45 replies to this topic

[Clifford Greenblatt]

a copy is not as good as the original.

It is true that a copy is not the original, but claiming that a copy is never as good as the original is a different story. Copies can sometimes be better than originals. If an original has an obvious defect, then a copy can be made identical to the original minus the defect. What matters is how well the copy serves the fundamental purpose intended for the original.

[DJS]

Cliff, I am impressed by your response - not convinced - but definitely impressed. I will have to (when I have the time) further research the potential for continuity of time between universes.

A couple of more thoughts/challenges I have:

1) Wouldn't this scenario make pointless the quest for Immortality? Afterall, if my eventual fate is heat death anyway, why bother? Why not just sit on the beach drinking margaritas, pondering the infinite potential for my alcohol consumption over space/time? [lol]

1A) It also appears that the picture you paint neglects the influence (and power) that future levels of intelligence may have on altering the physical structure of our universe. This is, by the way, one element of Dennett's philosophizing that I find deficient as well.

2) Could there be copies of me that were "exactly" me? Yes, and as a materialist I am inclined to agree with you that identical copies of myself are "me". Afterall, if you don't believe there is some warm fuzzy thing called a soul, then my consciousness is the sum of my parts; and this, like any physical structure, can be replicated.

Although the probability of immortality is essentially zero for any given version, immortality is obtained by unlimited opportunities for future versions to seamlessly continue from mortal versions. The surviving versions become more rare as life span increases, but their numbers remain unlimited as time is unlimited. None of the versions that die consciously experience their state of death. Their continuation versions consciously experience a continuation of their lives.

3) In our universe, would it be physically possible for Plato to be Immortal? As an Immortalist I would say yes. The proper future technologies, if available, could be used to "cure" Plato's mortality.

However, for such future technologies to be available in Plato's time, the universe and circumstances in which Plato existed would have to be altered so drastically that an identical copy of the Plato in our universe could never have existed to begin with in such an environment (I am excluding divine or alien intervention [thumb] ).

The Immortal Plato is therefore physically possible, but logically impossible, no matter how many universes come and go.

I am trying to illustrate the constraints placed on your concept of infinite existence by the logical neccesities of our universe. A higher level mammal miraculously defying the process of senescence seems to violate the logical (and physical) rules of our universe, unless of course, a universe can be imagined in which the rules of senescence were not incorporated into the biological design of living organisms. Are you then suggesting that an exact copy of "me" exists in this alien universe? If so, then your theory appears to be suffering from credibility issues.

Cliff, regardless if I agree or disagree with you, I must admit that I find pondering such abstract cosmological issues extremely enjoyable! I must remember to avoid you in the future, as concepts such as infinite personal existence have a tendency to drive me to distraction.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

1)  Wouldn't this scenario make pointless the quest for Immortality?  Afterall, if my eventual fate is heat death anyway, why bother?  Why not just sit on the beach drinking margaritas, pondering the infinite potential for my alcohol consumption over space/time?  [lol]

A certainty of eventual heat death would make a pursuit of a truly infinite life span pointless, but would not hinder the pursuit of a life span of trillions of years. The technology would have to become increasing more clever as the entropy of the universe increases. We could begin a programme to go throughout the universe, covering all four pi steradians of every star with self replicating solar collectors to prevent waste of energy that could be used to maintain life much longer, but not infinitely longer. I am not aware of any technological possibility of beating heat death infinitely into the future. Are you aware of any? Paradoxically, the thermodynamics that prohibit immortality locally ensure it globally.

1A)  It also appears that the picture you paint neglects the influence (and power) that future levels of intelligence may have on altering the physical structure of our universe.  This is, by the way, one element of Dennett's philosophizing that I find deficient as well.

My picture is one of brute force probabilities. It does not account for the way that probabilities of physical events are greatly enhanced by various dependencies. The ASCII code for the complete works of William Shakespeare appear in the hexadecimal sequence for the square root of two an infinite number of times. However, the mind of William Shakespeare made his writings much more likely they would be from a monkey at a typewriter. A person’s life has a nonzero probability of being run in reverse, but that probability is minuscule relative to the probability of it being run in the forward direction.

I used brute force probabilities to demonstrate that, with a materialist assumption, an infinite future assures an infinite existence for every person. The density of personal existence is greatly enhanced by considerations beyond the brute force level.

2)  Could there be copies of me that were "exactly" me?  Yes, and as a materialist I am inclined to agree with you that identical copies of myself are "me".  Afterall, if you don't believe there is some warm fuzzy thing called a soul, then my consciousness is the sum of my parts; and this, like any physical structure, can be replicated.

This is the only point of view that is consistent with materialist philosophy. Not understanding what really causes a person to “feel like who he is”, some immortalists insist on an ever increasing precision of duplication and are never satisfied. Ultimately, they insist that only space-time continuity can assure that they will “feel like what they are”. Ironically, their space-time continuity requirement permits gradual changes that eventually add up to radically alter the physical (and psychological) nature of the person. I used brute force probabilities to demonstrate that there is no limit to how precisely a person is duplicated in an infinite future. A true materialist would have to believe that duplicating a person sufficiently for him to “feel like what he is” requires much less than the unlimited precision that brute force probabilities guarantee.

3)  In our universe, would it be physically possible for Plato to be Immortal?  As an Immortalist I would say yes.  The proper future technologies, if available, could be used to "cure" Plato's mortality.

However, for such future technologies to be available in Plato's time, the universe and circumstances in which Plato existed would have to be altered so drastically that an identical copy of the Plato in our universe could never have existed to begin with in such an environment (I am excluding divine or alien intervention  [thumb] ). 

The Immortal Plato is therefore physically possible, but logically impossible, no matter how many  universes come and go.

If you are talking about exact copies of infinite precision then they will never happen. If you are talking about extremely precise copies, then they will happen an infinite number of times in an infinite future.

If you follow Plato’s life to the end, he cannot be immortal because he has already died. On the other hand, you could say that a fresh cryonic corpse cannot be immortal because it is already dead. If you follow Plato’s life to any point prior to his death, he could beat senescence by a sequence of very lucky biological events, even without the benefits of futuristic technology. After all, a materialist must believe that Plato came into existence without the benefit of any futuristic technology.

I am trying to illustrate the constraints placed on your concept of infinite existence by the logical neccesities of our universe.  A higher level mammal miraculously defying the process of senescence seems to violate the logical (and physical) rules of our universe, unless of course, a universe can be imagined in which the rules of senescence were not incorporated into the biological design of living organisms.  Are you then suggesting that an exact copy of "me" exists in this alien universe?  If so, then your theory appears to be suffering from credibility issues.

Yes, violation of the process of senescence does violate the rules of our universe. However, the process of senescence is a probabilistic one. There is a nonzero probability that any organism can, at any point in its life, beat the process of senescence by pure luck. Furthermore, the biology of the organism can be radically changed, either by pure luck or by technological advance, so that its process of senescence is eliminated.

I do not suggest that any copies of you would exist with infinite precision. However, an unlimited number of copies of you would exist in an unlimited future to any arbitrarily high degree of precision.

Consider this event that is radically contrary to the rules of our universe. A million kilogrammes of iron is dumped into the Antarctic Ocean and sits there for a year in thermal equilibrium with the ice cold ocean waters. Then suddenly, some Tuesday afternoon, heat is spontaneously transferred from the ice cold waters of the Antarctic Ocean to the iron. Within an hour, all the iron has all melted and is glowing white hot. The event is highly contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, but it is not an absolutely zero probability event. Given an infinite future, events like this are certain to happen an infinite number of times.

Edited by Clifford Greenblatt, 27 July 2004 - 11:10 AM.

[chubtoad]

I am not aware of any technological possibility of beating heat death infinitely into the future. Are you aware of any?

Beating heat death into the future seems impossible. But Brian Greene in his string theory books speculates that we may be able to create a wormhole time machine to travel backwards in time to the point in history when the time machine was created.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

Beating heat death into the future seems impossible.  But Brian Greene in his string theory books speculates that we may be able to create a wormhole time machine to travel backwards in time to the point in history when the time machine was created.

If such a time machine were to be invented, could someone use it one thousand years later to go back to the time when the machine was a day old and destroy it?

[chubtoad]

If such a time machine were to be invented, could someone use it one thousand years later to go back to the time when the machine was a day old and destroy it?

Greene says that paradoxes like this one or killing the original copy of yourself before you time traveled would be impossible. If you have traveled back in time the time machine exists in the future so none of your time traveling copies (you would see the other versions of your former/future self before you time traveled) were able/chose to destroy the time machine. I have no idea how this interacts with MWI QM, but avoiding heat death and time travel discussions probably should have their own threads since this materialism thread is tricky enough already.

[bgwowk]

The idea of intrinsic personal immortality via naturally-occurring alternative realities consistent with your current mental state is not new. Mike Perry wrote a whole book about this (Forever for All). The most commonly postulated mechanism for this immortality is the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics,

http://www.higgo.com/quantum/qti.htm

http://encyclopedia......m immortality

but birth of other universes separated by vast expanses of time is another possibility as suggested by Mr. Greenblatt.

It has also been pointed out that this is a fully testable hypothesis, although I would recommend against it. There are many more ways to survive a suicide attempt with resulting injury and disability than to survive unscathed. Indeed, there are many more ways to survive *any* brush with death with resulting injury and disability than to survive unscathed. And that is the dark side of this immortality theory, if true. A happy existence requires very specific physical conditions. There are many more ways for your life circumstances to be seriously screwed up and unhappy than otherwise. There are also many more ways for you to lose little bits of yourself with each transition to an alternative reality than for everything to translate perfectly.

All in all, it's recipe for ever increasing debilitation and memory loss until "you" finally vanish completely. Not a happy scenario.

The only way out of it that I can see is for benevolent intelligence (not necessarily supernatural) to eventually take control of the scenario generation process in future profusions of alternative realities so that most life scenarios in any given universe are "good". That is the optimistic view taken by Tipler, Perry, et al. I hope they are right.

---BrianW

[Clifford Greenblatt]

The most commonly postulated mechanism for this immortality is the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

The many worlds interpretation (MWI) is consistent with observations about quantum-mechanical phenomena, but has the drawback that there are alternatives that are just as consistent. The MWI is one of the more economical alternatives, but time symmetry is probably the most economical alternative.

A very major problem with the MWI is the age paradox. Versions of a person increase exponentially in number as the person gets older. The probability of a person being young becomes extremely minuscule relative to the probability of the person being extremely old.

Multiplication of universes by chance events in the far distant future does not have the problem of the age paradox at all. The extremely old versions of a person do increase to unlimited numbers, but they become increasingly smaller in proportion to the younger versions as they get older. Therefore, the probability of being young is much greater than the probability of being extremely old, which is consistent with what we observe.

There are also many more ways for you to lose little bits of yourself with each transition to an alternative reality than for everything to translate perfectly.

    All in all, it's recipe for ever increasing debilitation and memory loss until "you" finally vanish completely.  Not a happy scenario.

Considering the future from the perspective of this known universe alone, it would take an awful long time for a person to recur by chance. The early chance recurrences would be the least precise. Going much further into the future, the numbers of increasingly higher precision recurrences grow in numbers without bound. On the other hand, the number of less precise occurrences also grow boundlessly in numbers and at a faster rate than the more precise occurrences. Eventually, there is more and more of continuous spectrum of persons and life histories. The desires of the recurring beings have a dramatic influence on the shape of the distribution of life situations, but all possible persons and life histories occur in unbounded numbers as time progresses unbounded into the future.

Edited by Clifford Greenblatt, 28 July 2004 - 02:56 AM.

[apocalypse]

The hypothetical suffers practical impossibility issues. Nothing happens instantaneously.. everything happens with some degree of change over time... but to answer your question, yes, 'my' life would in effect be completely over. The copy's life would have replaced mine.

Suppose you slowly replace your brain small piece by small piece with copies and after a few months all that remains are the copies. What then?

No matter how long the life span, a healthy path exists.

Indeed, statistical anomalies, or things that are statistically remotely possible, become absolutely certain once you take things to infinity. (e.g. say winning the lottery, with infinite attempts, you'll win an infinite number of times)

Stored information is independent of the medium. The meaning assigned to writing in a book is independent of the ink and paper. Information on a computer is independent of the disk or chip used to retain it.

I believe this is so, information is independent of medium, and even all mediums are in their final nature but information.

That is some say that information/concepts//etc are thus independent of all, they're akin to that which is said of mathematical truths, in other words meaning it's in essence indestructible, perpetual, and without beginning or end,this is in their nature. Even if within a construct of information(i.e. universe) it appeared to be destroyed, in reality from an outside perspective, it would not be. Though the fact that this world seems to show information preservation jibes with these ideas.

which essentially means every possible permutation of anything occurring has its own universe (a universe for every superstring state for every possible timeline)

Indeed, I've heard that strings abhor singularities, that is that the big bang, might not be the beginning, that there is no origin. If an information construct has no origin, it jibes with the idea of information being in essence without beginning, timeless or independent of time. Even if an informational construct appears to be with beginning to those within, from an outside perspective it might be a timeless piece of information. Time too is but information.

But furthermore, if we posit that there exists an infinity of universes going back infinitely, then there must exist an infinity of post humans with an infinite scale of ever greater potential. In essence there must be an infinity of celestial class entities, and one whose power must scale towards the limit of infinity without a beginning or end, timeless encompassing all.

The current laws are based on ideas kin to these...

Vedanta has influenced modern science enormously. Schrödinger was a Vedantist, and he claimed to have been inspired by it in his discovery of quantum theory. According to his biographer Walter Moore, there is a clear continuity between Schrödinger’s understanding of Vedānta and his research: "The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrödinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."

We may be able to persist for trillions of years, but entropy would eventually take its toll on all of our best efforts.

It's my belief that higher posthuman civilizations can actually escape entropy, either by escaping into another universe or by bending the laws sufficiently.

None of the versions that die consciously experience their state of death. Their continuation versions consciously experience a continuation of their lives.

In other words, subjectively one never experiences true death, nor can one truely kill oneself, only the deaths of those around. Others continue to live, but in another world, and never experience death subjectively.

I've thought about that, but as others have said the only problem I see is that there are infinite number of possible divergencies. Thus there'll be an infinite number of different paths taking by an infinite number of continuing existence.(e.g. One of the existences will continue to exist and have both arms, another will lose an arm, or dog or something, and all other possibilities, etc)

I am not aware of any technological possibility of beating heat death infinitely into the future. Are you aware of any? Paradoxically, the thermodynamics that prohibit immortality locally ensure it globally.

Omega point, wormhole escape into another universe, possibility of variable constants of physics through time or space which could allow if true violation of conservation of energy. Also if there is no beginning(as some are postulating with versions of the newest theories), and there is an infinity of other universes, through space-distortion or hyperspace or other FTL we could reach them and keep going, also some of them might even harbor laws that allow violations to occur.

Greene says that paradoxes like this one or killing the original copy of yourself before you time traveled would be impossible. If you have traveled back in time the time machine exists in the future so none of your time traveling copies (you would see the other versions of your former/future self before you time traveled) were able/chose to destroy the time machine. I have no idea how this interacts with MWI QM, but avoiding heat death and time travel discussions probably should have their own threads since this materialism thread is tricky enough already.

A time machine allows for the creation of infinite energy. (that is you had say a 1 unit of energy, you only use half of it, you go back, and now you start with 1.5units, you use only .5units and now you have 2units to start with, ad infinitum.). Of course the matter that you brought back would probably deteriorate(no worries since your body would as all biological bodies change in composition), but you might use the excess energy to prevent decay.

The only way out of it that I can see is for benevolent intelligence (not necessarily supernatural) to eventually take control of the scenario generation process in future profusions of alternative realities so that most life scenarios in any given universe are "good". That is the optimistic view taken by Tipler, Perry, et al. I hope they are right.

I believe that an entity of such a kind which in a timeless multiverse will have always been, is beyond mere good and evil, it's beyond description.

[tbeal]

I think the question here is does sleep break consciouness at all(I.E. completly for any period of time) - if it does then surely no contunuity of consciouness is required to produce the same affect as waking up and cliffords inifinite worlds in the futture hypothesis is correct. If sleep does not break consciouness then surely assuming that many worlds is correct and that death is the equivelent of merging two hypohtetical consciounesses ( Ie the chance escape and the unlucky death) then quantum immortality is possible( athough maybe not as desirable) either way I think theirs a genuine chance that we are allready immortal any comments on this idea?

"All in all, it's recipe for ever increasing debilitation and memory loss until "you" finally vanish completely. " actually thats the only thing it doesn't predict "you" will exist forever osillating between extreme intelligence and extreme stupidity for eternity and in fact you may allready had have done since you wounld't remember it

Edited by tbeal, 19 February 2005 - 06:42 PM.

[tbeal]

this is probably the best cosmological model which fits what you asset greenblatt it's the recycling universe
http://xxx.lanl.gov/...707/9707292.pdf

[dimasok]

What if life sucks and one wants to kill himself right now? Does that mean that in an infinite amount of infinite universes, that person (his/her "self") is indeed living the life of a king/queen with all the wealth, ladies/lads, eternally young and immortal?

I think what is discussed in this thread opens way too many doors and there is no clear way to verify whether any of that is actually true.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

dimasok wrote:

Does that mean that in an infinite amount of infinite universes, that person (his/her "self") is indeed living the life of a king/queen with all the wealth, ladies/lads, eternally young and immortal? I think what is discussed in this thread opens way too many doors and there is no clear way to verify whether any of that is actually true.

The infinite amount of universes is simply a consequence of the laws of physics in an infinitely expanding universe. However, no other universes would be observable by anyone in our universe. The "laws of physics" that I mention here are limited to what our minds are capable of representing. Laws transcending the capabilities of our minds to represent could prevent the endless multiplication of universes.

Assuming an endless multiplication of universes, there would always be some universe in which your life would be materially duplicated to any precision. One could argue, however, that if you are not a young and wealthy king/queen in this universe that no young and wealthy king/queen in any other universe could meet the precision requirements to be you.

[dimasok]

Laws transcending the capabilities of our minds to represent could prevent the endless multiplication of universes.

Is there any reason to assume that such laws are in place in this or other universes (which is a bit paradoxical because one infinity cannot be added to another infinity and so an infinite number of infinite universes is the same as a single infinite universe, right?)?

[Clifford Greenblatt]

dimasok wrote:

Is there any reason to assume that such laws are in place in this or other universes (which is a bit paradoxical because one infinity cannot be added to another infinity and so an infinite number of infinite universes is the same as a single infinite universe, right?)?

An infinite number of universes could be the consequence of a single universe expanding infinitely into the future. After sufficient time, the single universe would be so large that child universes would begin from quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuations with ever-increasing likelihood. The collection of such child universes is called a multiverse. There would always be a finite number of child universes, but the number of them would increase toward infinity as time, measured from a place in the parent universe, increases toward infinity. If our universe is the child of in infinite line of parent universes, then there would be an infinite number of universes already. If there is no infinite line of parent universes, then either our universe or its earliest ancestor would require a transcendent origin from laws that transcend the capability of our minds to represent.

[dimasok]

dimasok wrote:

Is there any reason to assume that such laws are in place in this or other universes (which is a bit paradoxical because one infinity cannot be added to another infinity and so an infinite number of infinite universes is the same as a single infinite universe, right?)?

An infinite number of universes could be the consequence of a single universe expanding infinitely into the future. After sufficient time, the single universe would be so large that child universes would begin from quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuations with ever-increasing likelihood. The collection of such child universes is called a multiverse. There would always be a finite number of child universes, but the number of them would increase toward infinity as time, measured from a place in the parent universe, increases toward infinity. If our universe is the child of in infinite line of parent universes, then there would be an infinite number of universes already. If there is no infinite line of parent universes, then either our universe or its earliest ancestor would require a transcendent origin from laws that transcend the capability of our minds to represent.

I read something similar in a recent article here:
http://www.physorg.c...ws91078256.html

Take an expanding universe with its little pockets of heterogeneous quantum events. At some point one of those random events may actually "escape" from its parent universe, forming a new one, Linde said. To use the ball analogy, if it experiences small perturbations as it rolls, it might at some point roll over into the next valley, initiating a new inflationary process, he said.

According to string theory, there are ten dimensions. We live aware of four of them-three of space plus one of time. The rest are so small that we cannot experience them directly. In 2003, Stanford physicists Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh and Andrei Linde, with their collaborator Sandip Trivedi from India, discovered that these compacted dimensions want to expand, but that the time it would take for them to do so is beyond human comprehension.