More Lives Than A Cat? The Quantum Theory of Life

I was just reading about some things to do with quantum theory. The theory is way beyond my comprehension, but it gives rise to some interesting speculations and thought experiments, and those I CAN understand.

One of the thought experiments is about multi-dimensional universes. This is based on the idea of Schrodinger's Cat (see the Doomsday Device post). We say that the actual status of the cat is fixed by the observer, in other words, the consciousness of the observer CREATES the status of the cat. In a similar way, as you go through your day, your year, your life, you meet thousands and thousands of instances of having to make a choice. Do I go upstairs or downstairs? Do I take this job or stay in my old one? You have to decide which way to go, and whatever you decide, your consciousness follows the consequences of that decision.

It's a bit like the camera in a movie. Your consciousness, in a sense, CREATES the reality of what you see and experience. The other possible consequence is made to be non-existent because your consciousness has not followed it, has not MADE IT REAL. Up until the time when you make that choice, both of these separate realities have an equal chance of being real. They both have a probability existence, like the cat before you open the box. This gives rise to the idea of an infinite number of universes, branching off from each other, each one coming into existence each second or each millisecond as your consciousness makes the choice to observe it.

The idea of the Doomsday Device brings up another interesting idea. The Doomsday Device experiment tells us that the outcome which leads to no consciousness of any event just cannot happen, it would be impossible. This seems to indicate that there can be no such thing as death, at least as we understand it in its usual sense, because it would cause a PARADOX of having to be conscious of not being conscious, or being aware of having no awareness. So the logical conclusion is that, however things may appear to be, we are immortal, since every outcome of every branching probability is one which leads to conscious awareness. To life, in other words.

But how can this be, since we see and hear of death happening every day? Some have speculated that the event that we call death is the beginning of the event we call birth. They argue that your consciousness at the time of "death" immediately begins to have the experience of birth, and so life continues without a break. If you think this sounds a bit weird, just compare it with the paradox in the previous paragraph.

Some speculations come from this idea. What kind of life would this new one be? Some would speculate that it is the same life as before, but with the capacity to differ from the former one because consciousness may make different decisions at certain points, thus creating an entire different universe of experience. One can visualize this repeating itself endlessly over an infinite time, so that your consciousness eventually experiences everything possible. Under this model of the universe, or Universe of universes, life would not be dull.

Credit must here go to Nietzsche, who was probably the first to speculate on the idea of a cyclic model of conscious existence. But Nietzsche did not have the predictions of quantum theory at his disposal, so the best he could come up with was to say that when you repeated your lives over and over again eternally, each one was EXACTLY the same as all the others. A bleak prospect, and one that would indeed be dull.

A consequence of the consciousness-chooses-life philosophy is that, since you are immortal, it follows that you need have no fear. One imagines that if the idea became a widespread belief, there would be even more people taking up sports like sky-diving or drag-racing than there are at present.

The Doomsday Device

There is a branch of philosophy called Idealism. We think of that word to mean having noble thoughts and ambitions, but that is not quite what it means when a philosopher uses it, though it can include those things. In philosophy, it means the school of thought that considers reality to be in the mind rather than in matter or things. Idealism is thus the opposite of Materialism.

The Idealists are concerned with how information reaches us from the outside world. They maintain that the only way we can know anything at all is through the medium of the five senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. Anything that is in your mind apart from these sense-data, say the Idealists, must have its origin in your mind and not outside it. They say that a person who was born without any of the five senses would have no knowledge of the world at all.

One of the most famous Idealists of the past was George Berkeley, who was from Ireland. He said that nothing existed in our minds except what had already come into them in the form of sense experiences. The concepts we have in our thoughts, come from our experience. So we can only have the concept "cat" because we have seen a cat. Now, Berkeley went further, and said that the sense-data are all that you can ever know. So when you look at a table, you have the sense-data of the table but that's all. You can't know anything about what it really is, apart from what your senses tell you. This led Berkeley to say that to all intents and purposes, matter does not exist. The only existence it can have is in the mind of the observer.

So someone might ask, "What if I close my eyes, so I can't see the table? Does the table cease to exist?" A complete Idealist would say, yes it ceases to exist. But obviously this is a problem! The way Berkeley solved it was by believing in God, so when you shut your eyes, the table continues to exist, because God is observing it. In this way, the universe as described by Berkeley consists of God and the observer, who receives the sense impressions given by God.

This philosophy is what gives rise to speculations like: "If all that I can know about the world is through sense-data, how do I know that the information coming in is correct?"

Or: "How do we know we're not living in a virtual reality, like in the film, The Matrix?"

Or: "If a tree falls to the ground in a deserted forest, and no-one is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?"

In space, there is no sound, because there is no air to carry the sound waves. But even when there is air, the movements caused by the falling tree only become sound when they reach an ear. So if there's no-one there, how can the tree make a sound? We think of the world as something outside and independent of us, but in fact, so much of "reality" depends on the observer.

This idea comes into the "thought experiment" called Schrodinger's Cat. Imagine an air-tight box with a lid, and inside the box is a cat. The box also contains a device which can release a deadly poison. (Sorry if you like cats, but this is only a THOUGHT experiment). The device has a random generator so it has an even chance of going off as not going off. Is the cat dead or alive? You can't know. The cat's existence is in a "probability-state" at the moment. The only way to find out is to open the box. Then the probability state ends and the status of the cat is determined, dead or alive. So it is the observer who has made this happen, before that the cat was in a state of probability. It's only by the process of observation that the cat is now dead (or alive).

A similar thought experiment is The Doomsday Device. This was in the writings of an astronomer, but I can't remember his name, so if anyone knows, please leave a comment? Imagine a Doomsday Device hovering above Planet Earth. If it goes off, it destroys everything on the planet, including humans and all life, with nothing surviving. If it doesn't go off, we survive. The Device has a random generator, like in Schrodinger's Cat. So we have an even chance of survival or total obliteration. What happens?

The astronomer says that we must survive. Even though it is an even chance, the Doomsday Device can never go off. Because, if it did, there would be no consciousness to observe it happening, and so it could not happen. Like the tree that makes no sound, or the cat which is only dead or alive because it is observed to be so, the Doomsday Device could not go off, because we would never know it had happened.