Transvision 2004 Conference
August 2004, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Copyright © 1999, 2004 Allan Randall
http://www.elea.org/Miracles/
 

 

Quantum Miracles and Immortality
Allan F. Randall
Dept. of Philosophy, York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
randall@elea.org  http://www.elea.org/

1       Introduction

Are miracles possible?

Do we have a soul?

Can we live forever?

It is widely believed that such old-fashioned questions have been rendered absurd by the materialism of modern empirical science, but some seemingly 'magical' properties of quantum mechanics have brought them back into serious discussion in some circles. I will examine the possibility of making miracles using well-established principles of quantum mechanics--in particular, the possibility that quantum theory allows for the most desirable 'miracle' of all: immortality.

We will discover that 'major miracles'--those that appear to violate the laws of classical physics--will turn out to be almost certainly impossible. But 'minor miracles', which do not violate physics, but merely beat the odds--such as guaranteeing a win in the lottery--can be generated with some reliability.[23] Unfortunately, the win is risky and comes at a great cost, one you are not likely willing to pay.

I will also examine the rational basis of arguments for the immortality of the soul based on quantum mechanics, particularly those of Perry [18] and Tipler [25]. I will conclude that there are problems with such proofs so, although intriguing, they must currently be considered inconclusive.

In spite of this negative result, we will find that minor quantum miracles have a more conclusive impact on our prospects for achieving immortality--but through natural means such as advanced medical technology. For if it seems that such medicine will not be developed in time to save you from death, you can still have your body cryopreserved at low temperature, immediately after legal death. If you are lucky, you will be thawed out and revived in the future, when the requisite technology to grant you immortality has been developed. We will see that quantum mechanical effects can radically improve your chances of being successfully revived from cryopreservation.

2       Assumptions

Every argument begins from some set of assumptions. While many of my assumptions can be justified in terms of more general rationalist principles, I do not have the room to do that fully here, so feel free to treat them as independent assumptions if you wish. See my other writings for a more complete defense.[8][19][20][21][22]

2.1    Assumption #1: Scientific Rationalism

I will assume, until given evidence to the contrary, that the natural world is a result of rationally understandable processes. I will only admit entities not amenable to rational analysis if rational analysis fails to explain the empirically observed phenomena, and even then I will keep looking for a rational explanation for whatever remains unexplained. I will accept that the scientific method is the means by which natural phenomena are to be investigated, and will always accept the logically simplest theory that best explains our empirical observations, until such time as empirical observation mandates modification of the theory. The 'simplest' theory will be defined as the one with the fewest rationally unjustified assumptions.

Scientific rationalism means accepting, at least as a working hypothesis, that our most highly corroborated scientific theories are literally true of the world. This may sound like a no-brainer, but many scientists and philosophers (particularly extreme empiricists and positivists) are too timid to do this when said theories violate their common-sense view of the world. In what comes, we will take the best that science offers us, and we will take it seriously, come what may.

2.2    Assumption #2: Computationalism and Strong Artificial Intelligence

The 'Strong Artificial Intelligence Postulate' (Strong AI) is the hypothesis that consciousness is a result of purely mechanistic, rationally comprehensible processes, and nothing else. More specifically, it assumes that such processes are exactly those that can be simulated on a computer with an inexhaustible memory and unlimited time.

Defining the 'soul' as a person's essence--that which makes them who they are--we can say that Strong AI rejects both the materialist theory of the soul, as well as the Platonic-Augustinian view of the soul as a mystical entity that defies rational analysis. Instead, Strong AI adopts the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the soul, as the 'form' of a conscious being. The form of a thing is, in modern terms, the in-form-ation required to completely describe (or simulate) the thing. The formalistic conception of the soul was the most widely accepted view of the soul in the Roman Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages. The Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body is based on it: God can resurrect you because he is omniscient and knows your form.

I will assume a rationalist version of the Strong AI Postulate, and so will further state that computational processes are strictly speaking the only rationally comprehensible concepts, and thus 'rationally comprehensible in principle' literally means 'can be simulated on a computer with inexhaustible memory and unlimited time'. This is a common rationalist assumption, closely related to the Church-Turing Thesis [3][26], although I will not attempt to further justify it here (but see, for instance, [5][6]).

2.3    Assumption #3: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is (along with General Relativity) our best theory as to how the world works. If our understanding of the universe is to progress, we must take our best theories seriously. I will therefore adopt a completely literal interpretation of quantum mechanics, and assume that the mathematical formalism of the theory literally describes objective reality. This means applying the laws of quantum mechanics at the level of the entire universe--for if the theory is true, it applies to the universe, and to everything in it, as much as it applies to subatomic particles.

A quantum system or object is described in quantum mechanics as many simultaneous possibilities existing at the same time, called a 'superposition' of states. Thus, the universe as a whole, if it is taken to be a quantum mechanical object itself, is necessarily a plethora of many different 'worlds' or possible world histories. This is the 'Many Worlds Interpretation' due to Everett, Wheeler and de Witt.[9] Whenever an observation is made, where more than one possible outcome is listed in the superposition, all outcomes actually happen, each in a different world or universe.

Consider the classic Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment: a cat is placed in a 'black box' that is completely isolated from the environment. A small sample of radioactive material, with a 50% chance of emitting radioactive decay within the next minute, is placed inside the box. Included is a detection device set to act for exactly one minute, which if triggered by radioactive decay will break a vial of poisonous gas, and kill the cat. If the sample does not decay, the cat lives.

Quantum mechanics demands in this experiment that all possible outcomes happen simultaneously, in a superposition. Superposition is uncontroversial for electrons--for instance, the experimental evidence indicates that electrons can be in more than one place at the same time. But the notion that cats and people can be in superposition defies common sense. Yet, this is what the equations of quantum mechanics demand, if they are to apply to cats and people, as well as electrons.

Thus, when you open the box and look inside, since you are also just a quantum system, the entire cat+box+you system evolves along two simultaneous histories, in superposition, one with your looking in on a live cat, and one with your looking in on a dead cat. In other words, you have 'split' into two versions of yourself. You are in a sense in two separate 'worlds', one where the cat dies and one where it does not.

I will accept the Many Worlds Interpretation without further justification. For more, see [7][10][19][20][21][22].

2.4    Assumption #4: Strong Anthropic Principle

It is well known that there are many facts of nature--events in the early evolution of the universe, the values of numerous physical constants, and so on--that seem 'custom-designed' for a universe in which life evolves. Change the mass or charge of the electron, for instance, and life as we know it cannot evolve. Change the nature of the early expansion of the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and you do not get the galaxies and stellar systems required for life. In short, the universe seems somehow 'made for us'. The idea that the universe must be such that life, a priori, had to evolve is called the Strong Anthropic Principle.[1] A version of this principle uses the Many Worlds Interpretation to explain this suitability to life: we are in a world suited to life because all worlds exist, and statistically some were bound to evolve life. And we certainly could not have found ourselves in any other kind of world. This is the 'Many-Worlds Anthropic Principle'.

2.5    Assumption #5: The Synthetic Unity of Consciousness

If my soul is nothing but information or computation, as Strong AI declares, then there is no reason why two different instances of this computation would not equally well be me. Or three such instances. Or a million. If my soul is computational, like a program on a CD, then it can be copied like a program on a CD. And a copy running on a different computer is still the same program.

Let us say that a copy of my soul (i.e. the information required to reconstruct my mind) is recorded on a CD a moment before my death. A hundred million years in the future, the CD is excavated by alien archaeologists, who use it to build a robotic replica of me. The replica has mental states that seem (to the replica) to immediately follow from the final mental states of my original life. It remembers being me. It has my personality, my quirks, my memories and predilections. For all intents and purposes, it is me.

Thus, if my consciousness is nothing but information, it has no need of spatial or temporal continuity in order to cohere. There is no reason, then, to suppose that the various mental states and perceptions that make up my consciousness need be near each other in space and time. In fact, they might be in separate rooms; or countries; or centuries; or universes.

Going further, since we have concluded that information/logical form/mathematical structure is all that really constitutes who I am, we have de facto rejected metaphysical materialism--the idea that matter (and/or energy) is the most fundamental level of explanation for the universe. While matter may be fundamental to our view of our world, if that world is just a statistical pick from all computations or logical structures that contain life, then it is information or logical form that is really fundamental, not matter. While many advocates of Strong AI and rationalism still call themselves 'materialists', it would be more accurate to say that they are 'computationalists' or 'mechanists', given that they take computation or information to be a more fundamental level of understanding than matter and energy.

This anti-materialism may sound to some like mysticism, or a belief that the universe is mental in nature, but this would be a misconception. Take, for instance, the Statue of Liberty, which we usually consider to be a physical object distinct from its surroundings. But scientific materialism leads us to consider that it, and the water, earth and buildings around it, are, on a more fundamental level, just a collection of electrons, quarks and other fundamental particles, arranged in a certain way. Thus, our perception of the Statue as a distinct object is a result of our limited perceptual abilities, not an absolute feature of the world. One might imagine having super-eyes and actually seeing the individual quarks and electrons in the Statue and its surroundings. Then one could choose to view it as a distinct object, or see it and its surroundings as a whole (as a huge collection of particles, perhaps, or as a conjoined Earth-Statue object). And there are no doubt innumerable other ways we might perceive the situation.

No one would claim that this means that the Statue of Liberty is fundamentally mental in nature, or a mere illusion created by our minds. It is rather its separation as distinct from its environment that is a projection of our minds. Likewise, the computational metaphysics that we have now arrived at does not take our entire world to be mind-created, but does take it to be but a slice out of the totality of all logical possibility. Just as the Statue of Liberty is merely perceived by us, due to the structure of our minds, to be a distinct material object, so our whole world is only perceived by us as distinct from the rest of logical possibility. It is not only the Statue's distinctness from the world that is a product of our perspective, but its separateness from other worlds and other logical possibilities is likewise due to our perception and the structure of our minds.

At this point, we have arrived at a computational version of Kant's transcendental idealism: physical objects and the spacetime they inhabit are dependent on our minds for their existence as physical objects; their unity as physical things is our unity as conscious beings. They are ultimately (metaphysically) computational, but they are physically mental in nature. Kant would say they are 'empirically real' and 'transcendentally ideal'.[11, pg. 44]

Kant called this principle the 'Synthetic Unity of Consciousness' [11, pg. 153-171] (he used the term 'apperception' rather than 'consciousness', but the meaning is the same). In numerous variations, it has been re-invigorated by the popularity of Strong AI and the Many Worlds Anthropic Principle, from which it might even be considered a natural consequence. By calling the unity of one's consciousness 'synthetic', Kant essentially meant that it was dependent on perception--it is a matter of perspective rather than objective fact. I credit Kant with the concept because he was the first to give it a rigorous formulation, but others before him had related notions of consciousness or personal identity, such as Locke [14, II.27], and as far back as Parmenides [16-17, DK28B6], who lived in the sixth century, BC. Kant's version of the idea was not specifically computational. My computational version combines Kant's Synthetic Unity with Strong AI. The two ideas together, I will call the 'Computational Unity of Consciousness'.

The quantum proofs of immortality that I will examine later all depend on some version or other of the Synthetic Unity of Consciousness. Tipler argues for computational synthetic unity.[25, pg. 210] Perry uses something very similar [18, pg. 158-189], although he seems at times to stop just short of full Synthetic Unity, holding out for an ultimately materialist substratum underneath (but one might arguably say the same thing about Kant).

2.6       Algorithmic Probability: Least Complexity Required For Consciousness

Given our computational metaphysical assumptions, the basis for any probability calculations on the quantum wavefunction must be in terms of computation. Therefore, I will assume that the probability of an experience contained in the wavefunction ultimately corresponds to Kolmogorov or algorithmic complexity [2], which is the number of bits in the shortest possible program that can simulate the experience. The Kolmogorov complexity is also identified with the 'information content', I, of a system:

         P(e) = the smallest program that simulates e.

         I (e) = |P(e)| = the size in bits of P(e).               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
My world or universe is therefore the shortest program (or programs) that can simulate my conscious experience. We cannot say a priori whether such a program will also simulate rivers and trees and planets and galaxies, along with my mind; but if the Computational Unity of Consciousness holds true, then we know that it does by simple empirical observation. The physical objects around me do not seem to be transient thoughts or figments of my imagination, but seem to have stability and law-like behavior over time. Thus, we assume that the complexity of the universe around us is the least that it needs to be, in order to produce us. We could call this the Principle of 'Least Complexity Required For Consciousness'.

There is an exact correspondence between statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory [24] that associates the logarithm of the information content, I, with the probability of the program, P:

         I(e) = -log2 p(P(e))

         p(P(e)) = 2-I(e)

The second equation is just a rearrangement of the first. For those unfamiliar with logarithms, since 23 = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8, we say that log28 = 3. This means that if the shortest possible form of a program is 3 bits long, its probability in the space of all programs is 2-3 = 1/23 = 1/8 = 12.5%. A program with an information content of 4 bits would have a probability of 1/16 = 6.25%. The more bits it takes to encode a program, the less probable it is (the less likely we would be to pick it at random from the set of all possible programs).

3       Quantum Miracles

Any (consistent) experience you can dream up exists in your wavefunction. For instance, there is a slice of the wavefunction where all the gas particles in the room you are now in suddenly rush into a corner of the room, suffocating you. This violates the classical laws of thermodynamics, but it happens in such a tiny percentage of universes, that the chances of our observing it are mind-bogglingly tiny. There is also a universe where random molecules in the room spontaneously organize into a million dollars in gold, or a hot fudge sundae, or a flying pig. There is another universe where they congeal into a virtual reality (VR) machine that makes you think you see a flying pig. And there is yet another one where the molecules in your brain organize themselves so as to make you hallucinate a flying pig. But all these highly contrived possibilities pale in comparison to the vast majority of universes, where you continue to breath the air molecules in the room, and nothing unusual happens at all.

So the question arises: can we not do something to change the probabilities so that the more desirable alternatives become more probable? I will call such feats 'miracle-working', since we are trying to violate our usual notions of what is physically possible. I will define 'miracle' as any apparent violation of the classical laws of physics (meaning the laws of physics as understood before the advent of quantum mechanics in 1925). I will distinguish between several types:

Micro miracles: miracles that are on too small or restricted a scale to have any productive impact on our everyday lives, compared to what was understood to be possible classically.

Macro miracles: miracles that have the potential to impact our everyday lives in a productive way. Of these, I distinguish between two further subtypes:

Minor miracles: macro miracles that do not appear in themselves to violate the classical laws of physics, but which radically shift the probabilities of events in a way not allowed for classically.

Major miracles: macro miracles that appear to violate the classical laws of physics.

Micro 'miracles' are realized all the time in physics labs. Electrons, for instance, are observed to be in a superposition of states (the superposition is not directly observed, but implied by repeated experiments). Hence, electrons can do weird things like 'quantum jump', changing their position without passing through the space in between. Our purpose here is to determine whether micro miracles can somehow be scaled up and turned into macro miracles. 

The magic that is practiced by various religions and cultural traditions is usually focused on macro miracles, since these are the ones that can change our lives for the better. Modern magical practices, such as Wiccan witchcraft and Christian prayer, are usually focused on minor macro miracles. In medieval times, ceremonial magicians were more apt to attempt major miracles.[12] For example, a magic spell that brings love or allows me to win the lottery would be a minor miracle, since nothing that happens would appear in and of itself to violate physics. A levitation spell or invisibility cloak, on the other hand, would be a major miracle.

A 'quantum miracle' is any miracle that is due to the nonclassical effects of quantum mechanics. We will now look at some macro quantum miracles (both minor and major), and see whether there is any feasible way to produce them.

4       Minor Miracles

Let's say you are playing a lottery with a 1 in 10 million chance of winning the jackpot. The universe where you win clearly exists in the universal wavefunction, even shortly before the draw. Lottery numbers are usually chosen by a machine that mixes up a lot of small balls with numbers written on them--a process that physicists call 'chaotic', meaning that a very small quantum uncertainty will very quickly make a difference at the macroscopic level (as with Schršdinger's Cat). Hence, all possible lottery numbers are about equally probable right up to some time fairly close to the draw.

Thus, after the draw, you exist in innumerable worlds, in only one ten millionth of which you are the big winner. To generate a minor miracle, you want to increase the probability of winning from 1/10,000,000 to something reasonably close to 100%. There is at least one way to do this, but first allow me to insert the following disclaimer:

The following technique for performing minor miracles is strongly recommended AGAINST. It is a philosophical thought experiment only, intended to stimulate intellectual discussion. It would be extremely unwise to actually do it, and I take no responsibility for anyone unbalanced enough to try.

Having said that, here is the technique: simply kill yourself if you do not win the lottery! The best way to do this would be to have a machine automatically monitor the lottery results, perhaps from a Web site. You then go to bed before the draw, and have the machine quietly perform the execution while you sleep. Since you are never conscious or aware in the universes where you lose, they are automatically no longer part of your physical wavefunction. You can only awake in a universe where you have won.


Figure 1. Minor Miracle: Winning The Lottery.

There are several really good reasons not to go out and do this! First of all, do you really have enough faith in Many Worlds to bet your life on it? I certainly do not. Secondly, even if you could be 100% certain of the theory's truth, you had still better be very sure to do your probability calculations properly, and that you set the procedure up properly. If you mess up, the result will not be millions of dollars, but a failed suicide attempt that may leave you crippled for life (we will see in a bit that this is actually the most likely outcome of any attempt to actually perform the lottery miracle).

One annoying (or pleasing?) consequence of this method for minor miracle-working is that it is only verifiable to the one who performs it. From everyone else's point of view, you have not changed the odds of winning the lottery at all by killing yourself. They see a dead corpse in 9,999,999 out of ten million of the universes.

5       Major Miracles

Now that we have devised a method for minor miracle-working (even though the results are unverifiable to others), we will try to apply the same technique to create major miracles. Let's say I wish to invoke a tiny magical green elf to appear before me in a puff of smoke. This possibility necessarily exists somewhere in the wavefunction, just as did the lottery win. The only difference is that the probability is even lower--a difference in degree, not in kind. Thus, I ought to be able to apply the quantum suicide trick, killing myself in any universe where a tiny green magical elf does not appear before me in a puff of smoke. This time, I will use a human accomplice to detect the presence of the magic elf while I sleep, since the detection procedure will probably involve physical examination, interviewing, testing of the elf's magical competence, and so on. The test of minimum magical competence will be the elf's ability to appear out of nowhere in a puff of smoke.


Figure 2. Major Miracle: Invoking A Magic Elf.

Unfortunately, there are numerous difficulties with this scheme, which we will now examine.

5.1    Reliability of Detection

Unfortunately, while my accomplice might be perfectly able to recognize a tiny magical green elf if such a being were to appear, this does not at all imply that he can detect that one has not appeared. Just because my friend believes there is a magical elf in the room, does not mean that there is one, and that it will continue to be there, acting lawfully and stably like a magic green elf in the future when I wake up (whatever the laws governing magical green elves are!).

For instance, my friend might be hallucinating an elf, in which case, when I wake up I will see nothing unusual at all (other than an apparently schizophrenic friend). Or, perhaps a second friend heard about the vile experiment, and is trying to save my life by faking the appearance of a magic elf, complete with dry ice, magic tricks and special effects. Both of these possibilities, and probably many more, are almost certainly far more probable than a real, probabilistically stable, tiny magical green elf appearing in a puff of smoke.


Figure 3. Intractability of Major Miracles (Invocation Miracle).

This problem was not so insurmountable with the lottery miracle, since in that case it was arguably possible (although undoubtedly extremely difficult) to detect a winning lottery number accurately enough that the probability of incorrect detection was sufficiently lower than the probability of having a winning number.


Figure 4. Tractability of Minor Miracles (Lottery Miracle).

I would strongly suspect, however, that a one in ten million lottery draw might be too difficult to pull off in practice. Even if it is doable, one might well have to spend the equivalent of the prize money just setting it up. Even if one is absolutely sure that the winning number is being chosen in a way that is truly random on the quantum level, it is difficult to imagine a suicide method that one could be confident would work every single time out of ten million cases. Automated methods would suffer from some degree of mechanical failure, and accomplices are fallible and liable to chickening out. So even a small-time lottery win, on the order of one in a thousand, would still be very difficult to set up--let alone one in ten million! The point remains, however, that the minor lottery miracle is doable on some level, however impractical it might turn out to be for really large jackpots.

5.2    Reliability of Suicide Method

Essentially the same problem we had with the detection method reappears in the suicide method itself. For instance, if a gun is used, what is the probability of its jamming and not firing? Or inflicting serious injury, rather than death? In the case of a human accomplice, what is the chance that they will chicken out, or faint? Even something as unlikely as the bullet's vaporizing before it hits you is still probably much more likely than the magical elf you are trying to create. You would be much better off trying to breed a kennel of dogs to evolve into magic elves!

6       Failure Conditions

We can lump the detection and suicide reliability problems together, into the more general problem of reliably detecting the absence of the ideal we seek, and then successfully performing the suicide. Assume that p(ideal) is the probability of the ideal actually happening, and p(~ideal) is the probability of the ideal not happening. In the absence of the ideal, the probability of successfully detecting the absence and committing suicide is p(suicide) and the probability of failing to do so is p(~suicide).

         p(suicide) + p(~suicide) = 100%

         p(ideal) + p(~ideal) = 100%

From this, we can state the condition for failure of miracle generation (where '>>' here means 'sufficiently greater than'):

         p(~ideal) >> p(suicide)

  p(~suicide) >> p(ideal)

These two forms are logically equivalent. The condition states that the miracle will fail if the probability of failing to detect the absence of the ideal and commit suicide is sufficiently greater than the probability of the ideal happening.

The lottery miracle certainly seems doable by these standards, although with odds like 1/10,000,000, it would be tricky business indeed. The magic green elf, on the other hand, is certainly unachievable. Even if we drop the requirement for him to be consistently magical, his appearance is sufficiently improbable to be considered effectively impossible.

7       Immortality

7.1    Least Miracle Required for Salvation

So minor miracles are possible, assuming the Many Worlds Interpretation--but at a cost few would be willing to pay. And more dramatic miracles, which actually seem to accomplish the impossible, are probably just that: impossible. But what about the miracle some would consider the most desirable of all: immortality? One might think this is surely a major miracle. But this is not so obvious. Immortality is a very special kind of miracle, with surprising properties. What happens if I try the lottery trick here? That would mean that I kill myself in all worlds where I do not survive. But this is already done for me, by definition! No consideration need be given here to methods of suicide and their probabilities of failure, since mere survival is all we care about. As long as I do survive in even a tiny, tiny percentage of worlds, then immortality is automatically mine. This means that I am already immortal, no further argument required. Let's celebrate!

Or so goes the argument.


Figure 5. Universal Immortality: A Tractable Major Miracle?

What I have outlined above is the basic structure of the immortality proofs I mentioned earlier, put forth by people like Perry and Tipler.[15][18][25] I will call them 'Computational Unity Proofs', since they critically depend on Strong AI, and on the Synthetic Unity of Consciousness (or something very much like it).

I will distinguish between four increasing degrees of immortality:

         Practical immortality: freedom from biological aging and disease

         Physical immortality