I was reading wikipeadia (as I am oft to do) and I ran across an article that is really relevant to this whole thing.

Basicaly it proposes that you have a person who is trying to discern if he can be killed or not. So he sets up a gun to go off based on some random occurrence, like say, the decay rate of a subatomic particle, or the chances of a third row audience member getting hit in the eye with a watermelon seed at a Ghalager concert.

So anyway, he (because, apparently women are to "smart" to try something like this) set's up the experiment and sits in front of the gun. He will run the expirament untill he either gets killed, or reaches a randomly chosen number of iterations.

Now here is where it get interesting. Because he can only observe the experiment NOT killing him (because if he dies, he can't observe that result), due to the fact that for each action there are an infinite number of out comes, (i.e. new universes being spawned), and finally, because he has narrowed those possibilities down to two outcomes, he will prove that he is immortal. (or at the very least, EXTREMELY LUCKY.)

How this comes about is because when we talk about weather or not he will die, we normaly look at the issue from our perspective, and from tha point of veiw he will amost certainly die. However when you look at it from his perspective, he only observes a result in the universes in which he CAN observe a result; the the subset of ones where he lives.

This is where it gets weird. See, this concept holds true for ALL of us. So from say... your point of view, I will get into an accident tomorrow, but from my perspective I'll avoid the accident and be back on the forum right as rain by 7 pm. (so watch: I'll for get to log on tomorrow and you'll all think I'm dead. )

But it goes deeper than that. This theory basically states that any act or occurrence that results in our demise will be unobservable to us and that from our own personal perspective we will continue to live ad infinitum. That means that for all those thought's of suicide that Emo friend of yours has had, there are an equal number of universes in which he/she actually went through with it. The kicker for him, though, is that from his own personal perspective, he will never taste the sweet release of death, and instead he will be forced to endlessly ply the waters of this dispairfull pit called "existence."

This whole theory is called "Quantum Immortality" and far from some weird foot note to it, the theory is actually a corner stone of modern Quantum Mechanical thought.

If parallel universes exist, they render the Christian faith completely meaningless. There would be a gazillion other me's out there who chose to reject God, and a gazillion other me's out there who chose to accept God. Therefore, there would be a gazillion me's in Hell and a gazillion me's in Heaven.

This kind of sci-fi stuff renders life itself utterly meaningless, but the sci-fi writers never seem to touch on that (while there are usually characters who travel between the alternate realities and sometimes even meet their alternate selves, the writers never acknowledge that such activity renders the importance of each character's life meaningless). I could kill myself today, and who cares? There's another me out there who is living happily. There's also another me out there who's miserable. And so on. It creates an atmosphere of Nihilism. Nothing matters. Everything is intrinsically pointless when every possible outcome simultaneously exists.

There was a TV series that centered around this concept. As I watched the heroes get into danger and peril each week, I hardly cared about what happened to them because if they got killed or if something bad happened to them, there's always another universe out there where they are living in peace and prosperity, completely oblivious to the travails of their alternate selves.

The point of life is to achieve a single outcome. To make decisions and experience the result of those decisions. An alternate me for every possible decision I've ever made renders my very existence meaningless. It renders my choices meaningless. It renders my very identity meaningless. There's no point in playing a video game when you already know that every possible outcome exists. Same goes for sporting events. The point is to find out what happens and experience a single result.

"What's your point, counsellor?"
"Old men don't bother making points. There's no point."
"Is that why there are no young men on the council?"
"Good point."

Side note: Saying that things exist only because they are observable is short sighted. The guy in the experiment with the gun would get killed. No one has to even be present to observe him getting killed. Every day things happen that no one observes, yet they happen, all the same.

As for immortality, we're already immortal. I don't need a scientist's help to know that.

You're not immortal, if you are then we can do as we please without any remorse. =D

Of course Parallel universes exist ^___^ they have beans.

http://gprime.net/flash.php/magicaltrevor

durrrr.

if you actually tried to challange any of the people who did the study though they'd prolly be like 'welll.. we meant that parallel universes MIGHT exist, we never SAID anything definate' or something along those lines =P

Parallel Universes do exist. We are talking about them right now. It doesn't mean they are REAL. They may exist only as imaginary and by imaginary I mean that they have no intelligent agents that occupy them in a way where said agent can actually experience them as real.

If they are actual to an agent that occupies them then they are real. This subjective perspective of objective reality, however does not necessarily actually apply outside of any modal realm of our reality, thus they may not ultimately exists as we ultimately may not be actually talking about them right now.

@Staffy, I'll look more into criticize the Quantum Immortality when I have more time but for now I see two problems.

First, there is no reason to assume necessarily that he won't be able to observe his own death. It rules out any number of irrational and absurd modal realms either in this life or an extra(after)-life. It is already biased heavily toward reason which prejudices the experiment in any number of ways.

Second, there is no reason to assume that their are an infinite number of outcomes. Infinity may have no actual existence. But even if there are an infinite number of actual outcomes, they all may already exist no matter what the guy does, yet all the outcomes may actually cease to exist.

Well, firstly, it assumes that there are two out comes that reiterate a random number of times. This means that the two out comes are also random. What the theory states is (simply put) that any observable results can only exist in one state-the state in which they can be observed.

Realy this harkens back to the old rehtorical question about a tree falling in the woods.

This is like asking that question and then using backwards logic to ask if the tree ever fell in the first place.

But I digress.

For the seeds of this thought expirament you have to go back to Schrodinger's Cat.

A cat is sealed in a box for the weekend while it's owner goes on a trip. Now, when the owner comes back, is the cat alive or dead? How can you be sure? What if you open the box to find the opposite of your prediction is true?

Physicists soved this problem by creating an indermediary state. Basicaly, it is like saying the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

This is obviously impossible, unless you assume that this is true but each separately in differing realities.

Now look at it from the cat's perspective. (and assume that it is conscious) From its perspective, it can only observe that it is in a box, and that it is alive. These aren't just the only things it can observe, but literally, on a quatum mechanical level, these are the only things it CAN observe. If it dies, it can't observe it, and therefore, it only observes what it can observe, that it is alive.

We're not talking about parallel dimensions here. We are talking about divergent realities. They are different hues of our own reality that are only slightly different from our own. Ones where the only differences are that we personally made a different decision at an important (or not so important) juncture in our life. These decisions are so inconsequential that they do not upset the overall big picture. Like if you decided to go to McDonald's today or not. That sort of thing. It won't create a full fledged parallel dimension, just a tweeked version of the current one.


NOW ALL THIS SAID

I'm not trying to support the idea, I just thought that it was kinda funny and relevant to the current line of discussion.

parallel universes disproven in new study!


::sumi edit::

now this is DEFINITLY spam. don't.

@Staffy

Without getting into theoretical reality states or worlds which you might guess I would love to if I had more time, I'm not sure that even in our reality you can suggest that the dead cannot observe themselves having been dead because:

1. A lack of sensory input might cause the mind (unless you are a materialist) by default to trigger the signal 'no observation', thus death. In other words the senses would indicate that they are not receiving input so the mind would observe that the body containing the senses is 'dead' (by possible default).

2. The body may have access to nonliving sensory input that we are presently cut off from now, such that when the body develops into a dead state, these inputs become available to indicate our status relative to a previous (no longer 'alive') state.

My point is that we cannot know what can and cannot be observed when we are dead until we are dead if at all.

That flash is ALMOST better than Hyakugojyuuichi!!

Realy. VERY close.

hehe, yeah; Albinoblacksheep is pretty cool ^___________^


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Sumisem, it is spelt 'definitely'. please try not to commit spelling errors within my posts.

^_^

Older than Ra flash is older than Ra.