Matt, please be real. No serious scientist would ever perform your variant of Schroedinger's cat by climbing himself into the box. That would truly be wacky, and only a "mad scientist" would even consider something insane like that. Every real scientist will instead kindly ask one of his PhD students to step into the box as part of his PhD research, and if necessary repeat this experiment again and again, until one finally survives, or the grant runs out.
Well only you would know it’s real so only if you tested all of humanity basically Cold War lmao but yeah no point in trying this unless your like 106 yrs old or something
Think of how shocked they will be when they try it just one more time and watch as all their theories about the quantum world crumble before their very eyes.
7:20 “live as though this is your one quantum timeline” - that was the inspiration I needed and my new motto from now on - in this quantum timeline anyway.
@@kapsi there wasn't an episodes about that, but Matt said that it is not that mistical and could do an other video about it. It needs to be demystified!
I like cats. I also like physicists - except when they put the cat into the box. I want to live in the universe where they both survive. Call me an optimist.
rofl Idiocracy here we come!! (because c'mon, which reality is most likely for the vast majority of the populous? It's hard to keep up with tech _now!)_
Excellent episode. The thing I've always taken away from the quantum immortality idea is that, while the Schrodinger's Box experiment is a great way of illustrating the point, as you said in the episode, life is a series of quantum steps. So actually, box or not, all of us will have an infinite amount of branches where we experience immortality. The philosopher in me thinks, if you take this theory as correct, isn't it akin to saying that we will all experience immortality in our life/world line of consciousness? After all, so far in life I have never experienced my own death, and I've never met another person who has experienced theirs, either!
Dannggg Matt was killing it with the jokes today lmao Anytime I'm feeling down for failing an exam or losing a video game, I can now rest assured that a version of me in another quantum timeline has been a great success. Even if the likelihood is only 1x10^50.
zemorph42: How d'ya think I feel? I picked out my preferred branch ahead of time, and I stuck with that branch, but reality objected, rebelled, and now I'm stuck in a doldrumous rut of not doing what I planned, with no way out, and no end in sight.
"I'm not killing *all* the humans," said Skynet, "just all of them except you. Check the math! This way humanity has the greatest statistical chance of living as long as possible -- precisely as you asked."
LOL. A great way of pointing out the fundamental flaw of the Doomday argument as the whole Doomsday argument is based on some sort of correlation there is the major flaw of it. Doomsday is arguing the winner of a game seven of the World Series would win Presidency which was true 8 times in a row until last election it was wrong. Without a cause any type of Doomsday argument totally flawed.
And John Connor turns out to be Quantum Immortal in their branch of the multiverse. Explaining how a superhuman AI can't kill him no matter how much they try.
If it's real then every person in the world is immortal from their point of view, but others aren't. In some of the branches you already died, but your consciousness "chooses" only the branches that allow it to exist. That's because in branches where you died, consciousness stops existing, so if at least one branch that allows it to continue exists, there will be a version of you that continued to exist against all odds, yet from their point of view nothing unusual happened. Other people can die because there would be many more branches with only you immortal than branches with you and someone else immortal (and with more people it would keep getting less probable to be in that branch). I think the real question is, if I jumped from a window, is there a branch where I would start flying?
Well it's rather: Yes and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and ....
I've had the Quantum Immortality Theory in my head for a while now. I'm glad to see someone else try to explain it. For a few years I've been telling people they are immortal and that at the moment of death in one branch of time the conscious continuity of the mind continues on in the live branch. I also theorize that eventually the world will reach a technological singularity and at some point branches will be merged and others who have died in our survival timeline will have their continuous consciousnesses reintegrated into the singularity.
That is deep, but I believe in something similar, we exist in multiple universes at the same time, I don't know how consciousness comes to play in it, maybe we quantum leap but it's there
"Not all observers agree on experimental outcomes - it's just you never meet the ones who don't agree with you." That has some very scary implications that I'm not really vibing with.
@@captainastral What's political about it? For example if you're sitting and watching someone run , the person who is running will experience time slower. That means for your body one second would pass but for him one second would not pass. You would then disagree with him and thus we would not know whether one second has passed or not. Hence the world you perceive it as it is , is not real for everyone out there. The only thing all of us can agree upon is spacetime interval or spacetime.
@@achyuththouta6957 You have perhaps heard certain online forums and news outlets referred to as echo chambers, and it is said that those who get all of their "information" from a single source or tightly confined cluster of sources are "in a bubble". So when deathscreton said "it's just that you never meet the ones who don't agree with you" and then followed it up with "that has some very scary implications", I saw a parallel. So, the original statement of quantum reality is as you point out, not a political assertion; but the particular formulation above was suggestive of a similarity, which I playfully pointed out.
if the minimum unit is a planck, then every 1 plank of time there would be a reality born for every quantum variation? They should've called it the way-too-damn-many worlds theory
Good argument, but also consider that the minimum unit is a Plank because it is the scale at which the quantum uncertainties exceed the scale of the universe.
If you excuse my pedantry... "A Planck of X" does not mean the minimum unit of X. The Planck units are simply the units derived from fundamental constants. It so happens that a Planck length is theorized to be the minimum meaningful length. And a Planck time is theorized to be the minimum meaningful duration. While that seems to be a commonality among Planck units, it is worth noting that a Planck temperature is theorized to be the maximum (not the minimum) temperature possible. Furthermore, if you go into derived units you can find other theoretical maximum units, such as the Planck speed, which is the speed of l̶i̶g̶h̶t massless particles.
In software development there is something called an Heisenbug, which is a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it. I have also often observed its close relative, the Shrodingbug, which is a bug that had been there for ages and only after being observed the first time starts happening to everybody all the time.
Years ago I came up with the idea that quantum decisions split the universe into infinitely many where everything is possible. There must be a timeline where you live to be the maximum possible age of a human and consciousness can transcend these realities and you always end up in one you are alive in. You will survive everything but there will be many universes where you don't survive. Schrodingers cat always survives from it's point of view. I always think I'm the only one to have thought about stuff sometimes but obviously not.
@@photinodecay funny thing is I actually found myself understanding it after the tenth listen when I first started here before Matt took over. Now I find myself jumping ahead of Matt in the middle of watching the new episodes, which I'm always awake to watch.
@@Ariana-dn4mm well, i rewatch most things I don't fully understand 2 or 3 times, this does atleast 2 things for me: 1: I pick up things i missed (adds pieces to my incomplete puzzle) And 2: it highlights what I can't comprehend (gives me a clue on what I need to study up on) So rewatcing can teach you much :)
As a programmer, the more I learn about how the quantum world works, the more I think that we're just a simulation built using a form of functional reactive programming.
As a programmer also, I can see where the "proof" comes from; especially when the universe makes local copies and back ups. Though, odds are leaning towards us either being a top level universe, or in the first few generations of the simulation. Veritasium has a good video on this.
Maybe we are just discovering the world, and applying our current biased knowledge. What is a simulation but a creation? Congrats, you've discovered God, whatever it might be.
If you would have to guess the current state of the cat, but you are only given the choices of dead or alive, then you would have to choose alive. Explanation: the cat can still die now, but it cannot revive. Did I misunderstand anything, or is this assumption perfectly fine?
It was a thought experiment to point out a shortcoming in Copenhagen. The point Schrodinger was aiming for was that the idea of a cat in superposition of alive and dead clearly can't be right, so wave function collapse can't simply be an outcome of observation. Copenhagen grew out of a philosophical notion that you can't even meaningfully discuss something that you haven't observed. From that perspective, it doesn't matter if there's a person in the box, because YOU can't meaningfully discuss what's happened until it's been opened. They were trying to apply the "science is only about observations" philosophy to QM and the result was an incoherent mess that implied that scientific observation actually caused a physical process. The point of the thought experiment was that this incoherent mess can't actually describe what is really, physically happening in the box. The actual response was basically "talking about what's really happening is fundamentally unscientific" rather than the idea that observation actually physically caused something to happen. Scientific philosophy has moved well past this offshoot of logical positivism. The most popular concept among working scientists is currently that of falsifiability, where science can only meaningfully tackle concepts that can be falsified by observation. This results in the same problem where you talking about what's happening in the box before you open it is fundamentally unscientific. I prefer scientific realism, where the underlying physical description is still accurate even when it isn't observed. We can say that, for instance, science can inform us about the likelihood of there being moons in distant galaxies even though we'll never observe them, because orbital dynamics are real whether we happen to be paying attention or not. Philosophy of science has real consequences in how research is done. If you don't think you can meaningfully talk about what's happening when you aren't looking, it makes it much harder to develop ideas about why you get one observational outcome rather than another. That's why decoherence, a real phenomenon that's important in quantum computing, wasn't developed by someone that was satisfied with "shut up and calculate."
I just want to point out that the quantum immortality experiment for testning MWI does not work in a universe where the observers consciousness returns in the future, for example if time would reverse in the future, or other cyclic or some eternal models.
What do you mean "returns"? Do you mean "continues from the point of death" as if nothing happened? For example if there was a sequence of quantum-level events that would somehow return the macroscopic body to a living condition, with all the memories from just before death restored? That would still work, no? That would be just one more way to ensure "immortality" in face of overwhelming odds.
@@kyjo72682 I mean that the mind "reincarnates". That after a long time, let's say, your brain like it was before is simulated or time resets to the big bang - if that happens in all time lines the experiment will NOT in fact test MWI. This is an implicit Assumption (that the consciousness does not return after some time) in this thought experiment.
@@lokehagberg6077 Oh, I see your point. Even if there is just a single branch with the consciousness popping out again at some point in the future, that would spoil the test. Got it. But I think that would still count as a form of multiverse, just not the quantum MWI one. If your mind reappears at some other point inside the same space-time I think that could be considered as the "level one" multiverse in Max Tegmark's classification.
Change the scenario slightly. The cat is inside the box and there is the same atomic emitter and receiver. But in my box, there is a vile of acid (which would also be broken when the receiver reached the designated count from the emitter) rather than poison. Needles in the box, mounted under the cat across the only space within which it would have to move would ensure that it remained standing while alive. If it were to fall as a product of its death when the acid vile is broken (releasing the acid fumes), it would be skewed by the needles and affect the mechanism holding the acid vile which would cause it to tip over and spill its contents on the floor of the box. When the acid finally eats through the bottom of the box, it is because the cat is deterministically dead. There is no wave function to collapse. The observation is forced by the string of deterministic events ending in the acid dripping to the floor after having eaten through the box. The observation is after the fact not prior as in the original scenario and thus, it cannot be defining of that event in any way or measure. Can anyone resolve this, explain the merits of it or the lack?
Assuming conciousness ceases to exist after death, using many world interpretation I could argue we are all subject to quantum immortality. After all, your existence as a concious observer is a consequence of the existence of your conciousness, by definition. Hence, you cannot observe the timeline where your conciousness ceases to exist, so in your perspective you will always follow one of the realizations of the world where you continue as a concious observer, aka you stay alive.
Did you know the notion of quantum immortality is considered a memetic hazard? Some people feel very disturbed by the idea, to the point the thing the most regret in their lives is learning about quantum immortality.
The philosophical implications of this not being a theoretical thought experiment but actually reality is tragic. As it means everyone would die completely alone, as an observer is a potential immortal compared to everyone else as they become the sole survivor as they observe everyone else die as their existence becomes decoherent from everyone else's, trapped in their own wave function completely alone until they exhaust all possibilities of survival.
A key feature that disproves the many worlds interpretation is the fact that, in this theory, ALL possible outcomes "happens" in a timeline, and if that's true, it makes no sense in saying that "something has X% of chances of happening". Like, suppose that's a 0,1% of chance that a photon emitted by a laser ends in my hand, and 90% of chance it ends in the wall. So, since both outcomes must be true, it's real probability is 100% for both, therefore the many worlds interpretation is incompatible with the % nature of quantum mechanics.
I have my own interpretation of Quantum mechanics. I call it "Логика Взаимоопределения" (Logic of mutual determination). It is based on solipsist-like mechanics. It hard to begin its description but I will try. When I thought about DS experiment when I was a kid I decided that the observation relayes on observer and observation itself which makes it unprovable because they are interconected at the time of interaction. So, every observation is a bit nondeterministic and every machanics has its own mechanics that produces it and that mechanic has its own mechanic and so on. And it ends with the fact that the complexity(in its mechanics) of the observer is limited and it makes a horizon of possibe observations making complete vision of the universe impossible. I was very sad at my 15 yo when I realized that ;D. I just asked myself "What is the space" instead, such a question was less depressing. After some time I said, "well, the space is just an illusion and whole universe is just one fist of matter(particles) and the disstance is just a hidden variable that determines all interactions". It was highly confusing but satisfying answer. And I just made another wild question "What if particles are an illusion too, what is the reality then?" And It was much more confussing question but I just realized that interconnectivity between observer and observation mutual dependence makes perfect sense. So, we can declare that the univesre doesn't exist beyond our vision at all and every particle is a product of some hidden elements and hidden parameters and mechanics, and we will never be able to see them, but becuase all the machanics interconnected and its product is dependent on all participants we will be able to find asymetrical property of our particles statistically and it will show us all subelements our particles made from. This is all too crazy to be spoken aloud. I hope I will make some use of it once I get to University in Russia. So main takeaway from this logic that everything in the universe exists only on acts of mutual determination which we cannot conceive because of limited set of mechanics given to all obervers. Sorry for bad English.
@@stankybaboon3799 imagine net or web of parameters, which form a "space" and every particle in this space is built from some combination of those parameters, with no temporality nor locality built in. Every particle does exist only when hidden parameters "interact" with each other, if there is no interaction particle does not exist. And observer is a part of the system, his complexity is limited. I have to introduce new paradox, which I call "disabled god paradox". If god can influence the system then he is defined by the system and works by means of the system if god is not defined by means of the system he cannot influence the system, it makes him "undetectable". The observer and the particles are living in the same closed systems with some amount of rules and hidden parameters. So if observer can affect the system it affects his observations. His observations allow him to modify his complexity and extend his vision of the system by looking at asymmetical properties of particles. If something is distinguishable it is asymmetrical for the observer in its mechanics, something brings new information or new properties. Also, it is clear that symmetrical particles cannot exist in the system. If particle is perfectly symmetrical it is indistinguishable for the observer because on act of the observation nothing changes for the observer. Which makes more symmetrical particles harder to observe. So in my interpretation the universe consist of infinite amount of particles doing random stuff to each other and ONLY little part of them are visible to the observer because they are asymmetrical relative to his instruments of observations. So, the work of scientist goes from believing to asumming that there exist a chain of particles and subparticles in that web/net of hidden paramters that makes his observations the reality and he has to find statistically most meaningful elements which affect his visible part of the system the most. It is solipsism on crack. Also, if there is two particles which are "mirror" to each other relative to the observer then they are the same particle, it imples that electron and positron must have asymmetrical properties to each other relative to the observer or otherwise it will be the same particle, therefore string theory is destined to fail and all symmetries too. Well, it is hard to describe it in English, maybe when I will print my own Sci-Fi book it will have proper description for whole view. Also, I use this math to describe complexity classes in attempt to solve PvsNP(i'm going to fail though) and will post the math one day to the world that will describe asymmetrical properties on unnatural prime numbers model(alternative sets of prime numbers to countable sets). I definitely cant be shorter ;D
Nerdomania Okay I think I see. Please do tell me how I could find this book or if they’re any books relating to this topic because I’m highly interested in this science but cannot wrap my brain around it as I’m still very young
The problem with determinism is that certain things at the quantum level are not just unknown to us, they are fundamentally, mathematically _unknowable_ even in principle. That's the whole reason the delayed choice quantum eraser does what it does. To me, the most fundamental question in quantum physics is, what _is_ *probability* anyway? There's some mechanism by which the dice are rolled, and we see the result, whether you call it the collapse of the wave function, or the timeline we're on, but nobody really understands what's going on. Sure we can verify our equations by rolling the dice enough times, but what actually determines each individual particle's outcome? Pure randomness. Complete and perfect unpredictability.
There's something I'm a bit unclear about. How does the many world interpretation handle the probabilistic interpretation of the wave function ? I mean, if the world splits into as many equally valid worlds as there are possible observable states, does that mean we just happen to be in the one where all of our experiments fit with the probability density we define with the wave function, and the probabilistic interpretation is actually false ?
That's correct. There is no such thing as probability or randomness in many worlds. You replace probability with "amplitude" which is like the height of an ocean wave, or the loudness of music. So things are not "low probability" but "low amplitude" because all branches exist with certainty, but just with different "intensity" so to speak.
I wonder if we could observe quantum immortality in our world. for example if we exist in an unstable false vacuum that only doesn’t collapse because of our immortality
I guess because of the instability of the system, it is similar in that it’s an improbable fluke that necessitates chance being in favor of the observer.
Its interesting to see the edge of science and how much it delves into a sort of psudo-philosophy and how interpretation can be argued to be important for understanding the wackiness of the world.
I like to play with the concept of free will being just the conciousness choosing what branch of the wave function to go. That is, every posible action that you do, is allowed by the laws of nature given the state you're in, so one part of your wavefunction is going to evolve to the state generated by your action. With that in mind, I like the picture of free will as conciousness moving or, more formally, restricting itself to a certain subspace.
In the case of the multiverse interpretation, I have a question regarding quantum immortality. If such a time line where I live forever exists, would not that timeline violate the principle that entropy in isolated systems always increases? Given enough time, we could consider that we live inside a system that is isolated…
there is a statistical interpretation of entropy that says entropy in an isolated system TEND to increase, even so quantum immortality says if you have a chance of living HIGHER THAN 0% you will survive so as you grow older and the heat death come closer the percentage will be 0% either way there is no violation.
If you think about it quantum immortality isn’t really immortality, because reality would only branch off according to the laws of physics, it’s possible if not probable that in no possible reality can you survive forever.
I think the problem with the quantum immortality argument is that it doesn't take consciousness seriously as some in principle understandable physical phenomenon. It tacitly assumes that consciousness is like a supernatural "juice" that flows through a bunch of "pipes" (the various branches in the wavefunction), and you experience living as long as the juice is still flowing. It'd be more reasonable (and consistent with our knowledge of the brain) to assume that consciousness _emerges_ from a huge number of physical interactions in the brain, most of which have timescales far greater than that necessary for irreversible decoherence to take place. That is, decoherence is way, way, way faster than your awareness, which means you'll be locked in a history in which your death is inevitable long before you take notice of it. If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago. To the extent that it's possible at all to make predictions in many worlds*, the result of the experiment is the same as in standard quantum mechanics: you're dead, Jim. If the crux of the argument were correct, you'd have to conclude that any form of unconsciousness is impossible, including non-dream sleep (because there'd be always a branch of the wavefunction in which you remain conscious). But I know empirically that being asleep is possible -- I sat through those lectures too! -- so I must conclude that either there's only one world or the argument is flawed. * Many-worlds is not, at present, well-developed enough to generate predictions. What we have essentially is a story, told in prose, but no convincing argument that tells us how to actually derive the usual probabilistic predictions from the prose.
Interesting thoughts. But our lack of knowledge about what consciousness really is renders it inadvisable to use it in this way. In Copenhagen, the mind is intrinsically a magical thing that is able to collapse a wavefunction and force a system to look classical. "Magical" just means, here, that the theory provides no qualifications or evidence, but nevertheless pronounces it so. Fans will argue that Copenhagen doesn't single out the mind explicitly, but if you take the theory seriously, it rules everything but magic out. Everett implies a branching mind, but provides no insight into how we should expect to experience branching. Either way, consciousness is so poorly understood that attempting to leverage it - even to the degree of pronouncing it magic as Copenhagen does - will inject countless unknowns into any predictions one might make. They will poison our reasoning using such theories and force us into false dichotomies or apparent paradoxes. You can't write a wavefunction for consciousness. So let's wait for neuroscience to produce a tenable explanation before we bring that mess into physics.
"In Copenhagen, the mind is intrinsically a magical thing that is able to collapse a wavefunction and force a system to look classical." In Copenhagen you are agnostic about anything else. It's really the minimal way to look at the problem: you change your mode of thinking from "modeling the global state of the universe" (as is done in classical physics) to "modeling my own perspective of this physical system". It never says anything magical happens, since it was never legitimate to take the wavefunction as being a physical object anyway as it's impossible to measure. All it says is "upon measurement _you_ may get these results with these probabilities". Even if many-worlds did turn out to be correct, Copenhagen would still be a correct operational recipe for predicting measurement results. As for waiting for further insights from neuroscience, I really don't think we need to: the general argument I laid out would be correct for any _conceivable_ theory explaining the brain's operation. Of course, if you disagree that consciousness is to do with the brain at all (because you believe in a soul or something) I can't convince you, but in that case I think it's likely you already gave up on a scientific explanation anyway. The timescales involved in decoherence are so short that even some molecular processes are well-described by classical physics. The idea that consciousness somehow depends so crucially on these processes that the argument I laid out above would fail is one I find very hard to believe, but if you noticed other holes please let me know.
Quantum immortality is a rather high level abstract argument, it doesn't really need to consider what consciousness really is or tie to anything quantum, except for assuming that it is a completely physical process without anything external or magic to it. The premise is that for any physical process there is a timeline, whatever infinitesimally unlikely, in which this process continues forever (assuming many-worlds). And if you say that your point of reference is this process, your experiences are equal to that process, then yes, from your standpoint as this process you will never experience end. Because you cannot find yourself in any timeline that doesn't have this process. You must always be in one that continues to go on. And there always will be such one forever.
"it doesn't really need to consider what consciousness really is or tie to anything quantum, except for assuming that it is a completely physical process without anything external or magic to it. " But that's precisely the point: if you take the premise seriously, that consciousness is some actual physical process, you have to conclude that the prediction in many worlds (should it be developed enough to generate predictions) can only be the same as in standard quantum mechanics. The argument for immortality requires consciousness to be some magical sauce with special properties, which supervenes on the branching structure of the quantum state rather than emerging from whatever physical processes happen in it.
@@vacuumdiagrams652 I'm not sure I follow. There's nothing magical or special about consciousness. Imagine we're talking about some other process, not consciousness. Like, clock. There's always a timeline that has the clock ticking forever. Or imagine a printer that is printing "I am alive and well". There will always be fluctuations that will spontaneously produce more paper and ink out of thin ether for it to continue printing (or maybe an entire civilization emerges that makes its sole purpose for this printer to continue, i dunno). Or maybe there's a computer that somehow ended up computing you, and everything you experience and are is a computation within it. Arguably this computer will also continue to exist somewhere somehow indefinitely. For the computer itself there exists an instance that is continuous and uninterrupted from the moment of creation till forever. And together with and within it it exist a simulated consciousness which finds itself also continous and uninterrupted.
I love when something I discovered eventually gets a name, Quantum Immortality. This supports my idea that everyone will live to be as old as they could be in the dimensional timeline they are forced to visualize. Because there has to be an observer to observe the survivor branches. I don't know if I believe in a soul yet or what something like that would be called but if there was an alive you and a dead you, a 'soul' would obviously go to the alive you, continuing you. Now the real question is, as we get closer to finding out Immortality in the future, the chances of at least one of yourselfs finding immortality is (according to quantum physics) 100% and since your 'soul' has to be around to observe that, you will be around forever....and yet we don't have a record of that happening to anyone....hmmm. Another trip, I am pretty sure if you could pinpoint all of your near death experiences they would follow the phi pattern and you would be able to predict future branch offs. My newest theory about this also involves a time rewinder or time eraser....ill wait till scientist think of a cooler name, but essentially the dead end branches (the timelines leading to dead yous) gets deleted or taken away somehow.
I always understood it differently. That eventually once your soul or whatever reaches the last version of you that's still alive and then that version dies you disspear into darkness forever. So it's not immortal in that way. It's just called immortal because it technically takes aaaages for you to reach that last version of you, since there are billions upon billions of versions of you.
I'm a many-worlds acceptor. As a young person, I would dodge a dangerous event and experience what I call "echoes" of having not dodged the dangerous event. I would briefly experience my death. These days, all those timelines are gone (because those other selves died!) and so when I survive a dangerous experience it's less likely that I feel these echoes. It still happens, and I do mourn the passing of another me, but it's less common now.
If there's a version of you that lives forever - is you automatically that version of yourself while everybody else around you dies? That could be a plot for a horror movie! :O
There's another way to test many worlds. Assuming that we have a reversible machine intelligence to hand then the experiment consists of the machine making three reversible measurements of the spin of an electron (or polarisation of a photon). (1) First it measures the spin along the z-axis. It records either spin "up" or spin "down" and notes this in its memory. This measurement acts just to prepare the electron in a definite state. (2) Second it measures the spin along the x-axis and records either spin "left" or spin "right" and notes this in its memory. The machine now reverses the entire x-axis measurement - which must be possible, since physics is effectively reversible, if we can describe the measuring process physically - including reversibly erasing its memory of the second measurement. (3) Third the machine takes a spin measurement along the z-axis. Again the machine makes a note of the result. According to the Copenhagen interpretation the original (1) and final (3) z-axis spin measurements have only a 50% chance of agreeing because the intervention of the x-axis measurement by the conscious observer (the machine) caused the collapse of the electron's wavefunction. According to many-worlds the first and third measurements will always agree, because there was no intermediate wavefunction collapse. The machine was split into two states or different worlds, by the second measurement; one where it observed the electron with spin "left"; one where it observed the electron with spin "right". Hence when the machine reversed the second measurement these two worlds merged back together, restoring the original state of the electron 100% of the time. Only by accepting the existence of the other Everett-worlds is this 100% restoration explicable
Well you'd walk up to the cliff, take a look, and decide that it was a bad idea. You could go back and try again, but you'd probably always change your mind last minute. Those timelines are the most common ones where you survive, so you would *have* to take on their perspective.
@@mikelarrivee5115 yes, part of why this experiment has never been done. I said 'most common' because there's always at least *one* timeline where they would go through with it and be privy to whatever happens.
There's one thing that feels weird to me about multiple timelines: If that's the case there could be a timeline where all particles of all double slit experiments that are being made land on the left side of the screen, or even on the same spot. Or even weirder: They land on all possible places where the interference pattern and the two bars pattern overlap. Or they start forming words. Or... And scientists wonder why on earth that happens. Imagine people always rolling a 4. No matter how many times they roll a dice.
Schrödinger developed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment and specifically used matter that is not on the scale of electrons in the experiment to demonstrate a point that physical matter, regardless of its size, exists in a physical form, regardless of whether or not someone is observing it. Math is just a model and you need to interpret the results of mathematical results in accordance with the physical laws of the universe in which we exist. There is only one 4-dimensional spacetime, in which matter exists, some matter is as small as an electron and some as large as a planet, but if it’s matter, it’s matter, be it a solid, liquid, or gas. Matter can be measured in all 4 physical dimensions (length, width, height, and the period of time during which it exists), whether it’s a cat or an electron). Matter does not exist in two forms simultaneously and then collapse into one form or the other whenever someone observes it, regardless of what the results of mathematical models lead some people to believe. The superposition theory is not a good scientific theory because there is no physical evidence to prove that it’s a good explanation for what it explains. If any matter exists in two forms simultaneously, then you would be able to take a photo of it in both states simultaneously, but that’s impossible to do and has never been done, not because it collapses into one state or the other whenever there is a conscious observer observing it, but because matter exists in only one state, regardless of what mathematical models lead some people to believe. We all know that cats do not exist in two forms simultaneously whenever nobody is watching them and Schrödinger used a cat in his experiment to demonstrate the fact that neither do subatomic particles, regardless of their size. No cats were harmed in his thought experiment, which occurs in one’s imagination, where physical matter does not exist.
*Watching TH-cam clips about Quantum Immortality* Me: this is probably true, I mean: this guy wouldn't make this up would he? Matt: "Quoting Tyler Durden" Me: "Wait a minute?! That's not right, is it?!" Me: *Googleing*. Google: "Narrator: On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." Me: "....."
Isnt chance of surviving this quantum immortality experiment in copenhagen interpretation exactly as unprobable as living in branch (in many worlds) where you do survive?
I see the time-honored tradition of using Schrodinger's example to make the opposite point he was making is still around. His point was that it was ridiculous - the cat is in fact 100% dead or alive at any given moment. You looking at it as it happens or not changes nothing.
5:21 please can someone explain this to me :/ I don't see why his survival chance is higher under the Many Worlds interpretation. In Many Worlds, aren't you locked on a specific branch at random? So if you crawl out alive, you could say "wow the decoherence ended in the one way that didn't activate the posion!" (Copenhagen) just as easily as you could say "wow I'm on the lucky one-in-a-million branch where the poison didn't activate!" (Many worlds). Unless Quantum Immortality proposes that your consciousness constantly hops to neighbouring branches to avoid death. Which seems rather ridiculous to me.
TheRABIDdude Yeah, it makes it not just a “useless” experiment, but not even an experiment at all, as it cannot differentiate between our 2 options at all. It doesn’t resolve the issue of not having access to other worlds
The idea is that the universe splits into one branch where you're alive and one in which you're dead, so your consciousness effectively splits too, but the version where you're dead doesn't continue. 100% of the time, you'll perceive yourself as having survived quantum suicide attempts because people don't continue to have experiences after they die. For anyone else in the world, your odds of survival are the same for Copenhagen vs. MWI, but your own continuity of experiences will always persist in MWI whereas it will almost certainly cease under other interpretations.
@@zero132132 No that's still incorrect. You don't experience the consciousness of other copies of yourself in different states of the multiverse wavefunction. The probability you die is always the same. In the many worlds interpretation, your prior probability of surviving the experiment is identical to that of the Copenhagen interpretation
@@joshyman221 No. The point of MWI is that the wave function doesn't actually collapse. You aren't sitting in a universe parallel to a number of identical universes where you're doing the same exact thing until the next quantum observation is made. You're currently in one single state, but when you enter superposition, it's effectively like you've branched off into a state that can never again interact with the other branch. Only one scientist in one state gets in the box for the quantum suicide experiment, but that one state branches into two states every time there's a 50% chance that one atom has decayed and triggered the poison. With 100 atoms at their half life, that's 2^100 different branches. Only one has an unpoisoned scientist, but there's no discontinuity of consciousness from before stepping into the box vs. after, just 2^100-1 dead scientists and 1 alive one. In MWI, since all these possibilities are physically real, the scientist getting into the box had a 100% chance of surviving since it's a single scientist in a single state getting into the box. The 2^100-1 branches with a dead scientist and the 1 with an alive scientist split off from the same single timeline.
@@zero132132 I'm not convinced. When the given time has elapsed there is a superposition of 2^100 states in the universal wavefunction. In 2^100-1 of these states, the atom has decayed. When you interact with this system, you end up in one of these eigenstates of the universal wavefunction. 2^100-1 eigenstates have you dead, 1 doesn't. There is a 100% chance that in the picture of the universal wavefunction you survive, but there is only a 2^(-100) chance that you end up in the eigenstate that allows this survival.
I've got nothing to say in this time line about not winning my choice of merch, however, I do want to say that the graphics of this weeks episode were on point. Whomever was responsible has a promising career in all timelines although the likelihood of Matt demonstrating these points using markers and a whiteboard is in at least one timeline. PS: Condolences to the collective spouses of the professor. Except where he's single or alive. Or single and alive.
Quantum immortality is the main driving plot in Terry Pratchett's first novel "The Dark Side of the Sun" where "p-math" (probability math) works by calculating which branch of the wave function you're on.
I hope the MCU recognizes the obvious that Deadpool is the result of an explicit quantum immortality experiment in an environment tuned to facilitate quantum fluctuations in genetic adaptations. The experiment isolated his biological system capable of rapid self-generation. Some of the mechanisms are similar to how salamanders can regenerate limbs and how healthy cells can turn into sophisticated cancerous tissues. While Deadpool was in Shrödingers box, he also met multiverse supervisors/writers from the 5th-dimension, which is why he is constantly breaking the 4th wall.
The challenge is wrong first you assume correctly that we are not special and should consider our self as normal statistically yet then you ask us to consider our self special and take our place in the universe as the only sample when aplying these statistics lets say a man in ancient rome did the same experiment what would his results be? Or even better lets say we reach close to the number the theory suggest as a cap and someone does the same experiment what will his results be? Will there be anywhere at anytime someone that does this experiment and gets as a result that he is close to the end? No the number of humans that are going to live is always going to increase yet are we to assume that we are the ones special enough that live truly in the midle?
Tyler's statement requires that every possibility that could kill you happens. It's no different a statement than "there is a universe where you live forever." The "long enough timescale" implies all infinite possibilities happening just like the multiverse.
Love this channel. Not to get off subject but on this timeline and in my reality, I've been long fascinated in the paranormal and am more or less convinced that if for example while crossing a road you are hit by a car and killed, things then flip over where that same car just misses you. Whether I was killed elsewhere or not, I don't know, but what did happen was so strange, as before crossing there wasn't a car in sight, and yet halfway across, one suddenly appeared from no where. As in all life or death situations everything becomes slow motion, I literally breathed in and pulled in my stomach allowing me a few cm's of extra space within which the car passed. My wife passed away suddenly a few years ago, and yet I'm sure that elsewhere she didn't, and that our life there is continuing as normal.
How is the physicist crawling out of the box "good evidence" of many worlds and not just a declaration of "hey, mathematical probability is a thing and you got lucky."
It's not evidence at all. Many worlds or not, the experiment is the same. There's always an incredibly low chance of survival, be that through simple probability or being in the right branch of the quantum multiverse. These are just two different ways of looking at the same thing. I still think the many worlds interpretation is good as just that, an _interpretation_ of quantum mechanics, not a theory that makes new predictions. Until it makes some prediction that no other interpretation does, it's just some way of thinking about reality. Kind of like you can write a _3_ as _1+1+1_ or _9/3_ etc. You express the same thing but in a different way.
LordKekz a rational observer who repeatedly finds themselves on the “survival” side of the odds will favor a many worlds interpretation as an accurate description of what reality is, it would be absurd for the subject to say “Yeah I just got lucky, it was a possible outcome but it says nothing except that there was a chance in the first place that I live”
@@pgibsonorg In that situation, he did get lucky. Without Many worlds, he'd say: "I got really lucky that the atoms didn't decay." With Many worlds, he'd say: "I got really lucky that I ended up on the branch of the quantum multiverse in which the atoms didn't decay." *Edit:* no idea what I was thinking but since there's no way he'd experience anything but survival he of course doesn't say that with many worlds.
It does make you think that if we find examples of *anything* which is absurdly improbable (and by that I mean almost Infinite Improbability Drive levels) in this spacetime, it’s gone a long way towards providing proof that we might be part of a Multiverse?
I just assume every action movie is set in a multiverse where the hero is enjoying quantum immortality, for the sake of the story.
Thanks for this comment, very good head canon explaination for plot armor
.
Me too! Glad I'm not the only one who has been using this kind of head canon for ridiculously unlikely happenings in stories lol
I think about this while playing video games. Every time my character dies and I reload their life goes on in another branch.
Man, it is as easy as that.
Matt, please be real. No serious scientist would ever perform your variant of Schroedinger's cat by climbing himself into the box. That would truly be wacky, and only a "mad scientist" would even consider something insane like that.
Every real scientist will instead kindly ask one of his PhD students to step into the box as part of his PhD research, and if necessary repeat this experiment again and again, until one finally survives, or the grant runs out.
P
P
"no scientist would climb in a death box"
...Pickle Rick would
Well only you would know it’s real so only if you tested all of humanity basically Cold War lmao but yeah no point in trying this unless your like 106 yrs old or something
What if you’re suicidal
I can feel my wave function infinitely branching every time we are promised a topic that “deserves it’s own episode”.
Lmao
Probably he uses quantum number generators to choose the topic, in which case they are split in different branches.
There is a branch where in every double slit experiment ever made, the particles always went through the right side slit.
My mind cannot comprehend
Think of how shocked they will be when they try it just one more time and watch as all their theories about the quantum world crumble before their very eyes.
Lucas Clemente Vella I think you just disproved the Everitt interpretation.
@@firebladetenn6633 that's not disproof, just shows how reality might be surprising
Or some branch in which every double slit experiment generated a statistically non-trivial pattern which would be interpreted as a message from God.
There must be a universe where this all makes sense to me.
There ya go, you're getting it. :D
Or imagine in that branch, the entire universe made sense to you. Out of boredom, you tried to imagine a universe where things did not!
😆Good one. I feel the same way.
😂
😅🤣🤗🫂💯🙇🏽♂️🤪🤤
“Live as though this is your one quantum time line.” I smell t-shirt.
7:20 “live as though this is your one quantum timeline”
- that was the inspiration I needed and my new motto from now on
- in this quantum timeline anyway.
"Delayed choice experiment is absolutely not as mystical as it seems!" Don't forget to make that episode!
I'm hoping this episode comes really soon!
Didn't they already do it?
@@kapsi there wasn't an episodes about that, but Matt said that it is not that mistical and could do an other video about it. It needs to be demystified!
Isn't this the episode. th-cam.com/video/8ORLN_KwAgs/w-d-xo.html
This experiment should be called Revenge of the Schroedinger's Cat
LOL, I just had an image of the cat turning on it's lightsaber and hacking it's way out the box!
I like cats. I also like physicists - except when they put the cat into the box. I want to live in the universe where they both survive. Call me an optimist.
Thanks for the idea bro, i'm going to write a script with this title
I am so happy I managed to get the challenge question his right, in a different quantum timeline...
You forgot the best corollary to the "Science isn't Magic" principle:. "Any science distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Magic is in the eye of the beholder.
@@Megalomaniakaal Don't forget the Eye of Vecna, too.
Arthur C. Clark just had another stroke
rofl Idiocracy here we come!! (because c'mon, which reality is most likely for the vast majority of the populous? It's hard to keep up with tech _now!)_
Isn't it magic things exist which shouldn't have..
You, a simpleton: YOLO!
Me, an intelectual: Live as though this is your one quantum timeline.
lattiyoqt!
Intelectual.... 1000 iq..
Me, an existentialist : Life makes no sense, enjoy it while it last !
@@tomf3150 Me, a smart aleck: Whether life makes sense or not, depends solely on your definition of "sense".
Me, not an intelectual or intellectual: It is your one quantum timeline. Other versions of you are not you.
It appears to be a multi-phasic temporal convergence in the space-time continuum.
Just fire some tachyon particles at it.
@@TheMarcQ That would initiate a transwarp feedback and damage the shield matrix.
Yours Truly Uhh... fire proton torpedos?
:O
That's exactly what I thought. A multi-phasic temporal convergence, I thought, in the space-time continuum.
Awe, this one just made me feel so much better about all the times i've fallen asleep to PBS Space time.
Having had a few near death experiences myself this is a topic that I find extremely interesting. Very informative video. Good job!
Excellent episode. The thing I've always taken away from the quantum immortality idea is that, while the Schrodinger's Box experiment is a great way of illustrating the point, as you said in the episode, life is a series of quantum steps. So actually, box or not, all of us will have an infinite amount of branches where we experience immortality. The philosopher in me thinks, if you take this theory as correct, isn't it akin to saying that we will all experience immortality in our life/world line of consciousness? After all, so far in life I have never experienced my own death, and I've never met another person who has experienced theirs, either!
Dannggg Matt was killing it with the jokes today lmao
Anytime I'm feeling down for failing an exam or losing a video game, I can now rest assured that a version of me in another quantum timeline has been a great success. Even if the likelihood is only 1x10^50.
I thought of this idea all on my own, but was upset when I went on the internet to find people already thought about it before me.
The same thing happened to me when I found about the giant space mirror weapon.
Same lol
So reality according to the many worlds theory is a 'pick your own adventure' book
I wish! I would not have picked this particular branch.
It's all fun and games until you are forced to suffocate in space until the heat death of the universe.
Your actions dictates your future.
zemorph42: How d'ya think I feel? I picked out my preferred branch ahead of time, and I stuck with that branch, but reality objected, rebelled, and now I'm stuck in a doldrumous rut of not doing what I planned, with no way out, and no end in sight.
I looked at the last few pages and worked backwards.
"I'm not killing *all* the humans," said Skynet, "just all of them except you. Check the math! This way humanity has the greatest statistical chance of living as long as possible -- precisely as you asked."
"Each person will still be alive in one timeline, so it's not like anyone actually dies."
LOL. A great way of pointing out the fundamental flaw of the Doomday argument as the whole Doomsday argument is based on some sort of correlation there is the major flaw of it. Doomsday is arguing the winner of a game seven of the World Series would win Presidency which was true 8 times in a row until last election it was wrong. Without a cause any type of Doomsday argument totally flawed.
@@ProxyAuthenticationRequired too damn real man...
Yeah but one person doesn't have the ability to reproduce. So letting one live is useless
And John Connor turns out to be Quantum Immortal in their branch of the multiverse. Explaining how a superhuman AI can't kill him no matter how much they try.
"If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever"
God please don't let me be that version
Even worse, there are infinitely many versions of you who live forever!
If it's real then every person in the world is immortal from their point of view, but others aren't. In some of the branches you already died, but your consciousness "chooses" only the branches that allow it to exist. That's because in branches where you died, consciousness stops existing, so if at least one branch that allows it to continue exists, there will be a version of you that continued to exist against all odds, yet from their point of view nothing unusual happened. Other people can die because there would be many more branches with only you immortal than branches with you and someone else immortal (and with more people it would keep getting less probable to be in that branch).
I think the real question is, if I jumped from a window, is there a branch where I would start flying?
@@kapsi i was looking for this
kapsi might be late.. but why wouldn’t you think someone would stop u before u jumped?
@@jeesejames5916 or a truck full of pillows awaits you at the bottom at the perfect moment
Ahh! That explains why I'm still about! I think I am either 837 or 838 years old (records weren't too good back then).
xD
Does Quantum Immortality Save Schrödinger's Cat?
Well... yes and no.
:D
.
It depends
@@algomi9280 Stop observing it! You'll influence the outcome!
Well it's rather:
Yes and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and No and ....
@@frankschneider6156
To clarify:
yes, but no, but actually yes, but, really, no. Or does it? *vsause music*
I've had the Quantum Immortality Theory in my head for a while now. I'm glad to see someone else try to explain it. For a few years I've been telling people they are immortal and that at the moment of death in one branch of time the conscious continuity of the mind continues on in the live branch. I also theorize that eventually the world will reach a technological singularity and at some point branches will be merged and others who have died in our survival timeline will have their continuous consciousnesses reintegrated into the singularity.
That sounds like a religion waiting to happen. (Not meaning to be offensive by saying this. But you do see the parallels, right?)
That is deep, but I believe in something similar, we exist in multiple universes at the same time, I don't know how consciousness comes to play in it, maybe we quantum leap but it's there
I don't believe there is a better version of this episode in any other quantum timeline.
"Not all observers agree on experimental outcomes - it's just you never meet the ones who don't agree with you."
That has some very scary implications that I'm not really vibing with.
sounds almost political, in a bubble universe sort of way.
@@captainastral What's political about it? For example if you're sitting and watching someone run , the person who is running will experience time slower. That means for your body one second would pass but for him one second would not pass. You would then disagree with him and thus we would not know whether one second has passed or not. Hence the world you perceive it as it is , is not real for everyone out there. The only thing all of us can agree upon is spacetime interval or spacetime.
@@achyuththouta6957 You have perhaps heard certain online forums and news outlets referred to as echo chambers, and it is said that those who get all of their "information" from a single source or tightly confined cluster of sources are "in a bubble". So when deathscreton said "it's just that you never meet the ones who don't agree with you" and then followed it up with "that has some very scary implications", I saw a parallel. So, the original statement of quantum reality is as you point out, not a political assertion; but the particular formulation above was suggestive of a similarity, which I playfully pointed out.
Is this more creepy or less creepy than, e.g. superdeterminism, though?
Imagine a branch where you did meet all of them! In their eyes, you would have been the oddball who always disagreed!
if the minimum unit is a planck, then every 1 plank of time there would be a reality born for every quantum variation? They should've called it the way-too-damn-many worlds theory
Good argument, but also consider that the minimum unit is a Plank because it is the scale at which the quantum uncertainties exceed the scale of the universe.
If you excuse my pedantry...
"A Planck of X" does not mean the minimum unit of X. The Planck units are simply the units derived from fundamental constants.
It so happens that a Planck length is theorized to be the minimum meaningful length. And a Planck time is theorized to be the minimum meaningful duration.
While that seems to be a commonality among Planck units, it is worth noting that a Planck temperature is theorized to be the maximum (not the minimum) temperature possible. Furthermore, if you go into derived units you can find other theoretical maximum units, such as the Planck speed, which is the speed of l̶i̶g̶h̶t massless particles.
The branches are created when the particles colapses. No planck time.
@@Theraot Planck temperature is only maximum temperature because it is the *minimum* wavelength of EM radiation
@@supermariotosh when the wave function collapses
I wonder if when we die, we load a savestate to before we experienced it?
PROVE ME WRONG.
Actually, please don't take that the wrong way.
So many other comments are amusing here and worth a smile, but yours literally got an LOL out of me. Cheers!
Schrodinger’s Comment: A comment that is unknown to be first until it is observed.
Colonel Graff but yes your right as the internet is made of particles that can change so you might be right
In software development there is something called an Heisenbug, which is a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it.
I have also often observed its close relative, the Shrodingbug, which is a bug that had been there for ages and only after being observed the first time starts happening to everybody all the time.
Haha
To find : is to make found. Hence create .
Not created ..but create.
Such is numbers. 1 exists before we call it " one".
I Rr i: Lemme get a hit offa that pipe yer smokin'.
Years ago I came up with the idea that quantum decisions split the universe into infinitely many where everything is possible. There must be a timeline where you live to be the maximum possible age of a human and consciousness can transcend these realities and you always end up in one you are alive in. You will survive everything but there will be many universes where you don't survive. Schrodingers cat always survives from it's point of view.
I always think I'm the only one to have thought about stuff sometimes but obviously not.
Always had thoughts about it! Guess we'll never know unless we end up becoming the worlds oldest person hahah!
I feel similar.
I had some months ago the idea about a thought-experiment where I go into the box myself, and then repeat it 10000 times :)
Yo I was 15 and I had this thought
Is it then bad that I put the whole Spacetime playlist on shuffle when I go to sleep. I usually get through two episodes before I'm actually out.
I think it supports the closing remark :)
@@photinodecay funny thing is I actually found myself understanding it after the tenth listen when I first started here before Matt took over. Now I find myself jumping ahead of Matt in the middle of watching the new episodes, which I'm always awake to watch.
get a actual book tho rewatching doesnt teach you much :p
Sameeeee learning then sleepin
@@Ariana-dn4mm well, i rewatch most things I don't fully understand 2 or 3 times, this does atleast 2 things for me: 1: I pick up things i missed (adds pieces to my incomplete puzzle) And 2: it highlights what I can't comprehend (gives me a clue on what I need to study up on) So rewatcing can teach you much :)
As a programmer, the more I learn about how the quantum world works, the more I think that we're just a simulation built using a form of functional reactive programming.
As a programmer also, I can see where the "proof" comes from; especially when the universe makes local copies and back ups. Though, odds are leaning towards us either being a top level universe, or in the first few generations of the simulation. Veritasium has a good video on this.
Maybe we are just discovering the world, and applying our current biased knowledge. What is a simulation but a creation? Congrats, you've discovered God, whatever it might be.
5:00 this is the plot of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
999
Also a science fiction short story by Robert Charles Wilson called, "Divided by Infinity."
Also a 1994 novel by Greg Egan "Permutation City" speculates on this and much further. But seems nobody knows it...
@@KolasName does it have anime girls?
I didn't think so
@@OpreanMircea You think correct! Bummer...
Holy crap, your answer to “does quantum mechanics influence consciousness”, I’m dying 🤣🤣🤣
His deadpan delivery always makes the punchlines that much better 😂
Lmao I was daydreaming near the end of the video but even half understanding the end made me chuckle :DD
Scientists: did you die?
Schrodinger's cat: sadly yes ... *but i lived!*
Maybe
If you would have to guess the current state of the cat, but you are only given the choices of dead or alive, then you would have to choose alive.
Explanation: the cat can still die now, but it cannot revive.
Did I misunderstand anything, or is this assumption perfectly fine?
"Live as though this is your one quantum timeline" Wise words....
I'll stick with classical immortality, thank you.
Yhea i take death over immortality
I think being in limbo is fine
But what about near light speeds? You are gonna need some relative immortality.
I just had a thought about the cat experiment. There's a flaw...since the cat observes himself the wave function is already collapsed.
It was a thought experiment to point out a shortcoming in Copenhagen. The point Schrodinger was aiming for was that the idea of a cat in superposition of alive and dead clearly can't be right, so wave function collapse can't simply be an outcome of observation. Copenhagen grew out of a philosophical notion that you can't even meaningfully discuss something that you haven't observed. From that perspective, it doesn't matter if there's a person in the box, because YOU can't meaningfully discuss what's happened until it's been opened. They were trying to apply the "science is only about observations" philosophy to QM and the result was an incoherent mess that implied that scientific observation actually caused a physical process. The point of the thought experiment was that this incoherent mess can't actually describe what is really, physically happening in the box. The actual response was basically "talking about what's really happening is fundamentally unscientific" rather than the idea that observation actually physically caused something to happen.
Scientific philosophy has moved well past this offshoot of logical positivism. The most popular concept among working scientists is currently that of falsifiability, where science can only meaningfully tackle concepts that can be falsified by observation. This results in the same problem where you talking about what's happening in the box before you open it is fundamentally unscientific. I prefer scientific realism, where the underlying physical description is still accurate even when it isn't observed. We can say that, for instance, science can inform us about the likelihood of there being moons in distant galaxies even though we'll never observe them, because orbital dynamics are real whether we happen to be paying attention or not.
Philosophy of science has real consequences in how research is done. If you don't think you can meaningfully talk about what's happening when you aren't looking, it makes it much harder to develop ideas about why you get one observational outcome rather than another. That's why decoherence, a real phenomenon that's important in quantum computing, wasn't developed by someone that was satisfied with "shut up and calculate."
@@zero132132 it was just a joke...
@@mhoover Joke or not, it's a good objection if wave function collapse is caused by observation.
The Space Time Nerd Salute: Two slightly spaced fingers over the right eye
Space Time Salute!
I've been watching since 2015, thanks for such a great series and community. I love you Matt and the Spacetime family.
"You're already testing many worlds, just by existing." -- Christ, it's like visiting my Mother.
This is great. At the around the 7 min. mark he explains the physics of modern insurance actuary tables.
I just want to point out that the quantum immortality experiment for testning MWI does not work in a universe where the observers consciousness returns in the future, for example if time would reverse in the future, or other cyclic or some eternal models.
What do you mean "returns"? Do you mean "continues from the point of death" as if nothing happened? For example if there was a sequence of quantum-level events that would somehow return the macroscopic body to a living condition, with all the memories from just before death restored? That would still work, no? That would be just one more way to ensure "immortality" in face of overwhelming odds.
@@kyjo72682 I mean that the mind "reincarnates". That after a long time, let's say, your brain like it was before is simulated or time resets to the big bang - if that happens in all time lines the experiment will NOT in fact test MWI. This is an implicit Assumption (that the consciousness does not return after some time) in this thought experiment.
@@lokehagberg6077 Oh, I see your point. Even if there is just a single branch with the consciousness popping out again at some point in the future, that would spoil the test. Got it.
But I think that would still count as a form of multiverse, just not the quantum MWI one. If your mind reappears at some other point inside the same space-time I think that could be considered as the "level one" multiverse in Max Tegmark's classification.
The seamless hole 🕳
How would the consciousness in question know what body it's attached to? The metaphysics behind this thought experiment is seriously weird.
The quantum immortality test is both brilliant and insane. Excellent
Last time I was this early, the cat had/hadn’t died yet
Last time I was this early, I wasn't this early.
Hahaha Chucklechuckle i still like my idea
What if the rabbit died? lol.
True/False.
Change the scenario slightly. The
cat is inside the box and there is the same atomic emitter and receiver. But in
my box, there is a vile of acid (which
would also be broken when the receiver reached the designated count from the
emitter) rather than poison. Needles in the box, mounted under the cat
across the only space within which it would have to move would ensure that it
remained standing while alive. If it were to fall as a product of its death
when the acid vile is broken (releasing
the acid fumes), it would be skewed by the needles and affect the mechanism
holding the acid vile which would cause it to tip over and spill its contents
on the floor of the box.
When the acid finally eats
through the bottom of the box, it is because the cat is deterministically dead.
There is no wave function to collapse. The observation is forced by the string
of deterministic events ending in the acid dripping to the floor after having
eaten through the box. The observation is after the fact not prior as in the
original scenario and thus, it cannot be defining of that event in any way or
measure. Can anyone resolve this, explain the merits of it or the lack?
The first rule of Cat Club, is don't talk about Cat Club!
*don't observe cat club
His name is Robert Paulson.
@@yourstruly4817 in at least one quantum timeline, that was actually the name of Schrodinger's cat 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Assuming conciousness ceases to exist after death, using many world interpretation I could argue we are all subject to quantum immortality. After all, your existence as a concious observer is a consequence of the existence of your conciousness, by definition. Hence, you cannot observe the timeline where your conciousness ceases to exist, so in your perspective you will always follow one of the realizations of the world where you continue as a concious observer, aka you stay alive.
Did you know the notion of quantum immortality is considered a memetic hazard? Some people feel very disturbed by the idea, to the point the thing the most regret in their lives is learning about quantum immortality.
The philosophical implications of this not being a theoretical thought experiment but actually reality is tragic. As it means everyone would die completely alone, as an observer is a potential immortal compared to everyone else as they become the sole survivor as they observe everyone else die as their existence becomes decoherent from everyone else's, trapped in their own wave function completely alone until they exhaust all possibilities of survival.
The Doomsday argument makes a great case for eugenics, apparently.
A key feature that disproves the many worlds interpretation is the fact that, in this theory, ALL possible outcomes "happens" in a timeline, and if that's true, it makes no sense in saying that "something has X% of chances of happening". Like, suppose that's a 0,1% of chance that a photon emitted by a laser ends in my hand, and 90% of chance it ends in the wall. So, since both outcomes must be true, it's real probability is 100% for both, therefore the many worlds interpretation is incompatible with the % nature of quantum mechanics.
Do you even know what a probability density is?
I have my own interpretation of Quantum mechanics. I call it "Логика Взаимоопределения" (Logic of mutual determination). It is based on solipsist-like mechanics. It hard to begin its description but I will try. When I thought about DS experiment when I was a kid I decided that the observation relayes on observer and observation itself which makes it unprovable because they are interconected at the time of interaction. So, every observation is a bit nondeterministic and every machanics has its own mechanics that produces it and that mechanic has its own mechanic and so on. And it ends with the fact that the complexity(in its mechanics) of the observer is limited and it makes a horizon of possibe observations making complete vision of the universe impossible. I was very sad at my 15 yo when I realized that ;D. I just asked myself "What is the space" instead, such a question was less depressing. After some time I said, "well, the space is just an illusion and whole universe is just one fist of matter(particles) and the disstance is just a hidden variable that determines all interactions". It was highly confusing but satisfying answer. And I just made another wild question "What if particles are an illusion too, what is the reality then?" And It was much more confussing question but I just realized that interconnectivity between observer and observation mutual dependence makes perfect sense. So, we can declare that the univesre doesn't exist beyond our vision at all and every particle is a product of some hidden elements and hidden parameters and mechanics, and we will never be able to see them, but becuase all the machanics interconnected and its product is dependent on all participants we will be able to find asymetrical property of our particles statistically and it will show us all subelements our particles made from. This is all too crazy to be spoken aloud. I hope I will make some use of it once I get to University in Russia. So main takeaway from this logic that everything in the universe exists only on acts of mutual determination which we cannot conceive because of limited set of mechanics given to all obervers. Sorry for bad English.
Nerdomania it’s okay, can you tell me what you’re talking about? It’s hard to understand when it’s that long
@@stankybaboon3799 imagine net or web of parameters, which form a "space" and every particle in this space is built from some combination of those parameters, with no temporality nor locality built in. Every particle does exist only when hidden parameters "interact" with each other, if there is no interaction particle does not exist. And observer is a part of the system, his complexity is limited. I have to introduce new paradox, which I call "disabled god paradox". If god can influence the system then he is defined by the system and works by means of the system if god is not defined by means of the system he cannot influence the system, it makes him "undetectable". The observer and the particles are living in the same closed systems with some amount of rules and hidden parameters. So if observer can affect the system it affects his observations. His observations allow him to modify his complexity and extend his vision of the system by looking at asymmetical properties of particles. If something is distinguishable it is asymmetrical for the observer in its mechanics, something brings new information or new properties. Also, it is clear that symmetrical particles cannot exist in the system. If particle is perfectly symmetrical it is indistinguishable for the observer because on act of the observation nothing changes for the observer. Which makes more symmetrical particles harder to observe. So in my interpretation the universe consist of infinite amount of particles doing random stuff to each other and ONLY little part of them are visible to the observer because they are asymmetrical relative to his instruments of observations. So, the work of scientist goes from believing to asumming that there exist a chain of particles and subparticles in that web/net of hidden paramters that makes his observations the reality and he has to find statistically most meaningful elements which affect his visible part of the system the most. It is solipsism on crack. Also, if there is two particles which are "mirror" to each other relative to the observer then they are the same particle, it imples that electron and positron must have asymmetrical properties to each other relative to the observer or otherwise it will be the same particle, therefore string theory is destined to fail and all symmetries too. Well, it is hard to describe it in English, maybe when I will print my own Sci-Fi book it will have proper description for whole view. Also, I use this math to describe complexity classes in attempt to solve PvsNP(i'm going to fail though) and will post the math one day to the world that will describe asymmetrical properties on unnatural prime numbers model(alternative sets of prime numbers to countable sets). I definitely cant be shorter ;D
Nerdomania Okay I think I see. Please do tell me how I could find this book or if they’re any books relating to this topic because I’m highly interested in this science but cannot wrap my brain around it as I’m still very young
The problem with determinism is that certain things at the quantum level are not just unknown to us, they are fundamentally, mathematically _unknowable_ even in principle. That's the whole reason the delayed choice quantum eraser does what it does. To me, the most fundamental question in quantum physics is, what _is_ *probability* anyway? There's some mechanism by which the dice are rolled, and we see the result, whether you call it the collapse of the wave function, or the timeline we're on, but nobody really understands what's going on. Sure we can verify our equations by rolling the dice enough times, but what actually determines each individual particle's outcome? Pure randomness. Complete and perfect unpredictability.
@@DFPercush some hidden parameters with eehh hard to explain without maths
10:22 I can't unsee his hair being shifted with the jump cut.
I've been close to dying so many times I figure it's quantum immortality, clean living, or sheer good fortune.
Now my entire night is being resumed in holding 2 fingers in front of my eye and looking towards various lamps
There's something I'm a bit unclear about. How does the many world interpretation handle the probabilistic interpretation of the wave function ? I mean, if the world splits into as many equally valid worlds as there are possible observable states, does that mean we just happen to be in the one where all of our experiments fit with the probability density we define with the wave function, and the probabilistic interpretation is actually false ?
That's correct. There is no such thing as probability or randomness in many worlds. You replace probability with "amplitude" which is like the height of an ocean wave, or the loudness of music. So things are not "low probability" but "low amplitude" because all branches exist with certainty, but just with different "intensity" so to speak.
Among other things, thank you for the legible subtitles.
I wonder if we could observe quantum immortality in our world. for example if we exist in an unstable false vacuum that only doesn’t collapse because of our immortality
Anthony Ward That would kind of be like a cosmic version of the Quantum Zeno Effect.
Isn’t that basically a boltzmann brain?
pgibsonorg I don’t see the relation
I guess because of the instability of the system, it is similar in that it’s an improbable fluke that necessitates chance being in favor of the observer.
Its interesting to see the edge of science and how much it delves into a sort of psudo-philosophy and how interpretation can be argued to be important for understanding the wackiness of the world.
"activate Quantum Immortality"
disclose the partnership
He bought?
Dump it!
POMP EET
Only Sminem can help us now.
I like to play with the concept of free will being just the conciousness choosing what branch of the wave function to go. That is, every posible action that you do, is allowed by the laws of nature given the state you're in, so one part of your wavefunction is going to evolve to the state generated by your action. With that in mind, I like the picture of free will as conciousness moving or, more formally, restricting itself to a certain subspace.
In the case of the multiverse interpretation, I have a question regarding quantum immortality. If such a time line where I live forever exists, would not that timeline violate the principle that entropy in isolated systems always increases? Given enough time, we could consider that we live inside a system that is isolated…
there is a statistical interpretation of entropy that says entropy in an isolated system TEND to increase, even so quantum immortality says if you have a chance of living HIGHER THAN 0% you will survive so as you grow older and the heat death come closer the percentage will be 0%
either way there is no violation.
If you think about it quantum immortality isn’t really immortality, because reality would only branch off according to the laws of physics, it’s possible if not probable that in no possible reality can you survive forever.
I’ve been talking about this concept endlessly for the last 10 years thank the many worlds it’s starting to become more mainstream
I think the problem with the quantum immortality argument is that it doesn't take consciousness seriously as some in principle understandable physical phenomenon. It tacitly assumes that consciousness is like a supernatural "juice" that flows through a bunch of "pipes" (the various branches in the wavefunction), and you experience living as long as the juice is still flowing. It'd be more reasonable (and consistent with our knowledge of the brain) to assume that consciousness _emerges_ from a huge number of physical interactions in the brain, most of which have timescales far greater than that necessary for irreversible decoherence to take place.
That is, decoherence is way, way, way faster than your awareness, which means you'll be locked in a history in which your death is inevitable long before you take notice of it. If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago. To the extent that it's possible at all to make predictions in many worlds*, the result of the experiment is the same as in standard quantum mechanics: you're dead, Jim.
If the crux of the argument were correct, you'd have to conclude that any form of unconsciousness is impossible, including non-dream sleep (because there'd be always a branch of the wavefunction in which you remain conscious). But I know empirically that being asleep is possible -- I sat through those lectures too! -- so I must conclude that either there's only one world or the argument is flawed.
* Many-worlds is not, at present, well-developed enough to generate predictions. What we have essentially is a story, told in prose, but no convincing argument that tells us how to actually derive the usual probabilistic predictions from the prose.
Interesting thoughts. But our lack of knowledge about what consciousness really is renders it inadvisable to use it in this way. In Copenhagen, the mind is intrinsically a magical thing that is able to collapse a wavefunction and force a system to look classical. "Magical" just means, here, that the theory provides no qualifications or evidence, but nevertheless pronounces it so. Fans will argue that Copenhagen doesn't single out the mind explicitly, but if you take the theory seriously, it rules everything but magic out. Everett implies a branching mind, but provides no insight into how we should expect to experience branching. Either way, consciousness is so poorly understood that attempting to leverage it - even to the degree of pronouncing it magic as Copenhagen does - will inject countless unknowns into any predictions one might make. They will poison our reasoning using such theories and force us into false dichotomies or apparent paradoxes.
You can't write a wavefunction for consciousness. So let's wait for neuroscience to produce a tenable explanation before we bring that mess into physics.
"In Copenhagen, the mind is intrinsically a magical thing that is able to collapse a wavefunction and force a system to look classical."
In Copenhagen you are agnostic about anything else. It's really the minimal way to look at the problem: you change your mode of thinking from "modeling the global state of the universe" (as is done in classical physics) to "modeling my own perspective of this physical system". It never says anything magical happens, since it was never legitimate to take the wavefunction as being a physical object anyway as it's impossible to measure. All it says is "upon measurement _you_ may get these results with these probabilities". Even if many-worlds did turn out to be correct, Copenhagen would still be a correct operational recipe for predicting measurement results.
As for waiting for further insights from neuroscience, I really don't think we need to: the general argument I laid out would be correct for any _conceivable_ theory explaining the brain's operation. Of course, if you disagree that consciousness is to do with the brain at all (because you believe in a soul or something) I can't convince you, but in that case I think it's likely you already gave up on a scientific explanation anyway. The timescales involved in decoherence are so short that even some molecular processes are well-described by classical physics. The idea that consciousness somehow depends so crucially on these processes that the argument I laid out above would fail is one I find very hard to believe, but if you noticed other holes please let me know.
Quantum immortality is a rather high level abstract argument, it doesn't really need to consider what consciousness really is or tie to anything quantum, except for assuming that it is a completely physical process without anything external or magic to it. The premise is that for any physical process there is a timeline, whatever infinitesimally unlikely, in which this process continues forever (assuming many-worlds). And if you say that your point of reference is this process, your experiences are equal to that process, then yes, from your standpoint as this process you will never experience end. Because you cannot find yourself in any timeline that doesn't have this process. You must always be in one that continues to go on. And there always will be such one forever.
"it doesn't really need to consider what consciousness really is or tie to anything quantum, except for assuming that it is a completely physical process without anything external or magic to it. "
But that's precisely the point: if you take the premise seriously, that consciousness is some actual physical process, you have to conclude that the prediction in many worlds (should it be developed enough to generate predictions) can only be the same as in standard quantum mechanics. The argument for immortality requires consciousness to be some magical sauce with special properties, which supervenes on the branching structure of the quantum state rather than emerging from whatever physical processes happen in it.
@@vacuumdiagrams652 I'm not sure I follow. There's nothing magical or special about consciousness.
Imagine we're talking about some other process, not consciousness. Like, clock. There's always a timeline that has the clock ticking forever.
Or imagine a printer that is printing "I am alive and well". There will always be fluctuations that will spontaneously produce more paper and ink out of thin ether for it to continue printing (or maybe an entire civilization emerges that makes its sole purpose for this printer to continue, i dunno).
Or maybe there's a computer that somehow ended up computing you, and everything you experience and are is a computation within it. Arguably this computer will also continue to exist somewhere somehow indefinitely. For the computer itself there exists an instance that is continuous and uninterrupted from the moment of creation till forever. And together with and within it it exist a simulated consciousness which finds itself also continous and uninterrupted.
I love you Matt! Space Time is the best science channel on youtube!
I love when something I discovered eventually gets a name, Quantum Immortality. This supports my idea that everyone will live to be as old as they could be in the dimensional timeline they are forced to visualize. Because there has to be an observer to observe the survivor branches. I don't know if I believe in a soul yet or what something like that would be called but if there was an alive you and a dead you, a 'soul' would obviously go to the alive you, continuing you. Now the real question is, as we get closer to finding out Immortality in the future, the chances of at least one of yourselfs finding immortality is (according to quantum physics) 100% and since your 'soul' has to be around to observe that, you will be around forever....and yet we don't have a record of that happening to anyone....hmmm. Another trip, I am pretty sure if you could pinpoint all of your near death experiences they would follow the phi pattern and you would be able to predict future branch offs.
My newest theory about this also involves a time rewinder or time eraser....ill wait till scientist think of a cooler name, but essentially the dead end branches (the timelines leading to dead yous) gets deleted or taken away somehow.
I always understood it differently. That eventually once your soul or whatever reaches the last version of you that's still alive and then that version dies you disspear into darkness forever. So it's not immortal in that way. It's just called immortal because it technically takes aaaages for you to reach that last version of you, since there are billions upon billions of versions of you.
I was smoking as I was watching this
or not....
Your dead........
Or not....
same here buddy
I'm a many-worlds acceptor. As a young person, I would dodge a dangerous event and experience what I call "echoes" of having not dodged the dangerous event. I would briefly experience my death. These days, all those timelines are gone (because those other selves died!) and so when I survive a dangerous experience it's less likely that I feel these echoes. It still happens, and I do mourn the passing of another me, but it's less common now.
The ability to change another person's mind is magic.
Extracting dollars from their wallets is even more magic.
nope, just requires a loaded gun
@@doktormcnasty no, also just requires a loaded gun.
See, guns are practically the modern equivalent of magic wands.
@@frankschneider6156 lmao
Also, wth does this comment exist? Its irrelevant to the video
One point people leave out ... the cat is itself a conscious observer.
8:31 _"In the year 3,000...In the year 3,000..."_
sdfkjgh "In the year one million hand half, humanity is enslaved by girafes"
If there's a version of you that lives forever - is you automatically that version of yourself while everybody else around you dies? That could be a plot for a horror movie! :O
"And to quote ANOTHER ONE of the greats..." That's a kind hat tipping towards Nick Lucid.
There's another way to test many worlds. Assuming that we have a reversible machine intelligence to hand then the experiment consists of the machine making three reversible measurements of the spin of an electron (or polarisation of a photon). (1) First it measures the spin along the z-axis. It records either spin "up" or spin "down" and notes this in its memory. This measurement acts just to prepare the electron in a definite state. (2) Second it measures the spin along the x-axis and records either spin "left" or spin "right" and notes this in its memory. The machine now reverses the entire x-axis measurement - which must be possible, since physics is effectively reversible, if we can describe the measuring process physically - including reversibly erasing its memory of the second measurement. (3) Third the machine takes a spin measurement along the z-axis. Again the machine makes a note of the result.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation the original (1) and final (3) z-axis spin measurements have only a 50% chance of agreeing because the intervention of the x-axis measurement by the conscious observer (the machine) caused the collapse of the electron's wavefunction. According to many-worlds the first and third measurements will always agree, because there was no intermediate wavefunction collapse. The machine was split into two states or different worlds, by the second measurement; one where it observed the electron with spin "left"; one where it observed the electron with spin "right". Hence when the machine reversed the second measurement these two worlds merged back together, restoring the original state of the electron 100% of the time.
Only by accepting the existence of the other Everett-worlds is this 100% restoration explicable
That low key seems like jumping off a cliff to figure out if your "supposed" to be alive
Well you'd walk up to the cliff, take a look, and decide that it was a bad idea. You could go back and try again, but you'd probably always change your mind last minute. Those timelines are the most common ones where you survive, so you would *have* to take on their perspective.
@@ianmeade7441 but that would also apply to any compitant physicist
@@mikelarrivee5115 yes, part of why this experiment has never been done. I said 'most common' because there's always at least *one* timeline where they would go through with it and be privy to whatever happens.
@@ianmeade7441 you cant say that the fact that the experiment hasn't been done is evidence that supports the experiment's results
There's one thing that feels weird to me about multiple timelines: If that's the case there could be a timeline where all particles of all double slit experiments that are being made land on the left side of the screen, or even on the same spot. Or even weirder: They land on all possible places where the interference pattern and the two bars pattern overlap. Or they start forming words. Or... And scientists wonder why on earth that happens. Imagine people always rolling a 4. No matter how many times they roll a dice.
Dumb question here... would a split in timelines cause a doubling of energy in the multiverse?
The cause for Dark Energy xD
TRUE to that bro.. ENERGY Law.. can not be create extra
Schrödinger developed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment and specifically used matter that is not on the scale of electrons in the experiment to demonstrate a point that physical matter, regardless of its size, exists in a physical form, regardless of whether or not someone is observing it.
Math is just a model and you need to interpret the results of mathematical results in accordance with the physical laws of the universe in which we exist. There is only one 4-dimensional spacetime, in which matter exists, some matter is as small as an electron and some as large as a planet, but if it’s matter, it’s matter, be it a solid, liquid, or gas.
Matter can be measured in all 4 physical dimensions (length, width, height, and the period of time during which it exists), whether it’s a cat or an electron).
Matter does not exist in two forms simultaneously and then collapse into one form or the other whenever someone observes it, regardless of what the results of mathematical models lead some people to believe.
The superposition theory is not a good scientific theory because there is no physical evidence to prove that it’s a good explanation for what it explains.
If any matter exists in two forms simultaneously, then you would be able to take a photo of it in both states simultaneously, but that’s impossible to do and has never been done, not because it collapses into one state or the other whenever there is a conscious observer observing it, but because matter exists in only one state, regardless of what mathematical models lead some people to believe.
We all know that cats do not exist in two forms simultaneously whenever nobody is watching them and Schrödinger used a cat in his experiment to demonstrate the fact that neither do subatomic particles, regardless of their size.
No cats were harmed in his thought experiment, which occurs in one’s imagination, where physical matter does not exist.
I still cannot tell if his head is rather large or he just has the body of a child.
really appreciated the bit of animosity towards the other wave functions lmfao
And here I thought quantum immortality was my original idea. Guess it goes in the trash pile of "my original philosophical and scientific ideas."
Nah it just means that it's not that crazy an idea and I love that other people think of this stuff, too.
Same here bro.
*Watching TH-cam clips about Quantum Immortality*
Me: this is probably true, I mean: this guy wouldn't make this up would he?
Matt: "Quoting Tyler Durden"
Me: "Wait a minute?! That's not right, is it?!"
Me: *Googleing*.
Google: "Narrator: On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
Me: "....."
Isnt chance of surviving this quantum immortality experiment in copenhagen interpretation exactly as unprobable as living in branch (in many worlds) where you do survive?
Yeah, there are some philosophical questions involved, but I think so, too.
I see the time-honored tradition of using Schrodinger's example to make the opposite point he was making is still around. His point was that it was ridiculous - the cat is in fact 100% dead or alive at any given moment. You looking at it as it happens or not changes nothing.
5:21 please can someone explain this to me :/ I don't see why his survival chance is higher under the Many Worlds interpretation. In Many Worlds, aren't you locked on a specific branch at random? So if you crawl out alive, you could say "wow the decoherence ended in the one way that didn't activate the posion!" (Copenhagen) just as easily as you could say "wow I'm on the lucky one-in-a-million branch where the poison didn't activate!" (Many worlds).
Unless Quantum Immortality proposes that your consciousness constantly hops to neighbouring branches to avoid death. Which seems rather ridiculous to me.
TheRABIDdude Yeah, it makes it not just a “useless” experiment, but not even an experiment at all, as it cannot differentiate between our 2 options at all.
It doesn’t resolve the issue of not having access to other worlds
The idea is that the universe splits into one branch where you're alive and one in which you're dead, so your consciousness effectively splits too, but the version where you're dead doesn't continue. 100% of the time, you'll perceive yourself as having survived quantum suicide attempts because people don't continue to have experiences after they die. For anyone else in the world, your odds of survival are the same for Copenhagen vs. MWI, but your own continuity of experiences will always persist in MWI whereas it will almost certainly cease under other interpretations.
@@zero132132 No that's still incorrect. You don't experience the consciousness of other copies of yourself in different states of the multiverse wavefunction. The probability you die is always the same. In the many worlds interpretation, your prior probability of surviving the experiment is identical to that of the Copenhagen interpretation
@@joshyman221 No. The point of MWI is that the wave function doesn't actually collapse. You aren't sitting in a universe parallel to a number of identical universes where you're doing the same exact thing until the next quantum observation is made. You're currently in one single state, but when you enter superposition, it's effectively like you've branched off into a state that can never again interact with the other branch. Only one scientist in one state gets in the box for the quantum suicide experiment, but that one state branches into two states every time there's a 50% chance that one atom has decayed and triggered the poison. With 100 atoms at their half life, that's 2^100 different branches. Only one has an unpoisoned scientist, but there's no discontinuity of consciousness from before stepping into the box vs. after, just 2^100-1 dead scientists and 1 alive one. In MWI, since all these possibilities are physically real, the scientist getting into the box had a 100% chance of surviving since it's a single scientist in a single state getting into the box. The 2^100-1 branches with a dead scientist and the 1 with an alive scientist split off from the same single timeline.
@@zero132132 I'm not convinced. When the given time has elapsed there is a superposition of 2^100 states in the universal wavefunction. In 2^100-1 of these states, the atom has decayed. When you interact with this system, you end up in one of these eigenstates of the universal wavefunction. 2^100-1 eigenstates have you dead, 1 doesn't. There is a 100% chance that in the picture of the universal wavefunction you survive, but there is only a 2^(-100) chance that you end up in the eigenstate that allows this survival.
I've got nothing to say in this time line about not winning my choice of merch, however, I do want to say that the graphics of this weeks episode were on point. Whomever was responsible has a promising career in all timelines although the likelihood of Matt demonstrating these points using markers and a whiteboard is in at least one timeline.
PS: Condolences to the collective spouses of the professor. Except where he's single or alive. Or single and alive.
Thanks from this timeline
I'm first, or am I? I am on Vsauce channel, right? Or Am I?
I think about this all the time. What gets me the most is thinking of my loved ones who had to deal with my death in alternate realities.
"well actually, its name is Schrödinger's Cat's Monster. Schrödinger was the cool cat who created the existentially horrifying metaphor"
Lol nice
Quantum immortality is the main driving plot in Terry Pratchett's first novel "The Dark Side of the Sun" where "p-math" (probability math) works by calculating which branch of the wave function you're on.
Dump it. Activate quantum immortality.
Really puts that old Busted song in a new light...
Matt: "We'll call this test, Quantum Im-"
Me: "SUICIDE!"
Matt: "mortality."
Me: Damn TH-cam demonetization schemes.
I hope the MCU recognizes the obvious that Deadpool is the result of an explicit quantum immortality experiment in an environment tuned to facilitate quantum fluctuations in genetic adaptations. The experiment isolated his biological system capable of rapid self-generation. Some of the mechanisms are similar to how salamanders can regenerate limbs and how healthy cells can turn into sophisticated cancerous tissues. While Deadpool was in Shrödingers box, he also met multiverse supervisors/writers from the 5th-dimension, which is why he is constantly breaking the 4th wall.
The challenge is wrong first you assume correctly that we are not special and should consider our self as normal statistically yet then you ask us to consider our self special and take our place in the universe as the only sample when aplying these statistics lets say a man in ancient rome did the same experiment what would his results be? Or even better lets say we reach close to the number the theory suggest as a cap and someone does the same experiment what will his results be? Will there be anywhere at anytime someone that does this experiment and gets as a result that he is close to the end? No the number of humans that are going to live is always going to increase yet are we to assume that we are the ones special enough that live truly in the midle?
Tyler's statement requires that every possibility that could kill you happens. It's no different a statement than "there is a universe where you live forever."
The "long enough timescale" implies all infinite possibilities happening just like the multiverse.
This is an argument for a simulated universe. At the small scale reality doesn't render unless it's needed, when we're are looking at it
Love this channel. Not to get off subject but on this timeline and in my reality, I've been long fascinated in the paranormal and am more or less convinced that if for example while crossing a road you are hit by a car and killed, things then flip over where that same car just misses you. Whether I was killed elsewhere or not, I don't know, but what did happen was so strange, as before crossing there wasn't a car in sight, and yet halfway across, one suddenly appeared from no where. As in all life or death situations everything becomes slow motion, I literally breathed in and pulled in my stomach allowing me a few cm's of extra space within which the car passed.
My wife passed away suddenly a few years ago, and yet I'm sure that elsewhere she didn't, and that our life there is continuing as normal.
How is the physicist crawling out of the box "good evidence" of many worlds and not just a declaration of "hey, mathematical probability is a thing and you got lucky."
If I walked out of that box I would not believe I was that lucky.
It's not evidence at all. Many worlds or not, the experiment is the same. There's always an incredibly low chance of survival, be that through simple probability or being in the right branch of the quantum multiverse. These are just two different ways of looking at the same thing.
I still think the many worlds interpretation is good as just that, an _interpretation_ of quantum mechanics, not a theory that makes new predictions. Until it makes some prediction that no other interpretation does, it's just some way of thinking about reality. Kind of like you can write a _3_ as _1+1+1_ or _9/3_ etc. You express the same thing but in a different way.
LordKekz a rational observer who repeatedly finds themselves on the “survival” side of the odds will favor a many worlds interpretation as an accurate description of what reality is, it would be absurd for the subject to say “Yeah I just got lucky, it was a possible outcome but it says nothing except that there was a chance in the first place that I live”
@@pgibsonorg In that situation, he did get lucky.
Without Many worlds, he'd say: "I got really lucky that the atoms didn't decay."
With Many worlds, he'd say: "I got really lucky that I ended up on the branch of the quantum multiverse in which the atoms didn't decay."
*Edit:* no idea what I was thinking but since there's no way he'd experience anything but survival he of course doesn't say that with many worlds.
It does make you think that if we find examples of *anything* which is absurdly improbable (and by that I mean almost Infinite Improbability Drive levels) in this spacetime, it’s gone a long way towards providing proof that we might be part of a Multiverse?