On a scale from pseudoscience to Hard Science how seriously is Quantum Immortality taken by people who Quantum for a living?
Was mainly wondering because I see it being promoted by things like Kurzesgtat (I know I butchered that) and other popular Science promoters.
Yet anytime I see anyone, even Roger Penrose himself, supposit that mind is any way connected to Quantum phenomenon it is attacked mercilessly and rushed out of the room like a crazed bloodied up goat that somehow snuck into a nursery.
So I am a little confused. By what mechanism would Quantum Immortality even work if science is so sure there is nothing like a soul jumping timelines?
Well yeah, if you were actually dead you wouldn’t be here to make that observation. It’s survivorship bias.
It’s also statistically almost impossible not to have a ton of guys who almost died 5 times running around when there are so many humans in the world.
Well yeah, it’s a personal survivorship bias, but isn’t that the basis for quantum immortality?
Isn’t my experience exactly what would be expected if quantum immortality was true?
Survivorship bias as an argument doesn’t really work because you are already presupposing you are the one who survived. Of course if you assume that there is a multiverse of infinite copies of yourself and at least one of them survived an incredibly incredibly unlikely event, then by definition you would not die and would be the person who survives the event.
But it’s kind of circular. You cannot apply surviroship bias prior to conducting the experiment because you have no reason to believe that what you call “you” would be one of the survivors. It is much more likely, even if we assume the multiverse theory is true (see my criticism of it here) that what you would call “you” after the splitting of worlds would not be one of the survivors.
Let me give an analogy. Replace the very likely event of dying with something else, like losing the lottery. At least one branch of the multiverse you would win the lottery. Yes, if we bias it so we only consider the branch where you win the lottery, then by definition you are guaranteed to win the lottery if you play it. But that biasing makes no sense prior to actually playing the lottery. It is much more likely what you call “you” after you play the lottery would be one that sees themselves as having lost the lottery.
It’s also exactly what would be expected if it was false.