Quantum Suicide And Immortality
In quantum mechanics, quantum suicide is a thought experiment. It was originally published independently by Hans Moravec in 1987 and Bruno Marchal in 1988 and was independently developed further by Max Tegmark in 1998. It attempts to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, from the cat's point of view. Quantum immortality refers to the subjective experience of surviving quantum suicide regardless of the odds.
Keith Lynch recalls that Hugh Everett took great delight in paradoxes such as the unexpected hanging. Everett didn't mention quantum suicide or quantum immortality in writing, but his work was intended as a solution to the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Lynch said "Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death", Tegmark explains, however, that life and death situations don't normally hinge upon a sequence of binary quantum events like those in the thought experiment.
Read more about Quantum Suicide And Immortality: Quantum Suicide Thought Experiment, Max Tegmark's Work, Criticism, In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words quantum, suicide and/or immortality:
“A personality is an indefinite quantum of traits which is subject to constant flux, change, and growth from the birth of the individual in the world to his death. A character, on the other hand, is a fixed and definite quantum of traits which, though it may be interpreted with slight differences from age to age and actor to actor, is nevertheless in its essentials forever fixed.”
—Hubert C. Heffner (1901–1985)
“Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a “grand peut-être”Mbut still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it—the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)