Discussion Exploiting Quantum Suicide/Quantum Immortality

[esoragoto]

Quantum Immortality
Quantum Immortality is a thought experiment based upon the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a very short, summarized form, it goes like this: In the many-worlds interpretation, numerous parallel universes "branch off" from each other every moment, creating parallel universes for every outcome for every event, as long as they're physically possible. If an event kills you in one of those universes, there must be at least some universes where that event did not kill you. Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not.

Quantum Immortality is non-falsifiable, and therefore non-scientific. It's a thought experiment, not some rigorously studied, accepted part of quantum physics. Still, it's easy to let it take up your mind when it comes to suicide. What if you never even had a chance against SI, from your own perspective? What if you're always destined to back down at the last moment, no matter what?


Exploiting Quantum Immortality
If Quantum Immortality is true, then you could put yourself in the way of any harm you like, knowing that you would survive. If you played Russian Roulette with a gun that had 5/6 chambers filled with bullets, Quantum Immortality says that one of three things would happen:
1) You would get the empty chamber, and you would survive (This is probably the most likely outcome here)
2) The gun jams or otherwise fails, and you would survive
3) You would get shot, but you would survive (You would probably want to ensure the clearest aim to the brainstem possible, to minimize the odds of this and maximize the odds of the other outcomes)

With this, it would be possible to manipulate probability in your favor and force even very unlikely outcomes to happen, by tying your death to an undesired outcome and setting it up so that you only survive on outcomes that you want. In theory, you could even force extremely unlikely outcomes like winning the lottery - the key is to ensure that the "gun" (or whichever method) is as effective as possible, to minimize the possibility of outcomes 2 or 3.


Why?
I would like to not be alive. Failing that, being alive after winning the lottery would be an okay consolation prize. Most people don't stand to gain from betting their life on a thought experiment, but if you're already planning to die, you don't have much to lose by giving it a try. And if you do survive and win the lottery, then you'll know beyond a reasonable doubt that trying to kill yourself is futile. It would suck, but it's better to know than not know.

From a more practical, less fanciful perspective, killing myself is hard. Really hard! SI is definitely really something. I can get all the equipment ready and set up, but actually taking that final step feels impossible. I think it'd be a lot easier if I was essentially "passing the gun" to the universe and letting it take the shot for me, setting it up in advance so I'd die automatically if I didn't win the lottery, without manual input. It also re-frames my actions from "suicide" to "trying to cheat the universe", which I think would make SI a lot easier to deal with.


The Process
This is the hard part. Using QI in a suicide method would, ideally, look like this:
1) I buy ~100 lottery tickets. Theoretically, I could buy just 1, but buying more helps hedge against the "gun jam" or "gun works but doesn't kill you" outcomes. Winning the lottery is so unlikely that it's probably a good idea to hedge a little bit, and it's not like I need money where I'm going.
2) I set up a program that will automatically read winning lottery numbers and compare them against my tickets.
3) I go to sleep a few hours before the lottery drawing, with my chosen suicide device set up and ready to go.
4) If there's a match (!), the program does nothing. If there's no match, the program starts up my suicide device.
5) I either wake up in my bed a millionaire, or I do not wake up - at the very least not on this plane of existence.

The hard part is, of course, the suicide device itself. On top of the normal requirements for a method, i.e. being peaceful and accessible, it also needs to be extremely reliable, so that you do actually win the lottery rather than having the device fail or leave you crippled without killing you. It also needs to be something that can be activated automatically while I'm asleep.

My current favored method, nitrogen asphyxiation, may not be feasible. I would be wearing a bulky, heavy mask, which obviously wouldn't be comfortable to sleep with. Trying to wear it while it while it's hooked up to a nitrogen tank, but with the nitrogen turned off, could also end up causing carbon dioxide asphyxiation - which could wake me up/cause a very painful death. It might not be impossible to solve these problems and hook up the nitrogen to flow if it's activated by the computer program, but it would definitely be difficult.


My Question For You
What method would you use, if you were trying to incorporate QI exploitation into your suicide? How would you set up an automated device to activate it? If I could actually get it working, I think it would make SI much easier to tackle, but trying to incorporate it makes the planning phase much more complex.

 

[Willy Wonka]

I can´t answer your question - but: I really love what and how you wrote it!

 

[cotton]

I got stuck on the first part, the theory assumes you can't die in a universe...

'Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not.'

But you can die... You don't need to observe it to happen. But yes technically, until you do there's a concept of 'limited immortality'. And yes, you will never observe it, just experience it.

Creating a scenario where your death is controlled by an odds game though I think means that QI doesn't apply and you witness an event of your death. It means you would experience an event that would kill you and as a function of the odds game, be immortal only so far as the limits allow (some years of playing before nature has its way).

I don't know if QI makes sense to me :/

If I was going to find a way, trying or not, it's still an odds game. QI wouldn't matter I think as death is inevitable. Rigging a device may mean you are temporarily immortal until it activates I suppose. But I don't think I understand where QI says you're immortal in other universes even though you die in this one. If you can't observe other universes, for all intents and purposes, you are dead and any split off universes where you survive still don't affect this one.

That it's based on an idealized set of circumstances makes it controversial but I don't think it means there's any real proof to dying in this universe and not in another.

 

[nihilistic_dragon]

The mere thought of immortality of any sort makes me extra depressed lmao. As Freddie Mercury sang, 'who wants to live forever?'

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

Many worlds interpretation is in contradiction to the law of parsimony. It was only invented because we cannot accept that things happen witout a cause.

In order to mitigate my survival instinct in connection with suicide, I would choose different constructs:

Our free will is most likely an illusion, so it is already determined how we die, by suicide or in another way. So you can relax an wait what happens.

Only our mind is sure to exist (Solipsism). You can do what you want, let´s see what happens.

 

[esoragoto]

I can´t answer your question - but: I really love what and how you wrote it!

I do my best writing when the suicidal ideation is near its maximum. Something about teetering over the edge of madness just before falling in.

I got stuck on the first part, the theory assumes you can't die in a universe...

'Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not.'

But you can die... You don't need to observe it to happen. But yes technically, until you do there's a concept of 'limited immortality'. And yes, you will never observe it, just experience it.

It's a kind of tautology - "you cannot experience a universe where you're dead, therefore you will never experience a universe where you die."

be immortal only so far as the limits allow (some years of playing before nature has its way).

In theory, Quantum Immortality can protect from death by natural causes as well. A "death from natural causes" is still caused by some event - some kind of organ failure, some kind of highly progressed disease, etc. There should, theoretically, be at least a tiny chance of those events not occurring at any given moment, and QI says that you would experience those universes, however unlikely they are.

Even growing old is a series of small events - a cell, by chance, replicates slightly wrong. Telomeres shorten by a few nanometers. A bit of collagen was put together incorrectly. Billions of tiny unlucky mistakes over several decades that eventually add up and degrade your body. Under QI, these mistakes could still happen, but they wouldn't age you enough to actually kill you.

 

[cotton]

Ita far from science for me x

 

[cryone]

from my interpretation, QI doesn't really impact our lives at all. i think it just means that there are parallel universes where we might be dead or alive.

 

[EternalShore]

this is a really cool thought experiment! :D I really enjoyed reading it! ^_^ if only I could set up an automatic sewer slide if I don't desirable social outcomes tho! >_<

 

[noname223]

What I don't understand about quantum suicide. Wouldn't this imply I am in general almost immortal. Or at least that I reach an extreme high maximum age.

"creating parallel universes for every outcome for every event, as long as they're physically possible"

"Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not."

I see the allure wanting to find out whether this theory has some truth in it. But let's say I get a very deadly form of cancer at the age of 85 (or 40). And this cancer will kill me with a chance of 95%. Then I will find out whether this theory is true still? Wouldn't I?

 

[esoragoto]

What I don't understand about quantum suicide. Wouldn't this imply I am in general almost immortal. Or at least that I reach an extreme high maximum age.

"creating parallel universes for every outcome for every event, as long as they're physically possible"

"Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not."

I see the allure wanting to find out whether this theory has some truth in it. But let's say I get a very deadly form of cancer at the age of 85 (or 40). And this cancer will kill me with a chance of 95%. Then I will find out whether this theory is true still? Wouldn't I?

Yes. If Quantum Immortality is true, then everyone would find out eventually. You'd beat the odds on any diseases, reaching 100 years without a problem. Then you'd be one of the few people to ever hit 120, and you'd maybe start to get suspicious. By the time you reach 150 or so and the doctors are all completely baffled, you'd pretty much have your confirmation that you won't be dying.

The method described above, other than perhaps helping with SI in a suicide attempt, would just be a shortcut to finding out if QI is true. It also comes with the advantage of winning the lottery if it is true.

 

[ThePlanIsInMotion]

The problem with this theory, is that in THIS universe, you are not the version of yourself that is immortal. There is no recorded case of someone living to be 200 years old, which informs that the laws in this universe make it impossible to live forever.

The real idea behind QI is that in SOME parallel universe, you could be immortal. But the laws of that universe would have to make it so. Part of the QI theory is that when you die in this universe, your conscious is automatically transferred to a divergent parallel. In that case, yes, you are essentially immortal, but it's unlikely that you would have any idea that you had transferred universes in the first place. Even this portion of the theory is highly debatable. It's entirely possible that the "you" of this universe is the only "you" of this universe, and when you die, that's it. An infinite number of different versions of you are not affected by your actions/results in this universe. Your "quantum self" may be immortal, but you, the person that you know, that exists right now, that typed up this thread, can most assuredly die.

What this means, is that there is no way to "test" this theory. Using your own example, if you were to play russian roulette, and die as a result, your conscious would travel to another universe where it wasn't successful. This would happen over and over again until you reach a universe with immortality. So even if you were to "test" this theory by doing something impossible to survive from, you would die. You would just then be transferred to an alternate universe where those same actions weren't taken, or where the laws of physics are not applied the same, allowing you to survive.

But again, in these cases, you would have no distinct recollection of previous universes (it's theorized that deja vu is a sort of "flash" from an alternate universe)...so you wouldn't have confirmation of the test. QI is impossible (with our current knowledge) to prove.

This line of yours specifically: It's a kind of tautology - "you cannot experience a universe where you're dead, therefore you will never experience a universe where you die."

This is a misinterpretation of QI. The more accurate way to say it would be: You cannot experience a universe where you're dead. Therefore, once you die, that universe essentially ceases to exist. Since you are dead, you cannot experience that universe. It's not that you can't die, it's that when you die, the universe in which you died is gone.

 

[CogitoMori]

Honestly this theory is kind of my biggest fear. On the date I had set for my last attempt, someone accidentally stopped me. That night I had a spiritually significant dream wherein I died and then woke up in my bed. I'm afraid that maybe I succeeded, but woke up in another timeline. The theory also says that each timeline would have to be more improbable than the last in order for you to survive. I'm afraid it's true and that I won't be able to actually end things on my own terms.

And if you do survive and win the lottery, then you'll know beyond a reasonable doubt that trying to kill yourself is futile. It would suck, but it's better to know than not know.

Unfortunately you wouldn't know, because an integral part of the theory is that you wouldn't actually remember dying or your "previous" life
I don't know if you could actually force a favorable result because there are infinite timelines in which you lose and in which you win.

 

[needthebus]

i

Quantum Immortality
Quantum Immortality is a thought experiment based upon the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a very short, summarized form, it goes like this: In the many-worlds interpretation, numerous parallel universes "branch off" from each other every moment, creating parallel universes for every outcome for every event, as long as they're physically possible. If an event kills you in one of those universes, there must be at least some universes where that event did not kill you. Quantum Immortality is the idea that you will never personally experience a universe where an event would kill you, because then you would be dead and unable to observe it. Therefore, from your own perspective only, you would be functionally immortal - death is impossible, whether you're actively trying for it or not.

Quantum Immortality is non-falsifiable, and therefore non-scientific. It's a thought experiment, not some rigorously studied, accepted part of quantum physics. Still, it's easy to let it take up your mind when it comes to suicide. What if you never even had a chance against SI, from your own perspective? What if you're always destined to back down at the last moment, no matter what?


Exploiting Quantum Immortality
If Quantum Immortality is true, then you could put yourself in the way of any harm you like, knowing that you would survive. If you played Russian Roulette with a gun that had 5/6 chambers filled with bullets, Quantum Immortality says that one of three things would happen:
1) You would get the empty chamber, and you would survive (This is probably the most likely outcome here)
2) The gun jams or otherwise fails, and you would survive
3) You would get shot, but you would survive (You would probably want to ensure the clearest aim to the brainstem possible, to minimize the odds of this and maximize the odds of the other outcomes)

With this, it would be possible to manipulate probability in your favor and force even very unlikely outcomes to happen, by tying your death to an undesired outcome and setting it up so that you only survive on outcomes that you want. In theory, you could even force extremely unlikely outcomes like winning the lottery - the key is to ensure that the "gun" (or whichever method) is as effective as possible, to minimize the possibility of outcomes 2 or 3.


Why?
I would like to not be alive. Failing that, being alive after winning the lottery would be an okay consolation prize. Most people don't stand to gain from betting their life on a thought experiment, but if you're already planning to die, you don't have much to lose by giving it a try. And if you do survive and win the lottery, then you'll know beyond a reasonable doubt that trying to kill yourself is futile. It would suck, but it's better to know than not know.

From a more practical, less fanciful perspective, killing myself is hard. Really hard! SI is definitely really something. I can get all the equipment ready and set up, but actually taking that final step feels impossible. I think it'd be a lot easier if I was essentially "passing the gun" to the universe and letting it take the shot for me, setting it up in advance so I'd die automatically if I didn't win the lottery, without manual input. It also re-frames my actions from "suicide" to "trying to cheat the universe", which I think would make SI a lot easier to deal with.


The Process
This is the hard part. Using QI in a suicide method would, ideally, look like this:
1) I buy ~100 lottery tickets. Theoretically, I could buy just 1, but buying more helps hedge against the "gun jam" or "gun works but doesn't kill you" outcomes. Winning the lottery is so unlikely that it's probably a good idea to hedge a little bit, and it's not like I need money where I'm going.
2) I set up a program that will automatically read winning lottery numbers and compare them against my tickets.
3) I go to sleep a few hours before the lottery drawing, with my chosen suicide device set up and ready to go.
4) If there's a match (!), the program does nothing. If there's no match, the program starts up my suicide device.
5) I either wake up in my bed a millionaire, or I do not wake up - at the very least not on this plane of existence.

The hard part is, of course, the suicide device itself. On top of the normal requirements for a method, i.e. being peaceful and accessible, it also needs to be extremely reliable, so that you do actually win the lottery rather than having the device fail or leave you crippled without killing you. It also needs to be something that can be activated automatically while I'm asleep.

My current favored method, nitrogen asphyxiation, may not be feasible. I would be wearing a bulky, heavy mask, which obviously wouldn't be comfortable to sleep with. Trying to wear it while it while it's hooked up to a nitrogen tank, but with the nitrogen turned off, could also end up causing carbon dioxide asphyxiation - which could wake me up/cause a very painful death. It might not be impossible to solve these problems and hook up the nitrogen to flow if it's activated by the computer program, but it would definitely be difficult.


My Question For You
What method would you use, if you were trying to incorporate QI exploitation into your suicide? How would you set up an automated device to activate it? If I could actually get it working, I think it would make SI much easier to tackle, but trying to incorporate it makes the planning phase much more complex.

it's not like the other yous that would die wouldnt experience death

it's just a fraction of you would be aware of reality after

Honestly this theory is kind of my biggest fear. On the date I had set for my last attempt, someone accidentally stopped me. That night I had a spiritually significant dream wherein I died and then woke up in my bed. I'm afraid that maybe I succeeded, but woke up in another timeline. The theory also says that each timeline would have to be more improbable than the last in order for you to survive. I'm afraid it's true and that I won't be able to actually end things on my own terms.

Unfortunately you wouldn't know, because an integral part of the theory is that you wouldn't actually remember dying or your "previous" life
I don't know if you could actually force a favorable result because there are infinite timelines in which you lose and in which you win.

i am right there with you, ive jad multiole times when it felt like i died but somehow didnt die in the world im i coincidentally

im still going to keep trying though

The problem with this theory, is that in THIS universe, you are not the version of yourself that is immortal. There is no recorded case of someone living to be 200 years old, which informs that the laws in this universe make it impossible to live forever.

The real idea behind QI is that in SOME parallel universe, you could be immortal. But the laws of that universe would have to make it so. Part of the QI theory is that when you die in this universe, your conscious is automatically transferred to a divergent parallel. In that case, yes, you are essentially immortal, but it's unlikely that you would have any idea that you had transferred universes in the first place. Even this portion of the theory is highly debatable. It's entirely possible that the "you" of this universe is the only "you" of this universe, and when you die, that's it. An infinite number of different versions of you are not affected by your actions/results in this universe. Your "quantum self" may be immortal, but you, the person that you know, that exists right now, that typed up this thread, can most assuredly die.

What this means, is that there is no way to "test" this theory. Using your own example, if you were to play russian roulette, and die as a result, your conscious would travel to another universe where it wasn't successful. This would happen over and over again until you reach a universe with immortality. So even if you were to "test" this theory by doing something impossible to survive from, you would die. You would just then be transferred to an alternate universe where those same actions weren't taken, or where the laws of physics are not applied the same, allowing you to survive.

But again, in these cases, you would have no distinct recollection of previous universes (it's theorized that deja vu is a sort of "flash" from an alternate universe)...so you wouldn't have confirmation of the test. QI is impossible (with our current knowledge) to prove.

This line of yours specifically: It's a kind of tautology - "you cannot experience a universe where you're dead, therefore you will never experience a universe where you die."

This is a misinterpretation of QI. The more accurate way to say it would be: You cannot experience a universe where you're dead. Therefore, once you die, that universe essentially ceases to exist. Since you are dead, you cannot experience that universe. It's not that you can't die, it's that when you die, the universe in which you died is gone.

you can sort of test qi but cant prove it to anyone. like only you know.