Eternal Life part 2
by Marcus Loane
4th June
2013
You
may want to read my article Eternal Life part 1
first.
Technological
immortality
Many
people believe they will have eternal life, usually as part of a religious framework
of beliefs. Others believe an extended life span will be possible perhaps using
future medical technologies. We still have much to learn about which
information processing states lead to a conscious experience. Once we have
solved this we may be able to create conscious beings in silicon which could be
much more durable than our organic bodies.
Quantum immortality
Still
others believe we may live forever as a result of the laws of physics. For
example some people believe quantum immortality is a possibility due to the
many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. The latter works as follows. The
world (universe) is constantly splitting into different versions and at the
point of death there will be worlds where you go on living as well as worlds
where you die. However as you cannot experience being dead you will experience
one of the worlds where you go on living. You would witness the people around
you dying with normal life spans while you personally go on living and become
the oldest person in your universe. This would be the fate of everyone. They
all get to live forever in their own universe while everyone dies around them.
That is not a very pleasant thought. The subject is highly controversial and I
can see a lot of problems with it. If you do find yourself experiencing this
then you will know the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is
correct.
There
is an entertaining and disturbing short story here
http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/divided-by-infinity
which explores the idea of quantum
immortality.
Big universe
immortality
Another
less controversial way of achieving longevity is due to the fact that the
universe is infinite in space and also going to last a very long time (the
universe will go on expanding forever but at a certain point time could be said
to end as the universe has become so thinned out that it is effectively empty
space and nothing happens). As there is only a finite number of ways your brain
molecules can be arranged, there is only a finite number of conscious states
you can be in. This means that after you die, it is certain that in the
universe somewhere (since it is infinitely large) the exact arrangement of
particles that is your brain at death will exist somewhere else in the
universe. Now whether you think of your consciousness "jumping" to
this new brain as making any sense, is up for debate.
There
is an article on http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=198794
which turns the usual thinking on its head and claims that it is supernatural
thinking to claim that there is not
eternal life. I quote:
“I have gone on record that I agree with
David Deutsch that the MWI (many worlds interpretation) is the only legitimate
interpretation of QM (quantum mechanics) - and that all empirical evidence for
QM is empirical evidence of the MWI- as all other interpretations merely ignore
the other outcomes after measurement with no mechanism for 'wavefunction
collapse' or description of what happens with those outcomes with decoherence- and I also agree with Deutsch that quantum
computers PROOVE parallel universes- and that proof will be widely accepted
when a qc (quantum computer) performs a calculation with more information than
is in the observed universe-
also
the notion that there is no empirical evidence for parallel universes is I feel
a POV (point of view) error from physicists that has baffled computer scientists
and mathematicians where these ideas have been widely accepted for decades-
there are very rigorous mathematical proofs which show that causal sets must
sort through states algorithmically- and that show all possible states are
realized somewhere in the computation- therefore the anthropocentric concept of
a conscious observer dying is logically impossible- since the observer IS a
configuration of matter- it is endlessly repeated in sections of the causal
structure- any dissolution of that configuration in a local sub-routine of the
algorithm appears elsewhere by definition-
I
firmly agree with Deutsch/ Martin Rees/ Max Tegmark/
Nick Bostrom/ Jürgen Schmidhuber/ Marvin Minsky/ and
many others who have extensively shown how these are unavoidable realities of
living in a world with rules/time/locality/ and causality-
I have
said many times that a claim that an observer can 'die' is a claim that the
observer is a magical entity made of fairy dust and beyond the laws of physics
because it is unique and some godlike demon edits the universe preventing that
very discrete configuration of matter from ever being built again anywhere in
any universe- but evidence shows that an observer is a discrete ordered
configuration of matter- and as such it is repeated throughout the multiverse of the entire casual structure of the universe
by definition- quantum immortality is the rational analysis of the logical
structure of causality- death is a mystical idea- yet the reverse seems to be
the perception of many physicists [at least in America- the UK is rapidly
accepting these ideas]“ - setAI, 17th Nov 2007.
I
think this does make the assumption that consciousness jumps across space.
However that may not be a problem. Think about what happens if you fall asleep on
a moving aircraft, boat or other vehicle. Your consciousness stops where you
fall asleep, say at a London airport, and starts again where you wake up which
could be just outside Paris several hours later. Your consciousness has leaped
across both space and time so why should it make a difference if the distances
are in hundreds of miles or billions of light years?
Forever is too long
As
described earlier, your brain particles can only be arranged into a finite,
though enormously large, number of configurations and only a subset of these
will lead to a conscious experience. This has consequences for seekers of
eternal life. It means that there is a very large but
finite number of conscious states you can be in. It becomes impossible for you
to live forever and not end up repeating the exact same conscious states
eventually. This would also mean that you would have to start losing memories to
make room for new ones so your identity would not be the same as it was in the
past. The ‘you’ would no longer be ‘you’ except for the continuity linking the
states over time. Imagine that you could only remember the last 1000 years out
of the previous 1000 billion billion years. In what
sense would you still be the same conscious entity that experienced the start
of those 1000 billion billion years? You might argue
that we may find a way to enlarge the brain or its replacement's capacity but
that would only delay the same problem. If you want to experience eternal life
without losing memories and without eternally repeating conscious moments..
you would need a brain
or brain replacement that was infinite in size
to be able to generate the infinite number of
unique states that you want to experience over an infinite time. Even then, we
are assuming that there can be an infinite number of conscious experiences theoretically and that is far from
clear. We do not have to get too hung up on talking about brains either. The
same arguments hold regardless of how the conscious experiences are generated –
brains, computers, interplanetary information processing networks, exotic
neutron star life forms or souls (whatever they are).
Perhaps
in the far future it will be somehow possible that we could indeed extend
brains or conscious computers or whatever is physically capable of generating
conscious experience, outward into space and allow them to enlarge indefinitely
into the infinite space of the universe.
Then
a) if theoretically
there is an infinite number of unique conscious experiences and,
b) if time does not end
(which is looking unlikely in an expanding universe)
the expanding
brain/computer/consciousness-generator may indeed be able to live forever
without losing memories and without repeating what it is experiencing. It then
seems unlikely that such an enormous entity would have the same identity as its
tiny (by comparison) progenitor.
That
is a lot of “if”s and yet it is the sort of eternal
life that religious believers think is obvious and simple. They imagine living
forever, retaining their identity and their memories of their earthly life and
afterwards and not repeating their conscious moments over an infinite time.
Some of this confusion stems from our difficulty in grasping really large
numbers. We imagine we can have infinite conscious states but we are not
realising that there is a massive difference between a really large number of
conscious states and an infinite
number of conscious states.
Summary
Extending our lives may be
possible through technology but we will eventually have the heat death of the
expanding universe to contend with. It will not be able to support life.
We
might find that our consciousness goes on longer than we thought due to the
structure of the universe or quantum effects.
Living
forever may not be desirable or pleasant and would most likely result in losing
memories and going into a “repeat” mode.
The downside
Personally
I would like to go down the technological route but I probably have not been
born late enough into our civilisation for that to be feasible. Extending life
with technology allows for control and voluntarily ending it unlike some of the
other nightmare scenarios. Living for a few centuries or millennia might be
enough to learn many professions, learn to play many musical instruments, study
many subjects, have many relationships and explore many ways of being alive. It
may have downsides though. It could lead to overcrowding if we do not get off
this planet. It could lead to boredom and procrastination. Why hurry to do
anything when you have millennia to play with? You might not value things as
much when you can start over and over again along different life tracks.
However I think we would adjust psychologically to great longevity and could
plan out a 50,000 year life just like many people plan out an 80+ year life
(although it might require a spreadsheet). You could embark on fantastic
projects which take hundreds or thousands of years to complete. Think
engineering on a massive scale – elevators into space, manipulating the
behaviour of planets and stars and black holes, creating custom solar systems.
You could work on the problem of entropy’s relentless march and how to survive
the heat death of the expanding universe.
--
Marcus
Loane
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