X-Message-Number: 8281 Date: Wed, 04 Jun 97 09:59:18 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Quantum Determinacy & Cryonics The issue has been raised, in the debates between Perry Metzger and Robert Ettinger (which have unfortunately gotten out of hand, but I'll ignore that issue), as to whether quantum mechanics permits determinsm. The answer: depends on which interpretation you subscribe to. With many-worlds, you have determinism, though in a strange way, certainly not Newtonian. That is, your reality splits into alternate versions, equally real. This splitting is deterministic: you know in advance what is going to happen, in particular, that *you* yourself will split into near-copies. But to each of those copies, what happens next will seem like a random event. From the viewpoint of a participating observer, then, you can't tell what's going to happen next, though in an overall sense, it's predetermined. Of course, this is just with the many-worlds version. Some other versions of QM really do have "chance"--absolutely unpre- determined events. Then there are other ("hidden-variable") theories, that attempt to rescue determinism in another way, making events depend on conditions in your own reality that cannot be observed directly. Once again, their determinism is at a level you can't observe--it too is "inaccessible determinism." This sort of determinism cannot be used to make predictions (or retrodictions) but at least it accounts for events without having to assume effects without causes, as with pure chance. Personally, I like many-worlds, though the case for it isn't ironclad and I'm well aware that not everybody accepts it. But I should also mention that some hold out hope for accessible determinism in QM, though it's optimism I don't share. Frank Tipler, in particular, with his gravitational collapse of the universe to the Omega Point, argues that, by detecting the in-streaming photons you should be able to retrodict distant historical events through a property known as phase conservation. In that way we could supposedly reconstruct minute details even of our prehistoric past, including how to resurrect everybody who has died, in the form of exact replicas. We would *know* that these people were part of our unique past reality. But that depends on a lot of things we really don't know about, and on the face of it, I don't have confidence we can ever recapture the photons as we'd have to. (Chasing down a photon isn't feasible in today's world, and whether the universe seems headed for a Tiplerian Omega Point that will do all it's supposed to, seems dubious.) I think we will have to accept the past as ambiguous, except insofar as our records and artifacts tell us otherwise. One consequence, in particular, is that one should not be too eager to trust the Omega Point (though this might follow even if the Omega Point *will* resurrect you, but only 10^19 years from now!). Instead, of course, be a cryonicst! That conclusion (or arranging for some means of high-quality physical preservation in event of death) seems obvious enough, but it sure is hard to get across to many people, even those that claim interest in "immortality, scientifically." Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8281