Exploiting Quantum Immortality
17 Mar 2015Three days had passed since the spaceship came into the Earth's orbit, and the message was broadcast. The International Council, part of the reformed United Nations, was in charge of responding, which is why Simon was going crazy. His boss of course had it even worse.
“Sir, all due respect but I think we should hurry up responding to the aliens. They must be more advanced than us, if they can even reach us, and I am worried that we might upset them.” said the short man.
“Don't you think I know that!?” snapped his boss. “I just told the rest of the International Council the exact same thing. Can you believe almost half of them are playing games and deliberately stalling?”
Simon had no response.
The elegant blonde lady looked at the creatures and smiled, showing no trace of surprise and disgust. Of course, that was mainly because the brown fox-like creatures looked much more normal than the stuff her superiors showed her during her desensitization training.
“My name is Johka, and this is my partner Paan.” said the voice coming from the metal device around the puffier creature's neck.
“I am Susan, the official representative of Earth. It is my pleasure to meet you.” came the practiced response.
“No, it is our pleasure to meet you. Humans seem very interesting to us, and that is valuable even when you can do almost anything.“
“I am glad to hear that, Johka. Similarly, we are very interested in you – we have so many questions.”
“We would be delighted to answer as many as possible.”
“Where are you from?”
“Our species originated in a planet that is very far away – we don't think you would have been able to document it. However , we have expanded now and we personally come from the galaxy you call 'IC 3418'. Needless to say, faster-than-light travel is possible.”
“That is very interesting. You said in your emissions that we should call you the 'Lokians'. Is that how you call each other, or is this name for our benefit?”
“The name stems from who we are, but you are correct – it is for your benefit. A pure translations of what we call ourselves would be 'beings' or perhaps 'humans', which would be confusing in this context, as we share no history with you.”
“I see. Do you have any questions for us by the way?” said the voice in Susan's ear, almost simultaneously with the one coming from her mouth.
“We do. We hope we don't sound rash, but what would be the ideal outcome from all this for you?“
“Well, we would like to trade knowledge and whatever we can offer with each other and live in harmony. You certainly seem to be very advanced, and in fairness you can probably offer us more than we can offer you, but a partnership should be possible.”
“Well put, Susan. This is exactly what we want as well. We have the power to do anything permitted by the laws of nature, but you can offer us company and another point of view.”
The creature almost looked like it was smiling, as silence stretched out for nearly half a minute. Thankfully the voice in Susan's ear seemed to have decided on a response.
“Anything? Would you be willing to share more, Johka”
“How familiar are you with science, Susan? Physics in particular.”
|As a diplomat she didn't know much physics but that didn't matter. “I have studied physics when I was younger.” It wasn't even a lie, at least if high school Physics counted.
“Let me tell you about the revelation which changed everything for us. We believe you call it Quantum Immortality.”
“They claim that the way to bend the universe to your will is by killing yourself. This is ridiculous, and you know it.”
“It actually sounds very plausible, sir. Many of our scientists have toyed with the idea, but it hinges on whether the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is true, and slowly but surely this has become the most popular interpretation among physicists – three out of four regarded it as 'probably correct' even before the aliens came!”
“This is not a goddamn toothpaste commercial, Simon. How can we stake anything on it when the best you have is 'three out of four' and 'probably correct'?”
The short man fidgeted uncomfortably. “Well yeah, sir. Admittedly that is the problem with the whole thing. There is literally no way to prove the theory without killing yourself, but it is very plausible. Many would tell you that the simplest way to interpret Quantum Mechanics is by denying that the wavefunction collapses, as that is just an extra unnecessary condition.” Simon said, while feeling guilty for using terms his boss was not familiar with. “In turn, this means that the universe branches off all the tune into many equally real worlds. The world in which Schrodinger's cat dies is as real,as the one where the cat lives, and there is a version of you in both of them”
“So you seriously also believe in this? That the world branches off in countless ways all the time, and that all those other worlds exist as much as this one? That your current self will branch off, too and experience all those worlds. I get why you might think that this is cool or cute, but tell me seriously – do you actually believe this.”
“Yes, sir.. Well, mostly – I was supporter of the theory even before, and the existence of these aliens only increased my confidence. Sir, imagine if this Many Worlds interpretation is correct like our scientists think. The rest of what the aliens said follows immediately – for example if you make sure to definitely die unless you win the lottery, then the only worlds in which you will continue to exist will be those where you won.”
“Or I will experience myself losing and then killing myself”
“You experience all worlds where you continue to exist, sir. Which is why you set up a device to kill you as soon as the results are out without an action on your part. In most of our considerations the surest way to do it would be when you are unconscious. You go to sleep, then the lottery results come out, and in the worlds where you didn't win you get killed. So only those continuations of you which won will wake up.”
“But what if, even though all those versions of me exist, my current self is one of those that are going to die, and I just stop existing?”
“Again, that is not how it works, sir. From your point of view now all those future versions are you, not just one of them, and you are going to experience living all those lives – you just wont remember any of the other lives at the same time.
This was only Susan's fourth meeting with the aliens, but she was starting to like them more. Last time she was allowed to pet one of them, and now they were giving her even more information regarding their past.
“The way it happened for us was that one important lokian tried to kill himself multiple times while being recorded. He came out unscathed, and that lead to us setting up a destruction method for our whole planet - the rest is history. There is one problem, however – can you see it?”
Susan couldn't but that didn't matter. “Yes, if your species was convinced that Quantum Immortality is real after seeing one man's tests, then that means that in the majority of worlds the lokians saw the man dying and that was it. This test works all the time from the suicider's perspective, but would almost never work from everyone else's”
“Very good. This actually troubled many of us at first – we wouldn't have gotten proof of Quantum Immortality in most worlds, thus it is only through extreme luck that we live in the branch where lokians harnessed this power. Our main consolation is that according to our simulations we would have likely ended up exploiting Quantum Immortality within a few generations, anyway.”
This didn't seem quite right to Susan, but the scientists seemed satisfied. “Sir, is the rumor true? Are we really building a doomsday device?”
The tall man took a hard look at his new assistant. If Simon was still here, he would have probably told the truth, but the man was one of the many who had killed themselves during the last few weeks. Simon had at least make sure not to disturb things by requesting no funeral in the worlds where he died.
“I can neither confirm or deny” was the only reply.
9% of the world population had committed suicide by now. There were some, who didn't even set it up so they received something in the event of their survival. Susan pitted those, as they probably didn't even understand the reasoning, but she felt even worse for those who survived their attempts.
“I hope we are going to do this as a planet, while there are still billions of us. Please let me ask the aliens to set something up soon.”
“No, we have set other plans in motion, Susan.”
“We aren't going to attempt to cross the aliens, are we? They have been guiding us for so long in this, and it seems likely that they've set it up so they self-destruct when we do, as to not be stuck in a universe without us.”
“Does it matter even if we do it then? This might be our one chance to gain something without discussing it with them first.”
The two fox-like creatures watched as all life on earth ended.
"I cannot believe that worked" said the puffier one, before setting the coordinates for the next system with intelligent life.