http://www.elea.org/Miracles/
Copyright © 1999,
Allan Randall
Finally, I will
examine what may be the most desirable miracle of all: immortality. Assuming
there is no God who will save us in the end, or soul that departs the body at
death, then immortality would seem to be pretty obviously in the Òmajor
miraclesÓ category and hence impossible. But this issue will turn out to be
particularly tricky, with its own complications that set it apart.
The Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics
Quantum
mechanics is our current best theory as to how the world works. If our
understanding of the universe is to progress, we must take our best theories seriously.
True, they may turn out in the end to be incomplete or totally false, but it
would be unscientific in the extreme to assume such before there is real
empirical evidence that the theory has a problem. Currently, there are no such
empirical holes in quantum mechanics. I will therefore adopt a completely
literal interpretation of quantum mechanics. I will not spend much time
defending this view, but will simply assume it, and explore the consequences.
More detailed arguments for taking quantum mechanics seriously can be found
elsewhere.[1],[2],[3] It will be helpful if the reader is
generally familiar with the essentials of the quantum measurement problem,
although a brief (but inadequate) overview will be given for those who have not
encountered it before.
The classic
problem with quantum mechanics is that, in spite of the fact that it provides
us with a remarkably accurate way of predicting the behaviour of the very
small, if scaled up to the very large, it seems to produce paradoxical results.[4] The quantum equations do not yield
a single outcome to any given situation, but multiple outcomes in
ÒsuperpositionÓ. The mathematical description of this superposition is called
the quantum ÒwavefunctionÓ. The classic example is SchršdingerÕs Cat
experiment, wherein a cat is killed or not depending on whether a radioactive
sample decaysÑgiven
that the quantum equations predict a 50% chance of decay. Quantum mechanics
predicts that the cat will be in a superposition of being both dead and alive.
This seems bizarre, even contradictory, since we never see cats that are both
alive and dead. Yet quantum mechanics, if it is truly an accurate picture of
the world, must scale
up to the macroscopic level, else it is an incomplete theory. After all, cats
in the end are supposedly just large collections of interacting subatomic
particles, so the laws of quantum mechanics ought to apply to a large cat as
much as to a small collection of electrons. Some have thus argued from
SchršdingerÕs Cat that quantum mechanics is therefore disproved as
contradictory (Schršdinger himself took this view). The theory must be incomplete, since our empirical observations disprove what
it predicts: we do not see cats in superposition.
But this
argument is flawed, since it assumes that the human being observing the cat is not
a quantum object.
If we are taking the theory seriously, and insisting that the cat is in a
superposition, then we must assume that the human observer is also just a collection of
interacting particles, obeying the laws of quantum physics. Thus, the observer
watching the cat is also in a superposition, with one version of the observer seeing
a live cat and the other a dead cat. Another way of putting this is to say that
there are two ÒworldsÓ or Òparallel universesÓ, one containing a human looking
at a dead cat and the other a similar but not identical human looking at a live
cat.
This
interpretation of quantum theory, popularly called the Òmany-worlds
interpretationÓ, was originated by Hugh Everett as the Òrelative state
formulationÓ of quantum theory.[5] But really, it is the only type of interpretation
of quantum mechanics that is possible. This can be seen by looking at the different
types of interpretations that have been offered. Traditionally, it has been said
that the various interpretations fall roughly into three main categories:
(1) The
Copenhagen interpretation and its variants. These all assume that at
some point between the subatomic events and human observation, a classical nonquantum
object (or process, or something) intervenes and ÒcollapsesÓ the superposition
into only one of its possibilities. Thus, this collapse prevents the quantum
system from developing into more than one world on the macroscopic level. When
Niels Bohr originally defended this view, he claimed that it was a true interpretation
of quantum theory, and that quantum theory could thus be consistently said to
be complete. Although he seems to have convinced an entire generation of
physicists of this delusion, it is quite straightforwardly false, since a
nonquantum something-or-other is required to collapse the wavefunction. So
Copenhagenism cannot possibly be correct if quantum theory is complete.
Somehow, there is something extra, not explained by quantum mechanics, that
collapses the wavefunction. This something extra was easy for laboratory physicists
to just ignore for many years, but modern cosmologists have found this
impossible, since they seek to study the wavefunction of the entire universe,
of everything there is. One cannot so easily ignore the requirement that
something extra outside the entire universe collapses it into a single history.
This problem with Copenhagenism is now widely recognized, and there are
relatively few who continue to support it, at least as a pure ÒinterpretationÓ
of quantum theory.
(2) Hidden variables theories. This includes all those theories
that postulate the incompleteness of quantum mechanics explicitly. They claim
that there is something hidden going on, not yet discovered, that reduces the
superposition of possibilities. These theories, most notably the deBoglie-Bohm
pilot wave, have traditionally been recognized as not strictly
interpretational, but as actually postulating the incompleteness of the theory.
Of course, Copenhagenism is really no less a hidden variables theory than any
other. I place it above in a separate category only because it was for many
years misclassified as a pure interpretation.
(3) Many-worlds and its variants. The notion of
many-worlds is thus the only pure interpretation of quantum theory currently on
the table. There are, it should be noted, numerous interpretations that do not
use the term "many worlds" that nonetheless fall into this category.
I am not claiming that there is only one conception of many worlds that is
possible, only that any consistent way of interpreting quantum theory will
involve, one way or another, an ensemble of worlds equally real to our own.
Whether or not we call it Òmany-worldsÓ is not important. What is important is
that these alternate worlds (or states of affairs, or universes, or histories,
or whatever one wants to call them) are all there in the wavefunction
of the universe, and they are alternatives we have traditionally considered,
for empirical reasons, as ÒcontradictoryÓ (although they are not logically or
mathematically contradictory). Their existence is mandated by quantum
mechanics. No re-interpretation can get rid of the alternate worlds, simply
because they are there in the mathematical machinery of our most thoroughy
tested scientific theory ever. One can postulate hidden "world-eliminating" forces
at work, but these are not required to explain our empirical data, all of which
is in accord with quantum theory. I will thus do what I think any good scientist
ought to do under such circunstances: accept the theory as our current best guess,
while remaining open to its being disproved in the future.
It has often
been noted that almost any result you can dream up exists in the wave function,
as long as one does not look to actually violate any laws of quantum physics,
such as the conservation of mass/energy. For instance, there is a slice of the
wavefunction where all the gas particles in the room you are now in suddenly
rush into one corner of the room, suffocating you. The quantum wavefunction
tells us that there are remarkably few worlds where this happens, but
nonetheless, there are a tiny fraction of worlds where it does indeed occur. But since the
probability of its occurence is so small, we never actually observe it in
practise.
So all kinds of
crazy things that would once have been said to be almost certainly impossible
(making a book levitate in the air, making a magical green elf appear in front
of you in a puff of smoke, etc.) are not only possible, but actually do get
realized in some worlds, according to quantum theory. However, any one version
of you will still only experience one of the worlds, so these ÒmiraclesÓ are highly improbable, even though they are
nonetheless there in the universal wavefunction. Worlds exist where our
greatest dreams and worst nightmares come true.
So the question
arises: can I not do something to change the probabilities so that the more
desirable alternatives are more probable? I will call such feats
Òmiracle-workingÓ, since we are trying to increase the probability of worlds
close to some ideal of what we want, in a way that would violate our usual notions of what is possible, or at
least probable. Many New Age adherents have speculated about such
possibilities, but most quantum physicists dismiss such talk as nonsense, of
course. However, I would argue that the possibility of miracle-working should
be looked at more closely, as its refutation is by no means as trivial as many
suppose.
The first thing
to note is that it is, in fact, quite easy to act to change the probabilities
so that what you observe is closer to your ideal. In fact, this might be said
to be the very definition of life (or at least integral to its definition). As
living feedback control systems, we act all the time to bring the quantum
probabilities closer to our ideal. However, we seem to have a limited ability
to do this. For convenience, I will divide such "purposive actions"
into three classes, although there is of course no solid dividing line between
them:
Purposive Action:
(1) Nonmiraculous (natural): actions that make one's ideal
highly probable, where that ideal does not violate our usual notions of what is
probable. For example, you work hard to start a new business so that you will
be likely to make lots of money.
(2) Minor miracles (beating the odds): actions that make one's ideal highly
probable, where that ideal would normally be considered relatively improbable,
but not in itself miraculous, perhaps even being observed to happen on
occasion. An example would be winning the lottery. This certainly happens to
some people, and in itself is not a miraculous event, but it would certainly
still be a miracle of sorts if we could beat the odds and be able to guarantee
a win reliably.
(3) Major miracles (supernatural): actions that make one's ideal
highly probable, where that ideal would normally be considered highly unlikely,
but not literally impossible, to ever be observed. For instance, causing a
small magical green elf to appear in a puff of smoke.
This fourth kind
of action is trivially impossible, so it is not really a legitimate kind of
action at all, since the ideal you are shooting for is actually a confused idea
in your mind, or a physical impossibility. It is thus not even in the universal
wavefunction at all.
Now let us look
again at all three legitimate actions one at a time.
We all know
these are possible. We struggle all our lives to make a world closer to our
ideal, but we seem constrained by a certain distribution of the probabilities,
which we have limited control over.
Minor miracles
I will use the
lottery example for this, since the actual probabilities are well established,
and it is easy to see that the chances of winning the big prize are extremely
remote. Of course, the mere fact of winning the lottery is not itself a true
miracle, since there are people who win the lottery. But if you could do something that would guarantee (or almost guarantee) that you
would win the lottery, then that would seem miraculous. So we will call that a
"minor" miracle.
Say you are
playing a lottery with a 1 in 10 million chance of winning the jackpot. The
universe where you win is in the universal wavefunctionÑthat seems pretty
straighforward. In fact, it should be fairly straightforward to show that up
to a point in time fairly close to the draw, all possible lottery numbers are
about equally probable. Lottery numbers are usually chosen by a machine that
mixes up a bunch of small balls with numbers written on themÑa process that
physicists call "chaotic", meaning that a very small quantum
uncertainty very quickly makes a difference at the macroscopic level (as with
SchršdingerÕs Cat), so that all the different possible lottery numbers are
about equally probable right up to some time fairly close to the actual draw.
The result of
the draw is 10 million different worlds, one for each possible lottery number
(we will pretend for the sake of convenience that the lottery draw is the only
thing distinguishing the different worlds). You exist in all 10 million, in one
of which you are the big winner. This means that at the moment of the draw, you
split into 10 million different versions of yourself. So it is just dumb luck
if you find yourself with a winning number, since there are 9,999,999 other
slightly different copies of you out there in other universes with unlucky
numbers.
The probability
1/10,000,000 is subjective, being the probability of your being in a world where you win the
lottery. By saying it is subjective, I do not mean that it is not based on an
objectively existing wavefunction, just that the probabilities involved are
probabilities of possible experiences that you could have. Actually, all probabilities are subjective in a
weaker sense, since they involve an arbitrary classification of equipossible
results into different kinds of results. All the individual results are equally
possibleÑwe cannot say that one is more probable than another, only that one kind
of result is more probable than the
other kinds. In the case of the lottery, we are classifying the results as
either positive or negative lottery wins. But here, the probabilities are not
only subjective because of this subjectively chosen classification scheme, but also in a stronger sense, because the
items being classified themselves include you, the observer, as part of the
system.
For instance,
take two worlds, A and B. You win the lottery in world A, but lose in world B.
Now imagine an analysis of the
universal wavefunction that splits up the "worlds" in such a way that
the left half of your brain in world A was classified instead as part of world
X and the right half as part of world Y, and vice-versa, so the right half of
your brain in world B was part of world X and the left half part of world Y.
This might be a technically allowable analysis of the wavefunction (one can
theoretically use any arbitary "basis" language one wants to describe
the wave function). However, it makes no sense to choose such a basis, since
it would destroy the unity of your consciousness. Not that this unity has some
power to define how the wavefunction is constituted, but rather, it is simply
not possible for you to experience the world in any other way than in a way
that has a unified consciousness in each "world".
As a simpler example,
imagine that a world resulted from the quantum equations where you did not even
exist. This world would be automatically ruled out of consideration for the
strong type of subjectivity, and it would be placed in neither the positive nor
the negative lottery group, since you can neither win nor lose the lottery in a
world where you do not exist. Curiously, all physical quantum measurements are
ultimately in this strongly subjective category, since they involve the
probabilities of a single human observer experiencing certain results. This is
where talk of ÒcollapseÓ of the wavefunction is actually useful. From an
objective stance, we say that SchršdingerÕs cat is in a superposition, and we
are likewise in a superposition of observing it. But all actual physical
measurements are made by people who are part of the system being measured, and
they only end up experiencing one of the outcomes. This is, in a sense, a ÒcollapseÓ of the
wavefunction, but not an objective, ÒrealÓ collapse, merely a subjective perspective
from which the wavefunction appears to collapse, since the observer has bifurcated into two
different consciousnesses. So long as the probabilities we are computing have
this strong subjectivity, then only one path of consciousness through the wavefunction
can be followed, since we are by definition considering the probabilities of a single observer having certain
experiences.
Actually, the
more objective stance that recognizes two superimposed observers observing
superimposed cats is not completely objective. It is a ÒweakerÓ subjectivity. But it still
classifies outcomes according to certain criteria that place different
observers in different worlds. It turns out that to split the wavefunction into
different worlds requires this arbitrary analysis of the wavefunction that
already recognizes that different streams of consciousnesses belong to
different ÒworldsÓ. So this perspective is more objective than strong
subjectivity, since it does not privilege a particular, single consciousness, but it is still not
completely objective, since it does assume that what is important is consciousness. So it is a weaker
subjectivity, a more strongly objective stance. The most objective stance of
all would simply take the universal quantum wavefunction at face value, as it
was, without splitting it or analyzing it into separate worlds, or caring about
consciousness at all. But such a viewpoint would no longer be one concerning
physical measurement. I would argue that it would be the perspective of pure
mathematics, although this is a controversial question that need not be settled
for our purposes here.
What we are
trying to do in our miracle-working is ensure that there are far more results
in the ÒpositiveÓ lottery group than in the ÒnegativeÓ group, where the only
possibilities placed in either group are worlds where we do experience an
outcome. This is a relatively objective stance that defines a world in terms of
the consciousness of a particular person, and Òcollapses outÓ any worlds that
do not contain said consciousness, but does not insist on only a single
consciousness, allowing a superposition of different versions of the same
person. This requires, of course, some kind of ultimately arbitrary definition
of what distinguishes two people as separate individuals, but I think we should
all be able to agree such a theory might be possible, or else we have no basis
for a notion of personal identity.
I really must
stress here that all this talk about different ways to analyze the
wavefunction, collapsing out certain parts of it, in no way changes the nature
of the overall universal wavefunction, which contains all the possibilities,
there to be analyzed from whatever stance we like. We are taking these various
perspectives and stances because by definition the issue we are exploring is
how things seem from the perspective of a particular person, and what the
person should justifiably be expected to experience in the future.
So is there any
way that you can act to ensure that the vast majority of worlds are in the positive
group, thus practically guaranteeing that you will win the lottery? There is at
least one way to do this, although I always hesitate to tell anyone, in case
they might actually try it. So please allow me to insert the following
disclaimer:
The following technique for
winning the lottery, or performing other minor miracles, is strongly
recommended AGAINST. It is a philosophical thought experiment only, related for
the purposes of stimulating intellectual discussion. It would be extremely
unwise to actually try it out and I take no responsibility for anyone
unbalanced enough to do so.
So 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. You then go to bed before the draw, and have the
machine quietly perform the execution while you sleep. That way, you are never
in any way conscious or aware in any universe where you lose the lottery, and
all such undesirable worlds are automatically eliminated from both the winning
and the losing groups.
In other words,
if you are never conscious or aware in these universes, then they are
automatically no longer part of your physical wavefunction! They completely drop out, since the
probabilities in the wavefunction are strongly subjective: they state the
probability of your observing some class or kind of result.
From the
objective point of view, all results are there in the universal wavefunction and no one
is more probable than any other. But physical measurements are always
strongly subjective and
thus always involve a subjective collapse of the wavefunction. By killing
yourself if you lose, before you have a chance to even be conscious in such a
world, you are never at any point alive and aware in any world where your
lottery number loses, and, from your own purely subjective point of view, these
universes don't really matterÑyou in fact are not even in them. In summary, the
only way I can think to generate miracles is to simply exit those universes
where the miracle does not occur, and the only way I can think to do that is to
commit suicide.
There are
several really good reasons not to go out and do this! First of all, do you
really have enough faith in the idea of many worlds to risk your life based on
it? I certainly think the theory makes all kinds of scientific and
philosophical sense, and is indeed our current best guess at the truth, but I
for one would never trust it enough to go out and kill myself. But even if you
could somehow be 100% certain of the theoryÕs truth, you had still better be very
sure you do your
probability calculations 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.
Besides which,
to perform such a quantum suicide would be extremely cruel to all your loved
ones, and, some might argue, would in a sense be the ultimate selfish act. To
commit suicide in this way assumes that all that matters is the wavefunction
from your subjective
point of view. What about the subjective point of view of others? For your
loved ones, the chances of your survival are still 1/10,000,000, so they will
not be so impressed. From their point of view, there is no minor miracle
hereÑyou are almost certainly killing yourself. Most likely, you would not
appreciate their doing the same thing.
Such an act
would perhaps make more sense for someone who has no loved ones at all. If you
really have nobody in the world who means anything to you at all, then at least
no one else would be directly hurt if you killed yourself. On the other hand,
you would be "opting out" of society (or at least
9,999,999/10,000,000 of future societies). You are refusing to be part of the
global solutionÑrefusing to do your part in making the world a better place,
and instead exiting the world for your own selfish reasons. Of course, from
your subjective point of view, you are not exiting the world at all, but this
assumes that only your own subjective view matters.
On the other hand,
it could be argued that if someone wants to so exit the world, they have the
right to do so. The moral issues here are not all that different from those
surrounding regular suicide. There are some differences, however. If many-worlds were
proven to the satisfaction of society as a whole, there might be a rash of
suicides, as people take advantage of their ability to (subjectively) work
miracles. This would be disruptive enough to society as a whole, that a
societal rule against it might make sense even to those who would not oppose
suicide under other circumstances.
My guess is that
even given iron-clad proof of other worlds, the vast majority of people would
still instinctively avoid suicide. There might, however, be a certain
percentage of people who would do it. Exactly how many is anybodyÕs guess. We
could expect, however, that in the vast majority of worlds, the people who
survive will be those who are not prone to taking such a purely subjective
view. So even if the existence of many-worlds were proven, natural selection
would probably push our species away from a state of continual mass suicide
(unless, of course, the suicides themselves proved to be adaptive, perhaps as
a means of population controlÑbut I will leave further debate on this issue
for another time).
Major (supernatural) miracles
Let us put aside
moral issues for now, and stick with the purpose of the thought experiment: to
explore the extent to which it is possible to make miracles happen, regardless
of the wisdom or ethics of actually doing it. We have seen that there is a way to make a minor miracle
occur. Now we will try to apply the same technique to create major miracles. It
might seem that, if there is no absolute dividing line between minor and major
miracles, and the distinction is only a matter of degree, as I claimed earlier,
then we ought to be able to apply the same quantum suicide trick, killing
ourselves in any universe where a green magical elf does not appear in a puff of smoke. However,
there are numerous difficulties with this, which I will discuss one at a time.
Some of the problems listed below might also be a concern in creating minor
miracles, but we will see that such problems are surmountable for minor
miracles with some clever design and engineering. For major miracles, however,
there are (I believe) insurmountable difficulties.
(1) Automatic detection
of the ideal.
Take the example
of the elf. I want a magical green elf to appear before me in a puff of smoke.
Unfortunately, it is going to be harder in this instance than in the lottery
case to hook up a machine to detect the result automatically and kill me while
I sleep, since it certainly seems like one would need a human being to detect
the presence of a green magical elf. This may be a problem for the lottery
miracle as wellÑbut we can probably solve
the problem there with some ingenuity. Perhaps the lottery results can be
obtained without human intervention from an Internet site, for instance.
Unfortunately, while current computer technology can provide lottery results
automatically, we would need an advanced technology not available today to
detect a magic elf automatically. Perhaps, in the future, we could build an
artificial intelligence (AI) that is able to detect magic green elves just as
well as a human can. Of course, we would have to decide what the criteria for
ÒmagicalÓ and ÒelfÓ are, but that can perhaps be worked out with some thought.
However, even if
no adequate AI is forthcoming, this is really just another ethical issue, not a
technical one, since the only reason we want to detect the ideal with a machine rather than a human is to prevent
having to bring in a human accomplice who would be required to commit murder.
But, putting such ethical issues aside, there is nothing preventing us from
having a friend perform the detection and execution, without the need for an
AI. There are practical problems, of courseÑlike finding an accomplice who is
willing to risk the murder charge that would almost certainly follow.
Another
possibility would be to just perform the suicide yourself, reasoning that you
will only be conscious for a brief time in the worlds without the elf, or lottery win, or
whatever. However, most of us would find it discomforting to say the least,
knowing that doomed versions of us that know they have only seconds to live
will exist for even a brief time. So it is reasonable to do everything we can
to make sure no version of ourselves is ever conscious of their eminent death.
In summary, so
long as reliable detection is possible, whether we can do so automatically
without human involvement is not a fundamental stumbling block. What is at
stake here is more our peace of mind in being able to perform the experiment
without undo stress on those involved, such as our other selves or an accomplice
who could get into legal trouble.
On the other
hand, there are some kinds of major miracles where this problem clearly would
be insurmountable,
such as when the ideal we seek is not something any human (or AI) would be able
to recognize, even were it to happen. For instance, we can forget about using
this technique to discover some truth that we do not currently know. We cannot
advance science simply by killing ourselves in all universes where scientific
papers explaining all the mysteries of the unvierse do not appear fully written
before us. Weeding out the garbage from the legitimate breakthroughs would
likely be a far tougher job than just going ahead and figuring it all out for
ourselves in the first place (i.e., actually doing the experimental science).
The only miracles even under
consideration here, then, are those that we feel confident we, or an
accomplice, could recognize were they to happen. The magic green elf seems to
be in this category, as one could spend some time testing and interviewing the
elf before making a decision. Unfortunately, as we will see in #3 below, the
fact that we could detect the elf were he to appear does not mean that we can
detect that he has not appeared, and this will turn out to be a far greater
problem.
(2) Detection time
Detection time
would have been a problem for the lottery example except that you were willing
to fall asleep and wake up to your idealÑyou did not require that it happen
before your eyes. So the fact that it took a certain amount of time for the lottery
draw to occur did not matter to you. But if you want a green elf to appear
before your very eyes
in a puff of smoke, detection time becomes a problem. However, this really has
nothing to do with whether it is a major or a minor miracle, so we will consider
that this is a potential problem in either case. Because it takes time for your
friend to recognize whether a green elf has appeared, you will be aware and
conscious in the many many universes where it does not happen, for at least a
brief time, before being killed. Again, most of us would not be happy with that
(although perhaps that is just a matter of mental outlook).
There are two
solutions. You could go with the artificially intelligent detection of the
green elf and require that the elf appear almost instantlyÑfast enough that its
presence or absence could be detected by the artificially intelligent machine
faster than you could become aware of the result yourself. Of course, the
problem here is that artificial intelligence technology is not good enough yet,
and may never be. So, for the time being, let us modify our requirements
slightly and have your human, naturally intelligent, friend kill you only if a
magical green elf does not appear while you sleep (say within a certain amount
of time of falling asleep). This way, you go to bed and wake up with a magical
green elf by your bedside. Okay, so we have to dispense with the puff of smoke
and instant appearance, but they unfortunately present technical problems, and
I think we can agree that having a magical green elf at our bedside when we
wake up is still a pretty major miracle indeed.
In summary,
then, we must choose a miracle for which we can detect its presence fast enough
so that the killing can occur before we can be conscious of a failure (or any
result of the failure whatsoever).
(3) Accuracy of detection
Problems (1) and
(2) seem surmountable, so long as you always have a human accomplice and allow
the miracle to occur while you sleep. However, the accuracy of the detection
process is a real problem, not so easily worked around, particularly in the
negative caseÑdetecting
that our ideal has not appeared. While it is true that your friend might
be perfectly able to recognize a green elf if such a being were to appear, this
does not at all mean that if the friend
believes there is a green elf in the room, that there is one there, and that it will
continue to be there, acting lawfully like a magic green elf in the future when
you wake up (whatever the laws governing magical green elves are!).
For instance,
your friend could be hallucinating an elf, in which case, when you wake up you
will see nothing unusual at all, not even for a brief instant. Even if you
could somehow guarantee against hallucination and delusion (perhaps with an
artificial intelligence?), the molecules in the room could still form into a
temporary shell that looks like a green elf, but is empty inside and will break apart
into a random mess by the time you wake up, or very shortly thereafter. All of
these possibilities certainly seem like they would be far more probable than a
real actual probabilistically stable magical green elf appearing. Even the
artificial intelligence would not actually be immune from delusion or
hallucination (perhaps you could make one that was less prone to it than
humans, but its hallucinating would likely still be far more probable than a
real actual green elf appearing).
The fact is that
there are just all kinds of ways in which the detection of the green elf could
fail in some way that is far more probable than a real (stable) green elf appearing.
This is not so much of a problem with a minor miracle, like winning the
lottery, since it is relatively easy to detect a winning lottery number accurately
with a probability greater than that of not winning.
(4)
Reliability of Suicide Method
Problem (3)
could be considered an aspect of the more general problem of choosing a suicide
method, if we lump the detection technique in as part of the overall suicide
method, which includes many other things that could potentially go wrong. For
instance, if a gun is used, what is the probability of its misfiring? What is
the probability of the bullet vaporising before even reaching a vital organ?
These probabilities can be made quite low, granted, but they are still almost
certainly much
higher than the probability of a stable magic green elf appearing (even if we could accurately detect it). On the other
hand, they probably need not be higher than the probability of winning the lotteryÑso
the minor miracle is still doable.
On the other
hand, it is probably easy to underestimate the probability of suicide failure,
so even for a minor miracle, we had better be very careful to make the suicide method
as reliable as possible, since if we screw things up, the most probable result
might be that we survive the whole experience, but with severe paralysis or
other debilitating injury--and no lottery winning to boot!
So problems (3)
and (4) can be combined into the more general problem of maximizing the
reliability of detecting the absence of the ideal we desire and performing the
suicide. Let us say the probability of successfully doing this is p(suicide) and the probability of
failing is p(~suicide).
The probability of the ideal we seek actually occuring is p(ideal) and of its not occuring is p(~ideal).
Then if the following conditions hold (where >> means Òmuch-greater-thanÓ and << means
Òmuch-less-thanÓ), it is highly improbable that we can perform the miracle:
Conditions
for failure of miracle generation:
The lottery
certainly seems doable, although with odds like 1/10,000,000, we still need to
work very hard
to make the detection and suicide methods as reliable as possible. The green
elf, on the other hand, is certainly unachievable with any reliability at all.
The actual result of such an experiment will almost certainly be a failed
suicide attempt, perhaps resulting in extreme pain or permanent injury.
We could even
decide to take the above requirement as actually defining the distinction between major and
minor miracles. Although this is really an arbitrary distinction, if we are
going to draw the line somewhere, this is not an unreasonable place to draw it.
Perhaps even more interesting are cases that may be on the border line between
non-miraculous and minor, and between minor and major. But I think it may be
very difficult to determine the probabilities well enough to make such
judgements (especially between minor and major). The actual situations are far
too complex for us to be certain of the probabilities; we can only make
educated guesses.
Immortality
So beating the
odds at a lottery is possible, but only at a cost few would be willing to pay.
More dramatic miracles, that actually seem to accomplish the impossible, are
probably just thatÑimpossible. But what about what may be the most desirable
miracle of all: immortality? One might think this is surely in the same
category as the magical green elf, a major miracle not achievable in practice.
But this is not so obvious. Immortality is a very special kind of miracle, with
surprising properties when viewed in the light of quantum mechanics. What
happens if you try the lottery trick here? That would mean that you kill
yourself in all universes where you do not survive! But that is, of course,
already done for you, 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 you do survive in even a tiny percentage of worlds, then
immortality is automatically yours! This means that you are already immortal, so long as your continued
survival is not (1) a logical contradiction or (2) a physical impossibility.
Yet if a green elf or a levitating chair are logically and physically possible
(as they are generally considered to be), then surely oneÕs continued survival
is not literally impossible! It is this issue we will now explore.
The case of
accidental death is the most straightforward. Quantum theory gives you automatic
protection against this sort of thing (getting run over by a bus, for
instance). Such accidents are subject to all kinds of chaotic effects, and one
need not go back very far before the accident to find that it is only one
quantum possibility out of many, and usually not the most probable one at that.
So it makes no sense, assuming the literal truth of quantum mechanics, to go
around worrying about accidental death, at least not for fear of your own life.
It does, of course, make sense to worry about losing a loved one in this
manner, and it does make sense to avoid accidents out of concern for those who
would be affected by your death. And it also makes sense for another completely
selfish reason: doing what you can to avoid accidental death will also tend to
prevent accidents that injure you, but do not quite kill you. So while the fear
of accidental death may no longer be rational given quantum theory, the fear of
accidental near-death experiences is still quite real.
I said earlier
that there will be at least a small number of worlds in which you survive,
considering your state shortly before the accident. But what about mere moments
before the accident? You may still be conscious as the bus looms over you. Does
that person, so
close to death, have any hope of survival, or must s/he simply take comfort in
the fact that there are alternate worlds that split off from his/her own only
moments ago in which s/he does survive. Should it even matter? What if I told you that I
was going to erase all your memories of the past five hours. Would that bother
you greatly? Probably to an extent, yes, but you would hardly think it of the
same seriousness as death. Many people have had the experience of losing a few
hours of memory due to a drinking binge or other cause, and while it may be
disconcerting up to a point, it is something we shrug off fairly easily.
So let us assume
for now that there is a brief, consciously discernible time before the moment of
death/survival when there is no room in the quantum equations for survival, whether due to
physical or logical impossibility. You look up at the looming bus and there is
literally nobody in any future world who can remember such an event. Is there
any reason to view this any differently from the classical (nonquantum) situation
involving a single world, where you similarly get hit, but survive and lose
your memory from just before the accident?
Of course, even
if you decide losing a few minutes, hours or even days of memory is acceptable,
there will still be a point where you will consider the memory loss to be more
than an inconvenience and in some sense a true loss of self. What if you lost
your memory of the past ten years? The thought of that probably terrifies you
and is surely not all that different from your fear of death. Unlike the last
ten minutes, the last ten years are vital to your very sense of self-identity
and who you are. So there is no clear-cut answer as to how much memory loss is
acceptable. Most of us would simply become more and more uncomfortable with the
idea of greater and greater memory losses.
However, a loss
as great as ten years is not analogous to what happens in accidental death. One
need only look hours or minutes (perhaps even seconds) before the accident to
clearly see that tiny differences could prevent the accident from occuring,
even without having to invoke major quantum miracles. And if we are willing to
invoke major miracles, it is hard to see how there would even be a consciously
discernible time during which we need face death. Exactly how close we need get
to the accident for death to be 100% physically assured is not clear, but it
seems hard to believe that the time scale involved is very large, and perhaps
it is not significant at all. Keep in mind that anything logically consistent
that does not violate the laws of physics is found somewhere in the
wavefunction, even if in only a tiny percentage of it. Even major miracles like
the bus suddenly levitating in the air, and thus missing you, should have some
finite, nonzero probability. Recall that we are no longer worrying about the
probability of this major miracle in comparison to the probability of suicide
failure. Here, your death is by far the most probable outcome, from any point
of view just slightly more objective than your own, so no matter how unlikely
the quantum miracle required to save your life, it is now the dominant factor
in your subjective wave function. Most likely, even a fraction of a second
before the accident, there will be some possible event that will save your life in some small percentage of worlds that is,
in fact, far more likely than the bus levitating. So we are back to feeling
invincible. Nothing can kill us it appears, for we will always survive in some
world or other, even considering a point in time very close to when death would
normally be expected to occur.
But before you
go jumping in front of any buses, recall that this invincibility is no
justification for recklessness. True, you will survive in some world or other,
but the most probable such worlds will almost certainly not involve levitating
buses (which was just given as an extreme example), but instead will most
likely involve your being seriously injured, perhaps crippled for the rest of
your life.
Of course, for
those who seek immortality, what really matters here is not whether we can
prevent accidental death, but whether we can avoid the aging process, since
that is the inevitable death that seems to await us all, even if we do manage
to avoid accident and disease.
Given the
current state of medicine, it would appear that we are all doomed. Every last
human on Earth is suffering from a fatal disease called aging. Try as we might,
it will kill us in the end, as there is no known cure with present technology.
This seems to put it in the class of requiring a major miracle to save us, in
line with green elves and levitating chairs. It is unlikely that continued
survival in spite of the aging process is literally physically or logically
impossible. If there is some tiny percentage of worlds where molecules by
chance conspire to levitate chairs, then there is surely also some perhaps even
tinier percentage where they conspire to keep us alive at least a little bit
longer in spite of advanced age.
This is not, it
would seem, a kind of immortality you should desire, since the most probable
such major miracle is not going to restore your health and youth. All that is
required here is that your consciousness and personal sense of identity be
retained. This will most likely leave you in a state of advanced ill health.
According to this argument, you are doomed to live for all eternity in a state
of progressively worsening health, kept barely alive and conscious by quantum
miracles that are just miraculous enough to keep you alive, but no more so.
Egads! This is
not the utopic vision of future immortality one may have hoped for. Rather,
this is a fate that seems more on par with the traditional notion of hell. But
note something very strange and odd about the situation we are now faced with,
according to the argument advanced thus far. In the case of all other major
miracles, they were just not remotely attainable. If it had been possible
to generate a magic green elf, or make the air rush to the corner of the room,
then we would have proved that it is possible to willfully violate observed laws
of (classical, macroscopic) thermodynamics![6] So as physicists,
we all breathed a sigh of relief when we realized the green elf was actually
unattainableÑthermodynamics remained intact. Winning the lottery, as a minor
miracle, does not violate thermodynamics.
Yet here we are
facing the conclusion that the laws of thermodynamics must be violated
repeatedly and continuously from some point of advanced age onward, indefinitely
into the future (that is, either forever, or until our continued survival is
a logical or physical impossibility). It has been said that oneÕs pet theory
of the universe can violate almost any law without being in the same trouble
it is in if it violates the laws of thermodynamics, and I tend to agree with
this rule of thumbÑwe had better be very suspicious of the conclusion we are
now facing. After all, we initially thought that perhaps major miracles were
possible via the quantum suicide method, yet more careful thinking showed us
that there were fundamental reasons why thermodynamics would remain intact.
Perhaps the same is the case here (although a violation of thermodynamics is
not in itself enough to reject a theory; at this point it simply raises our
suspicions).
So let us look
more carefully at what actually would, in practice, be likely to happen if our
above scenario of infinitely progressing decrepitude came to pass. First of
all, we are talking about forever here, or at least until survival is a physical or logical
impossibility, which is quite likely to be until the end of the universe or
relatively close to it. It seems highly unlikely that, given such a long time
period, that continued quantum miracles would really be required, since at some
point medical
technology would surely be able to restore our health. Even today, while
immortality is still a dream, it is not an outlandish or far-fetched one. All
that would really be required to keep someone alive indefinitely would be:
(a) the ability to clone and grow a new
body, without the development of a new personÑi.e., without the development
of a cerebral cortex. Given the current state of technology, this does not seem
like that remote a possibility. We could have our bodies cloned, and perform
a thorough frontal lobotomy early on in the process. Actually, preventing a cerebral
cortex from developing would not strictly be required, although it would be needed
to avoid ethical problems (at the very leastÑthe
procedure would likely still evoke controversy!).
(b) the ability to transplant the brain
of an aging patient into the new, younger body. This, again, is beyond our
current abilities, but not that far off. Brain transplants have actually been
done on chimpanzees, and although the result was paralyzed chimpanzees, they did
survive the
operation for a time, and a more successful result probably just requires
better microsurgery techniques. Again, nothing outlandish or fundamentally new
is required.
(c) the ability to repair or replace
brain tissue as it dies off. Although transplanting your brain into a fresh
body would give you some time, your brain does not have the ability to
regenerate itself naturally. However, there have been some successes with
transplanting fetal tissue into damaged brains (such as those of patients with
ParkinsonÕs disease), and so it is again not that outlandish to imagine a
technology that would be able to repair wear-and-tear brain damage now and
then.
With these three
medical techniques in place, we could keep people alive perhaps indefinitely
(barring accidental death, which we have already shown to be a minor problem).
This is not to mention other possibilities that may be more fanciful and
futuristic, such as downloading oneÕs mind into a robotic or a virtual body.
The point is that some kind of immortality is probably going to be available through
technology at some point in the future. Even if we disagree as to how easy it
will be, this is a question of "when" not "if". So even if
the required technology arrives too late to save us, it should be in place for a future
generation. Let us guess, for the sake of argument, that these advances are in
place 100 years from now. At some time before that, you expect to die. However,
let us say, as we argued earlier, that there will be a tiny percentage of
worlds where you survive via major miracles, but in a decrepit state. Since
major miracles are required, these worlds are extremely physically unlikely. That means if
there is any remotely
or vaguely possible nonmiraculous chain of events that could lead to the right
technology being discovered in time to save your life before quantum miracles are required, then
the vast majority of worlds that have you in them 100 years from now will have the required technologies in
place in time to save you nonmiraculously.
Of course, this
is from your
point of view right now (and I am presuming here you are young enough to look at least a few
decades ahead). But what about when you are 98 years old and about to die, and
still no immortality technology is available? You need either the right
technology or a
major miracle right now (or at least very very soon) if you are to survive nonmiraculously. At
this point, it might take a major miracle to generate the technology in time to
save you, and we are back to where we started, in violation of thermodynamics
(again, not absolutely against the rules, but definitely cause for worry).
Figuring out
exactly what the probabilities are is, of course, far beyond our abilities,
given our current knowledge. However, it should be noted that, when calculating
quantum probabilities, the future does contribute to the probability of current events, at
least in a way. It does not cause them in the usual sense of Òcause and effectÓ (what
Aristotle called Òefficient causeÓ). But it does cause them in the sense that the
quantum probabilities at any point in the universe depend upon the whole
structure of the universe, everywhere in space, considered together (which can
include points in the future as well). This is because it is the whole
observable universe that is Òmore or less probableÓ given the quantum
equations. We cannot really consider the room in which we lie on our death-bed,
on the tiny planet Earth, as wholly separate from the rest of the universe.
The most common
example of this sort of thing is the case of delayed collapse of the
wavefunction. A photon on its way to Earth from a distant galaxy is refracted
around an obstruction, and could go either to the left or to the right on its
way around the object (which might be, for example, an intervening galaxy).
There are thus two worlds, one where the photon goes around the object to the
left and one where it goes to the right. Which way it goes has no affect on our
consciousness until we observe through our instruments which way the photon
actually went. So at the moment we make the observation, the wavefunction
collapses into one possible history, which is now the way it was all along from our point of view, even
though a moment ago both possible histories were there in superposition. This
is the same as saying that a moment ago, two universes with different photon
states had identical copies of you, but now the two copies are different, since
one has observed a left-path photon and the other a right-path photon. From your
point of view, the universal wave-function has "collapsed".
This subjective
ÒcollapseÓ applies right back to the moment the photon began to veer around the
object, which may be by now millions of years ago. Our observation now helps to determine what happened
millions of years ago, far away. This is because the possibilities that are in
superposition are of the entire experimental setup, including Earth plus galaxy plus
photon, over millions of years, and what we do now to observe the photon may affect
what is more or less probable for it to do when it begins its trip. Such
correlations are part and parcel of quantum theory. They are not, under the many worlds
interpretation, to be thought of as faster than light or backwards in time
causality, however, as they are in some interpretations, since one could never
use them to send information faster than light or backward in time in any
particular universe.
This is because each world still obeys the laws of physics, including the
prohibition against faster than light travel. What appears as backwards in time
causality is actually just an expression of the relative probabilities of
various kinds of possible histories of the universe. Each kind of possible
history has a certain probability, so that what we choose to do now in observing the photon can affect
the probability of what it does at the start of its travels, even though each
possible history involves no backwards through time causality. In each history,
the photon is emitted, follows a certain path, and is absorbed. However, what
we choose to do to absorb the photon can affect the probabilities of what it
will do when it is emitted, since the probabilities depend on the whole
ensemble of kinds of universes, which depends on the entire experimental setup,
even though each possible universe has only local, slower than light, effects.
The result is apparent faster than light and backwards through time
correlations, even though each individual universe can never involve
information transmission faster than light or backwards in time.
Now assume that
there are two possible histories of the universe, one in which we manage to
make the required medical discoveries in time to save ourselves (and not just
our descendents) from death nonmiraculously, and another in which we do not. On
the face of it, it seems that there is a 50-50 chance that we will surviveÑfrom
a point of view slightly more objective than our own, say that of our family
doctor (although he may be unaware of what this probability is). However, the
actual probabilities might be quite other than 50-50, since these probabilities
depend on the entire experimental setup, and not just how many different mental
states will result. Even if there are only two possible resulting kinds of
mental states, one where our doctor is aware of our death and one where s/he is
aware of our survival, in actual fact there may be far more world histories
that result in one than in the other.
It would seem
then that far more worlds will involve our death than our survival. But recall
that if our survival does not occur nonmiraculously, it will occur
miraculously. Given this, as an extreme case, it would appear that what is
actually most likely is that we will find out that we have been in a
universe all along that will at some point in the future have the medical
technology in time to save us. This should be far more probable than being saved by
quantum miracles and in a state of decrepitude until the technology becomes
available. In other words, of all the world histories it is possible to be in,
the entire world histories that involve medical technologies developing in time
to save us will be far more common than those without. In other words, to be a
person in a universe with the required technology is a more probable kind of
person to be than to be one in a world without, since the latter kind of world
must be a world that violates our commonly understood laws of thermodynamics.
The quite
legitimate objection to this argument is that the probabilities of our survival
in the future should not affect our chances of finding ourselves here now. If we require thermodynamic
miracles in the future to save us, fine, why should that make our present universe less likely, future and
all? What matters in terms of what kind of universe I find myself in now is the probability that said
universe will produce something like me up to this point in time. If such a
universe will in all probability end up killing me off in the vast majority of
futures, then that makes the decrepit me of the future who has survived major
miracles an unlikely person to be, but it unfortunately does not make the me now who will die in the majority of
futures any more probable.
Unfortunately,
this line of reasoning leads us back to observing that, even given that the
majority of futures from our doctor's point of view involve our death, only the
miraculous ones where we survive in a decrepit state are relevant from our own
personal point of view. So we are back to expecting a violation of
thermodynamics in our own personal future.
Yet
if such a person is so unlikely a person to be, as the universe involved is so
improbable, how can we now be so probable, since such a future naturally
goes with usÑgiven our current conscious state, we are guaranteed such a
future. There is something oddly paradoxical about this result. The problem
here is that we are being too loose about which probabilities are the
fundamental ones, the ones that should actually matter to us.
From
a rigorous philosophical perspective, what begs for explanation is simply my
current conscious state now, not my entire life-line. In fact, there may well
be no absolute metaphysical fact of the matter that makes me-now a future
version of a me-from-the-past. I have memories that make me believe, rightly or
wrongly, that I am
that person, and that is all that really matters. So we should not be initially
concerned with the probabilities of this or that happening to us in the future.
We must be first concerned instead with the probability of being the kind of
person we are right now. In other words, the philosophically prior question
to ask is not Òwhat is likely to happen to me tomorrow or ten years from now?Ó,
but rather, Òam I, right now, a likely sort of person
to be?Ó
If
we assume this latter question as fundamental, we get a version of Carter's
strong anthropic principle, in which the universe we are in has the properties
it does because we are a rather typical instance of a consciousness, and our
universe is rather typical of the environments that must necessarily accompany
such consciousnesses (the consciousness and the environment being together one
object, of course, not absolutely separable). Thus, it is extremely unlikely
to ever find oneself in the situation of being a person who has survived multiple
supernatural miracles to preserve their lifeÑlet us call them Òsupernatural
immortalsÓ. On the other hand, one
might quite likely find oneself to be a person who has either not yet reached
that point (call them Ònatural mortalsÓ),
or a person in a universe that allows them to continue on through nonmiraculous
means such as an appropriately advanced medical science (Ònatural immortalsÓ).
So,
to sum up, we have the following types of consciousness (note that the term
ÒimmortalÓ refers to
living either forever, or up to some point where continued life is either a physical
or logical impossibility):
(1) supernatural immortals (highly
improbable):
someone who, for some period of their lives, is in an increasingly decrepit
state of health and kept alive by the continuous action of supernatural
miracles. The supernatural miracles may stop, and the person may enter a phase
of their life more like that of the natural immortal, but as they have gone
through a supernatural period, their universe and consciousness are still
highly improbable, and they are still classified as supernaturalÑnot naturalÑimmortals.
(2) natural mortals (highly
probable):
someone who is in a universe that cannot keep them alive through natural means,
but whose current state is highly probable. Destined to become supernatural
immortals.
(3) natural immortals (highly
probable):
someone who is in a universe that can keep them alive indefinitely (until it
becomes a physical or logical impossibility), through natural means.
It would seem
that we have no reason to believe that either natural mortals (#2) or immortals
(#3) are particularly improbable. One type might be more common than the other,
but both could be, so far as we can tell at the moment, reasonably common. And
since supernatural immortals (#1) are exceedingly uncommon, one might
reasonably expect not to find oneself in that situation, and we can thus
effectively eliminate it from consideration. Ironically, however, one of the
probable types (#2) is destined to turn into the improbable type (#1), once we
drop the philosophically prior question of "who is me now?" and ask the inevitable
question "who will I be?". Natural mortals always turn into supernatural immortals.
So is there a
problem with this? What if it really is highly probable to be naturally mortal,
and yet one's future is exceedingly improbable? Since there is no necessary
metaphysical connection (that we know of) between the future you and the current
you, this presents no fundamental contradiction, only an apparent one. Yet
this apparent one is quite disturbing. It seems to indicate that our current
consciousness is reasonably likely, and yet we are destined to become something
highly unlikely.
But is this the
most reasonable way to view the situation? As mentioned earlier, many people
lose memory due to a drinking binge, and yet we would probably not suggest that
when they are in the drunk stage, living out memories that will be forgotten,
that they consider as valid futures only those that include memories of
precisely this current consciousness. Indeed, such futures might be exceedingly
improbable, perhaps even requiring some sort of miracle. Yet, in projecting
from our current natural mortality to a future supernatural immortality, we are
doing something very much like this. Why not presume, as we would likely
suggest to the drunk person, that we should consider only reasonably probable
consciousnesses, and draw only from those the ones that are most similar to
ourselves as candidates for possible future (or past) selves?
But, one might
object, this is fine for the case of drunken amnesia, since there are still
many future selves that, while they lack the ability to remember being our
current consciousness, nonetheless are justifiably the same person as us now.
But in the case of the natural 110 year old mortal, there are no probable beings that could
reasonably be described as their future selves. So, it seems, we are forced in
this case to consider our future to be miraculous, albeit minimally miraculous,
since what we can expect to happen to us will be the least miraculous way possible to
keep us alive. The paradoxical thing about
supernatural miracles is that, just when you think you have come up with some
situation that mandates them, you realize that delusion or hallucination could
naturally account for the same phenomenon (as when we thought we could produce
the magic elf, and then realized that we would be much more likely to just end
up hallucinating the elf). In order to consider the most probable supernatural
miracle, then, we must try our best to consider whether some natural chain of
events would be more likely. One tends naturally to be suspicious of such a
result, and yet there it is. Let us examine this possibility in more detail.
Assume for now, that we are indeed a type 2 consciousness: a natural mortal.
At the advanced age of 110, we reach the limit of natural (minor) miracles, and
the first supernatural miracle occurs to keep us aliveÑwe are at that magical
borderline between our natural mortal existence, and our new supernatural immortal
existence. Let us try to make a reasonably educated guess as to the most likely
such miracle. This means not going for the most extreme cases, like the cells in our body
spontaneously regenerating just enough to keep us alive. Instead, let us try to
come up with something as plausible as we can that is nonetheless consistent with
our life experience as a natural mortal up to this point. Consider some
possibilities:
Time travel: If time travel is at all
possible--even in
the far future, at such great cost that they can go back in time only once--then
it seems reasonable to presume that in some possible future, someone will
travel back in time to save us. But this would no longer be a supernatural
miracle. (One might call it a natural miracle, of course, but so is everything
else that has ever occurred that had anything to do with allowing us to be born
or keeping us alive.) So if time travel is possible, supernatural immortality
is effectively ruled out, and we are almost certainly natural immortals (presuming
there will be immortality technology at some point in the future, even
if distant). Of course, that is a big "if", since time travel might
very well not be
possible without a major miracle.
Delusion/hallucination: What about the situation where you
find out, after reaching 110 years of age, that you were simply living in a
universe that allowed natural immortality all along, but were delusional? You
find, in fact, that you have been in an insane asylum for years, a psychotic
who really believed themselves to be a natural immortal. This may seem
implausible, but is it not perhaps more likely that there is a world were such
a being legitimately has memories of being you-now than that the laws of
thermodynamics would be broken to keep you alive? It seems that there must be.
So, if it makes
sense to speculate being the perpetually decrepit individual, it makes even more sense
to imagine you will turn into a delusional person in another universe! You
will skip universes! Bizarre and unlikely yes, and perhaps a major miracle, but
surely more probable than continual regeneration.
Alien
visitation: Perhaps
aliens visit us and give us the secret to immortality. Unlikely, perhaps, but
possibly more likely than violation of thermodynamics. However, unless there
really are aliens likely to do this in our universe, this will probably have to
be called a major miracle.
Premature medical breakthrough: An individual or research group discovers
the secret to immortality years ahead of time. Even if some miracles are required
for this, it is, again, surely more likely than spontaneous regeneration. I
would guess that this scenario is the most likely considered so far. After
all, since medical technology is expected to eventually cure us of aging anyway,
would it not seem that if a supernatural miracle is required to keep us alive,
that it would be a minimal miracle, that simply allowed the technology to exist
earlier than otherwise anticipated? Somehow, the natural mortal must get this
technology before one would normally expect. However, while this may be reasonably
probable (even if perhaps still a miracle) for our current generation, it would
certainly seem that to save someone in ancient Egypt, for instance, would
require a stupendous miracle, even through this route. How is someone in
ancient Egypt to get life-saving medical help without drastic supernatual
miracles? On the other hand, wouldn't it still be more likely than continual
spontaneous regeneration?Ñperhaps ancient scientists just get really really really
lucky quite a few times in a row.
Even if all of
these possibilities require major miracles, they still illustrate that jumping
to the conclusion that miraculous decrepitude is the most likely scenario is
premature. The number of possible ways for a major miracle to occur is truly
staggering. We have only touched the tip of the iceberg of possible scenarios
we might dream up. And remember, that the important scenario is whichever one
is the most likely one, and there are probably vast numbers of scenarios I am
not even thinking of.
We are now faced
with three possible scenarios:
(1)
We
are already natural immortals: there is some reasonably probable way of achieving
immortality, either by (a) a natural miracle similar to one of the above scenarios, (b)
by some natural
miracle we have not yet considered, or (c) by completely nonmiraculous
eventÑwe simply are already
in a world with the technology coming very soon to save us. In any of these cases,
we are natural immortals. Celebrate.
(2)
There is no reasonably probable way to
achieve immortality, but there are major miracles that result in it, and
projection into the future is metaphysically arbitrary. We could choose to
interpret this in either of two ways: (a) we are in a probable world with an improbable
personal futureÑwe are natural morals
destined to miraculously turn into supernatural immortals, or (b) we could assume instead that it is
simply philosophically illegitimate to focus on incredibly improbable future
selves, no matter how like us they are. It makes more sense to focus on those
probable selves most like us. If none are like us enough to meet minimal
personal identity requirements, then the whole project of extrapolation into
the future is just untenable.
(3)
The only logically and physically
possible worlds really are ones in which we die. We are natural mortals. Make your
funeral preparations and say goodbye to your loved ones.
Scenario #1 is
uncontroversially cause for celebration, but we have no real reason to maintain
that it must be true. Scenario #2a is problematic, since we can call its
philosophial legitimacy into question. Projecting ourselves into highly
improbable future selves may be philosophically untenable. This leads to
scenario #2b, which assumes it is completely fallacious to extropolate our
current consciousness into the future like this. The view in #2a, that we must
view our future selves as supernatural, goes something like this: "the
only futures that are relevant to me-now are those for which me-now is a valid
past state. Therefore, those are the ones I will use to talk about my future
probabilities, even if they are all wildly and fantastically improbable."
"But
wait!" scenario #2b chimes in, "there is no metaphysical principle
tying you to these futures as opposed to other futures of selves that are close
to being future-you but not quite, or for that matter selves that are vaguely
like you or quite unlike you. If we are as strict as we possibly can be about
applying Descartes' Cogito principle ("I think, therefore I am")Ñi.e. that
what begs for explanation is just our current conscious stateÑall
we can really do is presume that our current conscious state is a reasonably
probable one out of the set of all conscious states (including ours and all
other possible creatures). So it is not really legitimate to declare quantum
miracles highly probable, just because they are required to maintain a future
self that is literally our future. All we can really say is that certain
consciousnesses are more probable than others, and one in which quantum
miracles had to occur is highly improbable, and so one should not expect to
find oneself in such a state. So a more realistic view of the future may be
just to realize that it involves many possible consciousnesses, and that some
of these will satisfy our arbitrary conception of "me" and some
won't. But whether we focus on those that do or not, it is not sensible to view
our future as consisting of quantum-miraculous selves. We are free to focus on
future consciousnesses that are very much but not exactly future versions of
"me-now", but only if we choose relatively probable ones. It is thus
more reasonable to extropolate oneself into the future by imagining a self that
is as consistent
as possible with
one's current self, but that has reasonably high probability, than by imagining
a more strictly consistent future self that has extremely low probability (i.e. that
violates classical, macroscopic thermodynamics).
This leaves us
with the rather bizarre suggestion that our most likely future self is someone
maximally similar to us, but not really quite us. It might even be someone
in a future manifestly not a future of this current world--but this is
a result we should view with great suspicion. Am I to conclude that my most probable
future either contains a future-me, or a future-not-quite-me, or a future-kind-of-vaguely-like-me?
There seems to be something wrong with this last possibility. While it may seem
reasonable to extropolate into the future towards a self that is almost a
future-me-now, extropolating into someone who is just a different person altogether
is plain silly, and violates the whole idea of extrapolating ourselves into the
future in the first place. So perhaps we must say that this is a case of true
death, since we cannot extrapolate into the future exact-me, and it makes no
sense to extrapolate into the not-me. But we cannot view
it as true death if there is even one exact-me in the future, no matter
how improbable, since we must extrapolate into this improbable
self if we decide that extrapolating into all available probable ones
is untenable. So are we not then stuck with extrapolating into the highly improbable
supernatural self, if we are to extrapolate at all? It may well be, depending
on how the actual probabilities work out, that we are left with the choice of
#2a, projecting into an improbable immortality, or #2b, simply not projecting
at all, which is entirely different than projecting into
death. In this case, there is simply no legitimacy into trying to project into
the future at all.
The question of immortality has not been answered, it has been rendered
meaningless.
The curious
thing is that the choice between #2a and #2b is utterly arbitrary. The two
scenarios describe the same objective state of affairs, only differing in how
we emotionally relate to the future, not in anything real at all. There is no objective
dilemma here; there
is only a dilemma if we insist on being able to interpret the universal
wavefunction in terms of some kind of single unified life-line. But there may be no such
clear-cut interpretation. Perhaps we will die, and there will follow huge
numbers of future natural immortals more or less similar to us, and only a tiny
few miraculous ones that more legitimately are us. The less probable future selves
that really are us
are incredibly unlikely people to be. There is no objective paradox here just
because we are now highly likely people to beÑonly
a dilemma as to how to arbitrarily project oneself into the future, an
operation we are not metaphysically obligated to perform in the first place.
Of course, some
may argue against my assumption that projection into the future is
metaphysically arbitrary, which I will call the "assumption of subjective
personhood". Subjective personhood holds if the mind is purely
computational like a machine (an idea known as the strong AI postulate).
Although I personally tend to assume subjective personhood, since anything else
seems a form of mysticism, there is no clear-cut argument either way, and many
people reject the idea, assuming instead what I will call the "assumption
of objective personhood", that there is an exact future self that is metaphysically
connected to our
current self in a special way that makes it absolutely a future version of us,
regardless of our concept of personal idenity. In this case, #2b is impossible,
and the only interpretation of #2 is #2a, that we are natural mortals destined
for supernatural immortality. #1 and #3 are still as much possibilities under
metaphysical personhood as under subjective personhood. Please note that the
assumption of subjective personhood is not suggesting that our persons have no
objective identity. It is suggesting only that there is no reason to suppose
that there is an absolute standard by which to determine that a future person
is the same
person as some particular past person.
Scenario #3 is a
scenario we have neglected up to now, in our optimism that perhaps some kind
of immortality was possible. However, the sad truth might very well be that, for
usü as opposed perhaps to those lucky
enough to live in the high-tech future, there is not even a miraculous future
in which we can be said to exist in any real sense at all. The argument against
this, and in favour of #1 or #2, is that surely there is some kind of
miracle that could keep you alive, even if highly improbable. This has intuitive
appeal, considering how vast the space of possibilities isÑit must surely have
any incredible thing we can imagine. But it is not entirely clear that this is
so. A miraculous future might quite possibly be very unstable and unpredictable.
Such a future might be more like a half-conscious dream-state with no clear linear
direction of time or lawful behaviour, than anything like a solidly envisionable
future in something we would call a "world" at all. And what sense
does it make to extrapolate into such a state and call it the "future"Ñeven
if we do decide that projection into the future is in principle legitimate? In
the end, of course, even in this case, it may be quite arbitrary what one chooses
to extrapolate into, since all that science really need provide us is a reasonable
explanation for who we are right now. In any case, it seems quite possible to
me, even likely, that a miraculous future self would lack many of the features
required for a stable self identity at all, so #3, true death, isÑsorryÑa real
possibility.
Of course, #1 is
still a possibility, but I see no reason to conclude that it must be the case.
I am personally highly suspicious of #2, since it requires either taking
seriously a future that violates thermodynamics, or (objectively no different)
rejecting the whole notion of "future" altogetherÑnot a reason to eliminate
it, but certainly a reason to be suspicious of it. On the other hand, the fanciful
sounding nature of the many-worlds hypothesis, which is the main assumption of this
entire essay, was also, I think, reason enough to be highly suspicious of it
before there was solid experimental evidence for it, in spite of the fact that
there were philosophical systems that predicted it (such as those of Bradley,
and in a sense Leibniz). So we have no solid rational argument against #2. I
remain, however, suspicious of it, given that there are other reasonable
options.
Finally, #3
seems, like #1, to be reasonable, but I again see no reason to prefer it. The
biggest reason to suspect #1 is the simple fact that we do seem to be living very close to the
point in history where the required medical technology might become possible.
But again, this is too unclear to justify any firm conclusions.
In summary,
then, I see no reason to currently make any bold claims as to the mortality or
immortality of the soul based on quantum physics. We may well be immortal--in
which case it will probably be medical science that saves us, not a mystical
spiritual soul or quantum miracles--or we may be quite mortal and destined to
die. A more complete understanding of quantum mechanics as a rational theory,
which we have only just begun to explore in this paper, may help in all this.
It may be that the tools to properly answer the death question, and its relation
to quantum theory, are just not at hand in our current scientific arsenal.
On the other hand, the possible existence of many worlds, which quantum mechanics
at the very least makes a real possibility, does make the whole question of
mortality much more difficult to figure out. The set of all possibilities
is just so extreme, so vast--and issues of probabilities and stability so subtle--that
even trying to guess at the actual probability distribution just defeats us.
Conclusion
To sum up,
although you definitely don't want to use the quantum suicide technique, if quantum
theory is literally correct, and there are other worlds, it is possible
to force minor "miracles" to occurÑevents that are highly unlikely
but nonetheless are observed to happen on occasion and do not seem to violate
the laws of classical physics (or more precisely, are more probable than the
failure of detecting their absence and committing suicide).
An obvious
question arises: is there any way to do this without having to resort to
suicide? I have tried to think of other ways, and certainly the existence of
one way suggests that it is at least reasonable to ask whether there are
others, but I personally cannot think of any other way to acomplish it. Unless
you actually die in the undesirable worlds, it seems that you are at the mercy
of relatively uncontrollable probabilities, and must stick with the traditional
non-miraculous ways that all living control systems use to control their
environment and make their future world vaguely and imperfectly closer to their
ideal.
Another question
is whether there is any general way around the problem of reliability for major
miracles. Again, it is possible, but I cannot think of any. As of now, although
the supernatural thought experiments are intriguing, they seem to be just that:
thought experiments of the fanciful variety that could not in practise be
carried out.
And finally,
although quantum mechanics makes it much more difficult to decide on the
question of immortality, it is still entirely unclear how to decide the issue.
We may or may not be immortal, and if we are, it will very likely come to us,
not through supernatural and mystical intervention, but through breakthroughs
in medical technology that seem in no way miraculous, but are rather the result
of hard sweat and work by determined humans through the ages.
[1]Allan F. Randall.
Quantum Superposition, Necessity and the Identity of Indiscernibles.
http://www.io.org/~randall/Indiscernibles/, Toronto, 1996.
[2]Michael Clive Price.
Many Worlds Theory FAQ.
http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/documents/many-worlds-faq.html, 1995.
[3]David Deutsch. The
Fabric of Reality.
Penguin Press, London, 1997.
[4]For an introduction to
the different interpretations of quantum theory see the following two volumes,
both of which are excellant: P.C.W. Davies and J.R. Brown. The Ghost In The
Atom.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1986. Also: Nick Herbert. Quantum
Reality.
Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1985.
[5]Hugh Everett, III.
Ò'Relative state' formulation of quantum mechanics,Ó In: The Many Worlds
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, DeWitt & Graham (Eds.), pp. 141Ð149.
Princeton U. Press, Princeton, 1957, 1973.
[6]The
laws of thermodynamics are not counted amongst the laws of physics that cannot
be violated in the quantum wavefunction. This is because the laws of physics
do not actually dictate against the laws of thermodynamics being violated!
Thermodynamic laws are probabilistic, not absolute. It is possible that this
applies to other physical laws as well, and that they all amount to logical
necessity plus probability theory, but such a grand unification and reduction
of physics to the (synthetic) a priori has not yet been achieved, so we
will assume that there are some absolute physical (nonmathematical) laws that
cannot be violated.