Alive and Dead
- I wonder if we ever die.
I have been close to dying several times. I wonder if i have died in some
parallel universe, and perhaps remained alive only in this one.
- We are trying to reconcile the essence of the micro-world (for example,
that a particle can be in two different places at the same time) and the
essence of the macro-world (that i can be only in one place at any given time).
I wonder if there is nothing to reconcile at all, if the micro-world "is" the
way things are, if i "am" in multiple places at the same time.
- A wave function provides a history of a particle in terms of superimposition
of states: the particle "is" at the same time in all of those states.
We assume that this does not apply to "macro" objects: a stone is only in
one place, the place where we see it. Scientists have long debated what causes
the "collapse" of reality: the transformation from the superimposed state to
the unique state.
- I wonder if that transformation never happens at all, and
we all are in a superimposed state at each moment of being here and not being here, of being alive and being dead.
- A literal interpretation
of the wave function is that, at each moment in time, the universe splits into
many universes, one for each possible state. At each moment in time my life
splits into many lives, one for each possible outcomes of the action that i
am performing now.
- I am alive in all universes in which... i am still alive. In this one i am writing this essay. In other universises i might be doing something else.
In each one i am conscious of what i am doing.
- I may have died in several of them, and, by
defition, i am no longer aware of them. In those universes i have been buried
by my relatives. In this universe, though, i survived. Tomorrow there might
occur another event that has my death as a possible outcome. Then the universe
shall split into many universes, and i shall die in at least one of them,
and remain alive in the others.
- The probability of being alive will keep decreasing as more and more of the
possible outcomes are death. I wonder if the probability ever goes down to absolute
zero, or if there are still rare universes in which some people are thousands
of years old.
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