According to a theory of quantum mechanics, you are immortal.
An interpretation of a theory called quantum suicide ironically leads to a line of thought that makes our immortality completely absolute.
Now, let’s discuss quantum mechanics here, so try to keep your eyes from looking away and stay with me, because in the end, you will be immortal.
The theory of suicide in quantum mechanics
Theorized and published by Hans Moravec in 1987 and Bruno Marchal in 1988, the quantum experiment of suicidal thought proposes the same configuration as the famous Schrodinger’s Cat experiment, with a small change – that you are the observer and the test subject inside the box.
Stepping back a bit, and stay with me here, Schrodinger’s Cat experiment puts a theoretical cat in a box. As we look at the box with a cat inside, the cat’s state is alive and dead due to the readily accepted view of quantum mechanics. The theoretical cat’s life is linked to a quantum event that may or may not occur; therefore, until we open the box, the cat exists in a state of being alive and dead, called superposition.
In the quantum suicide experiment, while you wait for a possible death inside the box, as you are the observer and the subject of the test, your chances of survival are 50% due to the probability that a certain quantum event will occur by performing each experiment. The experiment repeats itself to infinity. The quantum suicide theory essentially suggests that, on the second attempt, you would be decidedly dead.
But let’s focus on the other interpretation of the quantum thought experiment that gives you immortality – because that is so much more fun.
Interpreting the mental experiment
First, we must assume that there are infinite worlds. Stay with me here again, as this is really a common belief in quantum mechanics. It essentially states that everyone possible and every possible past and future exists and will exist on a quantum level. According to this theory, there may be an identical version of you reading this article exactly where you are, with the only difference that your version is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Something traveled.
If we repeat the quantum suicide experiment, assuming that the theory of many worlds is true, in all instances of testing, in one or more worlds, our consciousness will survive, no matter what. Since you – being the observer and the subject of the test – are in a state of superposition, you must live on a matter of quantum necessity; otherwise, you are left out of the overlap, which is a contradiction to the original experiment.
Therefore, no matter the number of iterations of the experiment, it is physically necessary for you to survive, suggesting that you have quantum immortality.
What this means?
But what does it really mean? Could you jump off a bridge and survive? Of course, if there are really infinite worlds and you follow the strict parameters of the quantum suicide experiment. But let’s see what it really means.
Max Tegmark, a famous cosmologist, gave the most famous answer to this immortality experiment. He acknowledged that if the logical parameters of the experiment follow correctly, we must all be immortal. However, the flaw, he believed, was that death is rarely a binary event.
In the experiment, each test is a binary event, whether you live or die. Tegmark suggests that dying is more of a progressive process, which is based on the results of previous events. When this is the case, the theory of quantum immortality disintegrates.
So if there are, in fact, infinite worlds and you put yourself in a quantum box as an observer of quantum experiments and an object of testing them, then you will live forever. This is how you become truly immortal.
If you could, would you enter the quantum box and live forever?
