- #1
Klaasje
- 3
- 0
First of all I want to apologize for any incorrect/non-physical terminology. Theoretical physics is not my field (which is neuroscience) and I only have some very basic knowledge in the mathematics of modern physics. Recently I read a couple of popular physics books by Brain Greene and Leonard Susskind that made me come up with a thought experiment that comes to rather strange conclusions, but which I cannot seem to debunk.
The setting of the thought experiment is a single infinite universe (infinite inflation) with a limit in the information a region of space can hold (holographic principle). In principle in such a universe there would be an infinite number of exact copies of our universe.
As a thought experiment, I imagine that while I am asleep, technically highly advanced aliens land near my house. They are feeling funny that night, so they decide to pull my leg. They scan me (my body) with the maximal possible precision. After that, they instantly vaporize me, so fast that I don’t notice a thing. After that, they reconstruct my body with different atoms and put me back in the bed The joke is that they film the whole thing and leave the DVD on my night table (their sense of humor is not so advanced). When I wake up in the morning I will not feel anything special (until I watch the video of course). In fact, the aliens could have chosen to rematerialize me anywhere. They could have made a copy of bedroom on the surface of Mars (a pressurized version), and rematerialized me there. Only after I open the curtains things start to look rather strange.
My description on what I would experience when I am instantly vaporized and then reconstructed is actually the mainstream view in neuroscience. What defines me is not related to specific matter or a specific location, but is determined by the information that is contained in my brain. I could replace all the atoms in my body one by one and remain the same person.
However, who needs aliens when we have an infinite universe. When there is e.g. infinite inflation and therefore an infinite universe, there are an infinite number of exact copies of me now writing this email. This however poses a puzzling question. When I wake up in the morning, how do I know I am not waking up in a distant universe far beyond the cosmic horizon of the universe I was in before I went to sleep? The distance seems to be unimportant as no information needs to travel. As neither matter nor location binds me to one copy in one universe, all of them must be equally likely. In my atheistic worldview there is no soul occupying any of these versions of me that prevents this. Why would I only change location during sleep, why not all the time? If they are all equally likely, is there a way to choose?
Actually the only consistent conclusion that I could come with is that all these versions would be me. In other words, all brains in an infinite universe that contain the exact same information are really me and produce my conscious experiences. This view on reality seems to have some similarities with the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum physics (although I am not certain), only that it takes place in a single world/universe. When we actually are many versions of identical brains, we can be surrounded by different physical states as long as they do not influence our senses and make the information content of the brains dissimilar infinite single universe, but we humans would just be poor observers of that.
I was wondering if there is a flaw in this line of reasoning and if it is consistent with known physical law.
The setting of the thought experiment is a single infinite universe (infinite inflation) with a limit in the information a region of space can hold (holographic principle). In principle in such a universe there would be an infinite number of exact copies of our universe.
As a thought experiment, I imagine that while I am asleep, technically highly advanced aliens land near my house. They are feeling funny that night, so they decide to pull my leg. They scan me (my body) with the maximal possible precision. After that, they instantly vaporize me, so fast that I don’t notice a thing. After that, they reconstruct my body with different atoms and put me back in the bed The joke is that they film the whole thing and leave the DVD on my night table (their sense of humor is not so advanced). When I wake up in the morning I will not feel anything special (until I watch the video of course). In fact, the aliens could have chosen to rematerialize me anywhere. They could have made a copy of bedroom on the surface of Mars (a pressurized version), and rematerialized me there. Only after I open the curtains things start to look rather strange.
My description on what I would experience when I am instantly vaporized and then reconstructed is actually the mainstream view in neuroscience. What defines me is not related to specific matter or a specific location, but is determined by the information that is contained in my brain. I could replace all the atoms in my body one by one and remain the same person.
However, who needs aliens when we have an infinite universe. When there is e.g. infinite inflation and therefore an infinite universe, there are an infinite number of exact copies of me now writing this email. This however poses a puzzling question. When I wake up in the morning, how do I know I am not waking up in a distant universe far beyond the cosmic horizon of the universe I was in before I went to sleep? The distance seems to be unimportant as no information needs to travel. As neither matter nor location binds me to one copy in one universe, all of them must be equally likely. In my atheistic worldview there is no soul occupying any of these versions of me that prevents this. Why would I only change location during sleep, why not all the time? If they are all equally likely, is there a way to choose?
Actually the only consistent conclusion that I could come with is that all these versions would be me. In other words, all brains in an infinite universe that contain the exact same information are really me and produce my conscious experiences. This view on reality seems to have some similarities with the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum physics (although I am not certain), only that it takes place in a single world/universe. When we actually are many versions of identical brains, we can be surrounded by different physical states as long as they do not influence our senses and make the information content of the brains dissimilar infinite single universe, but we humans would just be poor observers of that.
I was wondering if there is a flaw in this line of reasoning and if it is consistent with known physical law.