be that there are variations of reality only specific to you. Another is that variations of reality exist but continue their course regardless of your interaction with them. The article is funny because it mixes a silly concept with a proven one, that of observation having a bearing on reality.
      - chrischen 17y ago
        What do you mean by variations of reality only specific to you? This is from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation There is a rather more dramatic test than the one outlined above for people prepared to put their lives on the line: use a machine which kills them if a random quantum decay happens. If MWI is true, they will still be alive in the world where the decay didn't happen and would feel no interruption in their stream of consciousness. By repeating this process a number of times, their continued consciousness would be arbitrarily unlikely unless MWI was true, when they would be alive in all the worlds where the random decay was on their side. From their viewpoint they would be immune to this death process. Clearly, if MWI does not hold, they would be dead in the one world. Other people would generally just see them die and would not be able to benefit from the result of this experiment. So it seems that the MWI assumes that all possible realities exist simultaneously? If this is true, then trying to commit suicide would make logical sense. You can do crazy stunts and not die, and if you don't die, you'd become famous.
        jeromec 17y ago
        What I meant by variations only specific to you would be like The Truman Show, where everything is staged for the main character. This would mean that you only think everything else exists, but it's really only you that exists, and with many worlds there would be different realities you experienced. In that way, you couldn't die because you are the only one doing the observing. There is a flaw with that wikipedia example (which is based on Schrodinger's cat): the next time you walk into the machine the decay event is different. You could only walk through and find your fate a maximum of one time, win or lose, as the next attempt, if you were around, would be a different decay event.
      - camccann 17y ago
        Many-worlds isn't really a silly concept. It's one of several interpretations that are equally consistent with current experimental results, and it does have nice properties such as avoiding nondeterminism and nonlocality. It's also (in a way) a conceptually simpler theory, in that many-worlds is roughly what you'd have if you got rid of wave function collapse and naively applied the rest of quantum mechanics. If memory serves me, a substantial percentage of physicists consider many-worlds to be plausible, or even likely. Also, be careful when talking about "observation having a bearing on reality"--the quantum mechanical sense of "observing" state has little to do with the conventional meaning of the word, and absolutely nothing to do with the presence of a conscious observer. On the other hand, an "observer" in the anthropic sense, in the quantum suicide experiment, is generally assumed to be a conscious being (though this isn't strictly required).

As long as anyone else can observe you dead, you will be dead.

by jeromec 17y ago

As long as anyone else can observe you dead, you will be dead.

rw 17y ago

Hermit life-insurance policy.

chrischen 17y ago

Yes but if I'm not dead in another reality, then I'm only conscious there. And since supposedly the LHC would kill everyone, that's why no one will see it work right?

jeromec 17y ago
This only means the LHC can't kill you; it doesn't make you immortal. The LHC will continue to fail, but you're free to leap from the Empire State Building and have several people observe you die in that particular reality.
- chrischen 17y ago
  But the LHC can't kill you is because if it does, it would be unimportant since I wouldn't be around to observe such a reality right? So all realities I observe are those which I am conscious in right? So if I jump of the Empire State Building, I die. However that reality no longer matters because my consciousness no longer exists in it. But another reality where I didn't jump off, I'm still conscious, therefore it's all I remember. Am I getting this right guys?
  - jeromec 17y ago
    It depends. The problem with the many worlds theory (which I don't subscribe to) is there are many variations. One would be that there are variations of reality only specific to you. Another is that variations of reality exist but continue their course regardless of your interaction with them. The article is funny because it mixes a silly concept with a proven one, that of observation having a bearing on reality.
    - chrischen 17y ago
      What do you mean by variations of reality only specific to you? This is from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation There is a rather more dramatic test than the one outlined above for people prepared to put their lives on the line: use a machine which kills them if a random quantum decay happens. If MWI is true, they will still be alive in the world where the decay didn't happen and would feel no interruption in their stream of consciousness. By repeating this process a number of times, their continued consciousness would be arbitrarily unlikely unless MWI was true, when they would be alive in all the worlds where the random decay was on their side. From their viewpoint they would be immune to this death process. Clearly, if MWI does not hold, they would be dead in the one world. Other people would generally just see them die and would not be able to benefit from the result of this experiment. So it seems that the MWI assumes that all possible realities exist simultaneously? If this is true, then trying to commit suicide would make logical sense. You can do crazy stunts and not die, and if you don't die, you'd become famous.
      - jeromec 17y ago
        What I meant by variations only specific to you would be like The Truman Show, where everything is staged for the main character. This would mean that you only think everything else exists, but it's really only you that exists, and with many worlds there would be different realities you experienced. In that way, you couldn't die because you are the only one doing the observing. There is a flaw with that wikipedia example (which is based on Schrodinger's cat): the next time you walk into the machine the decay event is different. You could only walk through and find your fate a maximum of one time, win or lose, as the next attempt, if you were around, would be a different decay event.
    - camccann 17y ago
      Many-worlds isn't really a silly concept. It's one of several interpretations that are equally consistent with current experimental results, and it does have nice properties such as avoiding nondeterminism and nonlocality. It's also (in a way) a conceptually simpler theory, in that many-worlds is roughly what you'd have if you got rid of wave function collapse and naively applied the rest of quantum mechanics. If memory serves me, a substantial percentage of physicists consider many-worlds to be plausible, or even likely. Also, be careful when talking about "observation having a bearing on reality"--the quantum mechanical sense of "observing" state has little to do with the conventional meaning of the word, and absolutely nothing to do with the presence of a conscious observer. On the other hand, an "observer" in the anthropic sense, in the quantum suicide experiment, is generally assumed to be a conscious being (though this isn't strictly required).