Confessions of a quantum suicidal

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Christopher Maloney

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Jun 18, 1999, 8:56:35 PM6/18/99
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I'd be surprised if an idea similar to quantum suicide hadn't occured
to most of the members of this list before you read Tegmark's paper.
I first started thinking about it about ten years ago, I think.

Being prone to depression most of my life, it seemed like an obvious
plan: a way to force God's hand, in a way. Who says my arms are too
short to box with God? Quantum suicide offers a way to choose which
environments are acceptable to us. We can truly become masters of
our destiny.

I'm an electical engineer, so I have (had) the means to carry out the
experiment. As I mentioned, I was prone to depression. I can't
remember if a specific incident triggered the desire to carry out the
plan, or if the desire just built in me over time. It seems like an
awfully long time ago, now. Things weren't going my way. At least,
not the way I thought I wanted them to go. So I made the decision to
go through with it.

The whole time, I knew that only one thing would be certain: that I
would survive. But I didn't know by which avenue I would escape. So
the whole time I was planning and designing and plotting, I tried to
figure out which would be the most likely. The answer is obvious:
the most likely scenario for my survival would be that would change
my mind, and not go through with it.

But I was unhappy, and a part of me desperately wanted to go through
with it, so I tried to make a firm resolve, whenever I could, that I
would complete the plan, and step through the device. This of course
had an undesired affect: I was selecting out those versions of me
that had a weak resolve. For, as you've probably guessed by now, the
avenue that my survival did take was that I changed my mind.

On the other hand, my life has gotten dramatically better.
Coincidence? I'm not sure.

Let me explain "the project". Again, the only thing I knew for sure
was that I would survive. Well, I wanted to get something in those
worlds in which I did survive, and I figured out a way that I could.
I could set it up so that I would be killed if and only if I didn't
win the lottery on a particular day. It was a sort of Russian
roulette with one player.

Doing a rough estimate, I figured that I could find a game that would
offer a reasonable jackpot and that would have odds of winning at
about a million to one. I could, of course, buy extra tickets to
reduce the odds. I wanted to minimize the chances of surviving and
*not* winning the lottery, so that meant that I had to design an
extremely reliable killing device. I shot for there to be odds of
device failure on the order of a billion to one - so that if I
survived, chances would be roughly one in a thousand that I *didn't*
win the lottery.

To recap: from the bird perspective, for every billion copies of me
that went through the experiment, one thousand would have a winning
lottery ticket. So the device would "attempt" to kill 999,999,000
copies. But it would fail about once with this number of kills, So
that one of those copies, that didn't win the lottery, would survive.

How to design a device with that kind of reliability? Satellite
engineers know the answer to that one: redundancy. If you have a
single device that will fail about once in a thousand operations,
then three such devices, operating in parallel, will fail only about
once every billion. That assumes that *everything* in the system is
in parallel, which is impossible. There will be "weak spots" in the
design - single points of failure.

But I also figured that I could make the device more reliable by the
following technique: if anything went wrong, the default behavior of
any of the mechanisms should be "kill", instead of switching off.
Remember, I wanted to minimize the chances that I survive and don't
win the lottery. If there's a small chance of something in an
individual mechanism malfunctioning, then that won't affect the
overall odds much, as long as the default behavior is to kill.

There are two basic failure modes of the system: A, the device kills
when I do win the lottery; and B, it doesn't kill when I don't win
the lottery. I figured that I wanted to reduce the likelihood of B
as much as possible, and that I didn't care that much about A, as
long as it was reasonably low (say one in a hundred). Again, from
the bird perspective of the ensemble of one billion copies of me:
Out of 1,000,000,000:
1,000 win the lottery, of which:
10 get killed anyway, 990 survive.
999,999,000 don't win the lottery, of which:
999,998,999 get killed, 1 survives.
So a total of 991 "me"s survive, of which 990 have won the lottery.
Good odds, I think.

Another failure scenario is that I only get maimed instead of killed
when the device goes off. This is a grisly outcome, so I wanted to
design the likelihood of this to be as small as possible. I decided
to use high-caliber pistols aimed at the base of my brain. I needed
to ensure that when the time came, my head was restrained so that
there was no chance of the bullet missing the critical target. I
didn't finish this portion of the investigation, but I'm pretty sure
that there's an optimal aim at close range which would ensure a very
low probability of a bullet doing damage, but not killing me.

So I designed a system with three independent electronic kill
devices. Each device consisted of a timer which, when it counted
down to zero, would discharge a capacitor through a solenoid, which
would pull the trigger of a .45 caliber pistol, which would shoot
through my head. The counter would only be stopped by a signal from
a computer, indicating that I had won the lottery. That signal would
come from one of three trusty helpers that I had hired (who had no
idea of what they were really doing, of course), to type in the
winning lottery number and send it to my computer by modem. My
computers already knew the numbers of the tickets that I had bought,
so it could check to see if any of them matched.

Nearly everything would be redundant - the timers, the guns, the
computers, and the helpers. I had to shoot for (excuse the
expression) a one in a thousand failure rate or less for any one of
those individual systems. Difficult, but possible.

Leading up to the day of the actual lottery, I would do several trial
runs to verify the reliability. The weakest link is probably the
people who are hired to type in the lottery number. So I would hire
them to do that for several days in a row, and on the days leading up
to the target date, I would verify that they were performing
correctly.

Also, prior to the target date, I would allow a long window of time
for each of the electronic mechanisms to charge up from the wall
sockets. After they are charged, they can be disconnected and will
operate independently, thus eliminating a power outage as a source of
failure. Then I would set the timers, verify that each is working,
and secure myself into the chair. The probability would be high that
something would go wrong at this point. These preparatory steps are,
in effect, a single point of failure. Nothing can be done to
eliminate this completely, though.

The chair would have a simple electronic locking mechanism that would
secure my head and arms. When the counters got to zero, each gun
would either go off or not. It's designed in such a way that if any
one of the three guns goes off, I would almost certainly be killed
instantly. If none of the three guns goes off, then the electronic
lock would be released, and, hopefully, I'd be somewhat richer.


When you're talking about odds like one in a million, it's ridiculous
to think that the avenue of my survival would be to actually go
through with this plan. I knew that it was much more likely that I
would change my mind. Another possibility also occured to me: that
someone would find out and would stop me. I thought that most people
would think that this plan of mine was insane, and would probably
have me commited as a hazard to myself, if they knew how serious I
was. So I took precautions to prevent anyone from finding out. I
kept it a secret. This is actually the first time I've told anyone
about the details of my plan.

I called it "the project", so that no one would see something written
by me that would give away what it was really about. Later, I changed
the name to "the Lathe", after an Ursula K. LeGuin story called "The
Lathe of Heaven". It seems to me that this device is a little bit
like that story - where we can choose what worlds we will live in.
Of course, we can't ever actually change the past, but we can select
our future.

I never went through with it, obviously. My life just inexplicably
got better, and I ceased being depressed. As I mentioned above, I'm
not sure this was a coincidence. Perhaps I did select my future,
just by planning and having that firm resolve to go through with it.
Perhaps I can continue to select my future, by "threatening God" that
I'll go through with it unless I get my way. But now I doubt it.
Now I actually care too much about somebody else -- my wife. I
couldn't kill myself now, knowing how much it would hurt her.

So now I take my lumps as they come. That sounds like maturity, and
when I write about the Lathe, it sure does sound pretty immature.
But lots of people kill themselves. I'm certainly not in a position
to judge any of them. We're all just shooting arrows in the dark,
after all. I just thought I could deflect my arrow by purpose.


--
Chris Maloney
http://www.chrismaloney.com

"Knowledge is good"
-- Emil Faber

h...@finney.org

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Jun 18, 1999, 9:02:29 PM6/18/99
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That's a very interesting story. I wonder if any suicides have ever
been discovered where there was a note or other evidence that they were
attempting quantum suicide? Of course these ideas are not well known
so it is unlikely that the investigators would attach any significance
to such evidence.

Hal

GSL...@aol.com

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Jun 19, 1999, 1:13:12 AM6/19/99
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Chris, this is a scary story.... It points to the fact that there is a need
for a MW ethics. I also independently discovered QT immortality several years
ago.

Hal finney writes

<< I wonder if any suicides have ever
been discovered where there was a note or other evidence that they were
attempting quantum suicide? >>

I know that Arthur Koestler the author of "The Roots of Coincidence"
committed suicide. I quickly scanned his book to look for a hint of MW but
could not find any.

Everett too died at a young age... but I don't know the circumstances of his
death.

Even though I am not religious I found a way to eliminate QS from
consideration. It is most beautifully stated in the psalm of David: "....
even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil...." The MW is truly the valley of of the shadow of death: we die a
billion deaths every nanoseconds, yet we can only be aware of surviving....
QS is only a drop in the bucket...There is no need to commit suicide.....

I will fear no evil... The future, the only future that we can perceive is a
good future and if things may appear to take a turn for the worse, it is only
temporary, things will get better.... Enjoy life... it is like a
dream...nothing can hurt you... it is also like a game.... It is most
enjoyable if you play by the rules...."My cup runneth over, Surely goodness
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..." Live to the full and
enjoy for the future is assured.

George Levy

Christopher Maloney

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Jun 19, 1999, 1:25:51 PM6/19/99
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GSL...@aol.com wrote:
>
> Chris, this is a scary story.... It points to the fact that there is a need
> for a MW ethics. I also independently discovered QT immortality several years
> ago.

Yes, I think I've found a new ethics, which I alluded to in the end when
I said that I care about my wife too much to leave her grieving. I do
believe that it's worthwhile to suffer some slings and arrows in order
to try to make the measure of good worlds larger.

I really liked the stuff at the end of your post below about the future
being almost certainly a good one. I'm not sure I believe that though.
Whenever I think about it, an old Harlan Ellision SF story comes to
mind, "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream", in which a person lives
forever as the personal object of torment of a huge, bored computer.

If I had to hazard a guess, though, I'd say that it is very likely,
perhaps even certain, that our immortal future will be a "good" one,
for each of us.

It's also interesting that both you and Hal thought of looking for
other QS that may have already taken place. I hadn't thought of
that. But I think that Hal's right - that if a note was left
explaining it, it might not even make that papers, since most
people would probably be profoundly perplexed by the idea.


>
> Hal finney writes
>
> << I wonder if any suicides have ever
> been discovered where there was a note or other evidence that they were
> attempting quantum suicide? >>
>
> I know that Arthur Koestler the author of "The Roots of Coincidence"
> committed suicide. I quickly scanned his book to look for a hint of MW but
> could not find any.
>
> Everett too died at a young age... but I don't know the circumstances of his
> death.
>
> Even though I am not religious I found a way to eliminate QS from
> consideration. It is most beautifully stated in the psalm of David: "....
> even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
> evil...." The MW is truly the valley of of the shadow of death: we die a
> billion deaths every nanoseconds, yet we can only be aware of surviving....
> QS is only a drop in the bucket...There is no need to commit suicide.....
>
> I will fear no evil... The future, the only future that we can perceive is a
> good future and if things may appear to take a turn for the worse, it is only
> temporary, things will get better.... Enjoy life... it is like a
> dream...nothing can hurt you... it is also like a game.... It is most
> enjoyable if you play by the rules...."My cup runneth over, Surely goodness
> and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..." Live to the full and
> enjoy for the future is assured.
>
> George Levy

Jacques M Mallah

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Jun 19, 1999, 2:54:52 PM6/19/99
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On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Christopher Maloney wrote:
> The whole time, I knew that only one thing would be certain: that I
> would survive. But I didn't know by which avenue I would escape. So

Chris Maloney - the latest, and worst, addition to our little
group. It's not exactly a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I suspect
I will unsubscribe from this newsgroup before long. I'm a scientist, not
a suicide counselor.
Much like many others on this list, you have no understanding of
issues that are really simple. But then the human capacity for stupidity
never ceases to amaze me. For example, I am currently in an email debate
with someone who claims to have a counterexample to Bell's theorem - a
non-MWI, local hidden variables model to explain Bell correlations. The
only problem: the way he takes expectation values, with a funny
probability distribution, the average value of a certain quantity is 1
even though the probability that this quantity will be nonzero is zero.
To me this is the very definition of reductio ad absurdum, but he
thinks it is just an insult to call his beliefs absurd! This guy is not
kidding, he is an employed engineer and I still can't get my mind around
the fact that he is so incredibly stupid. IT ... IS ... JUST ... NOT ...
POSSIBLE! But, it is true. %*^~$%(&!
But this is not atypical of my experiences on the internet of
trying to convince crackpots of their errors. Be it magnetism,
thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, or quantum suicide, these people just
won't understand what I tell them.
So, I really don't expect to convince you either.

But consider this: Is the branch in which you win the lottery not
already occupied? How will it profit this lottery winner if you, finding
yourself in another branch, kill yourself?
Your belief that you will magically leap into the body of this
winner, at the same date and time as you die, is absurd. You guys take
one true fact - that the effective probability of finding yourself to be
that winning guy, given that you find the date and time to be such and
such, and that your name is such and such, etc. - is nearly one. But you
don't understand what it means and you sure as hell don't use it
correctly, and the result is this monstrous quantum cult of death.
The facts are, and I've said this a million times by now:
- There is only one reason to commit suicide and it is the same as
without QM: if your life is so bad that you would rather not exist, commit
suicide; otherwise don't. For indeed, in those branches you would cease
to exist, while the branches with the lottery winner would gain nothing.
- the effective probability of finding yourself to be that guy,
given that your name is such and such, is still very small. If you did
follow though, most of the the observers with that name would find
themselves prior to that date.
- The effective probability of having that name, given that you are
an observer after that date, would be greatly reduced by the suicide.
- Your total measure would be reduced, so there would be less
observers with that name in the ensemble, and the total number of
observers would be less.
- There is only one reason to commit suicide and it is the same as
without QM: if your life is so bad that you would rather not exist, commit
suicide; otherwise don't. For indeed, in those branches you would cease
to exist, while the branches with the lottery winner would gain nothing.


> Now I actually care too much about somebody else -- my wife. I
> couldn't kill myself now, knowing how much it would hurt her.
>
> So now I take my lumps as they come. That sounds like maturity

No, it sounds like you now have too much to lose. A condition
which may not last.

- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm...@is2.nyu.edu)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL: http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/

h...@finney.org

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Jun 19, 1999, 3:26:22 PM6/19/99
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Jacques M Mallah, <jqm...@SCIRES.ACF.NYU.EDU>, writes:
> Chris Maloney - the latest, and worst, addition to our little
> group. It's not exactly a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I suspect
> I will unsubscribe from this newsgroup before long. I'm a scientist, not
> a suicide counselor.

Jacques, you silver tongued devil, you. Don't sugar coat things, tell
us how you really feel.

> But consider this: Is the branch in which you win the lottery not
> already occupied? How will it profit this lottery winner if you, finding
> yourself in another branch, kill yourself?

You seem to be using the model where state reduction is a process of
differentiation of pre-existing universes, rather than the actual forking
of a single universe into multiple daughter universes. But neither
approach is inherently superior to the other.

Even in your model, where all (future) "branches" are already occupied,
many branches are completely identical prior to differentiation. It is
reasonable to consider your "identity" or "consciousness" as being common
to all of these branches. You are not living in just one of them,
you span all of the identical ones.

> Your belief that you will magically leap into the body of this
> winner, at the same date and time as you die, is absurd. You guys take
> one true fact - that the effective probability of finding yourself to be
> that winning guy, given that you find the date and time to be such and
> such, and that your name is such and such, etc. - is nearly one. But you
> don't understand what it means and you sure as hell don't use it
> correctly, and the result is this monstrous quantum cult of death.

With the concept of identity I described, or the concept of a universe
which branches at the time of state function collapse, there is no leap
involved. It is a continuous process.

Hal

Christopher Maloney

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Jun 19, 1999, 3:46:59 PM6/19/99
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Jacques M Mallah wrote:
>
> On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Christopher Maloney wrote:
> > The whole time, I knew that only one thing would be certain: that I
> > would survive. But I didn't know by which avenue I would escape. So
>
> Chris Maloney - the latest, and worst, addition to our little
> group. It's not exactly a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Jacques, I'm so glad that you decided to respond to me directly
at last! First let me say this: Fuck you, you pathetic piece
of shit! I wrote two posts directly to you in the recent past,
hoping to engage you in a meaningful discussion of QTI: see
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/index.html?mID=706 and
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/index.html?mID=754. In that
last post I even invited you to "show me why I am stupid". But
only when I decided to write something a little bit personal did
you decide to respond in a scornful, derisive manner. Why is
that?

I won't respond to the technical issues, "the facts" that you
listed in your post, because I would just be repeating the stuff
I wrote in the above two posts. I still wish you'd respond to
them.

It's interesting, isn't it, how people can disagree so
fundamentally sometimes? I sympathize with what you expressed
about your frustration in trying to convince someone of what
seems to be obvious to you. I've experienced that myself.
Now, I'd like to think that I'm a fairly good thinker. And I
think that you are, about some things, having read lots of
your posts from the past. I particularly liked your
explications on the pointlessness of the "free will" debate,
and I agree with them wholeheartedly.

So let me give you some advice, because I'm still seething
here -- when you feel that frustration coming up again, just
stuff it. Either ignore the post altogether, which is
something that I do quite often, or respond thoughtfully and
respectfully. I do, personally, believe that there is a
thing called truth out there, and I know that you'd like to
know it as much as I would. If we disagree, it must be
because either we're starting from different premises, or
one of our logical reasoning is flawed, or perhaps one of
us is biased in our thinking in a way that we are unaware of.
But I'm not stupid, and I don't believe you are either.

> I suspect
> I will unsubscribe from this newsgroup before long. I'm a scientist, not
> a suicide counselor.

I didn't ask for any counseling.

--

Wei Dai

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Jun 19, 1999, 6:28:35 PM6/19/99
to everyth...@eskimo.com, everything-list
[Let's please keep this discussion civilized. And keep in mind this is the
*Internet*, not a group of your closest friends, so think carefully before
posting something personal, and then don't do it.]

I think the main point of disagreement between the two camps now is
relative SSSA versus absolute SSSA (Marchal's terms). Can we all agree
that given the absolute SSSA, there is no justification for QS? (Higgo's
"I don't care about anything" doesn't count.) If so, someone from the QS
camp should respond to my argument that the absolute SSSA is necessary for
practical reasoning.

Jacques M Mallah

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Jun 19, 1999, 6:40:30 PM6/19/99
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From: h...@finney.org

> Jacques, you silver tongued devil, you. Don't sugar coat things, tell
> us how you really feel.

Judging by the reaction to my sugar coating - which it WAS -
maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea.

>> But consider this: Is the branch in which you win the lottery not
>> already occupied? How will it profit this lottery winner if you, finding
>> yourself in another branch, kill yourself?

>You seem to be using the model where state reduction is a process of


>differentiation of pre-existing universes, rather than the actual forking
>of a single universe into multiple daughter universes. But neither
>approach is inherently superior to the other.
>
>Even in your model, where all (future) "branches" are already occupied,
>many branches are completely identical prior to differentiation. It is
>reasonable to consider your "identity" or "consciousness" as being common
>to all of these branches. You are not living in just one of them,
>you span all of the identical ones.

I guess that depends on the definition of 'you'. It sure doesn't
seem reasonable that I'm living in a branch where I won the lotto. I
don't remember doing that. Some other guy did that who's almost like me.

>> Your belief that you will magically leap into the body of this
>> winner, at the same date and time as you die, is absurd. You guys take
>> one true fact - that the effective probability of finding yourself to be
>> that winning guy, given that you find the date and time to be such and
>> such, and that your name is such and such, etc. - is nearly one. But you
>> don't understand what it means and you sure as hell don't use it
>> correctly, and the result is this monstrous quantum cult of death.

> With the concept of identity I described, or the concept of a universe


> which branches at the time of state function collapse, there is no leap
> involved. It is a continuous process.

Wrong. It makes no difference if you assume that worlds branch.
(Off topic note: When did the term 'collapse' start applying to the MWI?
Last I heard the MWI was the antithesis of that.)
Think of it from the point of view of the guy who won the lottery.
If the other branches commit suicide, can he then say "I wouldn't be here
otherwise, I'd be in another branch"? Of course not. He would still have
been there and is totally unaffected by what goes on in the other
branches.
As far as continuous, don't forget that it is not the selection of
the lottery numbers that kills you. It's what happens after that, after
the branching already occurred a macroscopic time ago. You know you
didn't win and that death is coming, but you still think you can leap to
the other distant branch. Not very continuous.

On Sat, 19 Jun 1999, Christopher Maloney wrote:
> last post I even invited you to "show me why I am stupid". But
> only when I decided to write something a little bit personal did
> you decide to respond in a scornful, derisive manner. Why is that?
> I won't respond to the technical issues, "the facts" that you
> listed in your post, because I would just be repeating the stuff
> I wrote in the above two posts. I still wish you'd respond to
> them.

You just answered your own question. Responding to them would
just be repeating what I already wrote, including the technical side of
the last mail. Only when you wrote something new that hadn't been written
before did I respond. Your two technical posts were a rehash of the same
stupid view I keep pointing out the fallacies of.

> It's interesting, isn't it, how people can disagree so
> fundamentally sometimes?

Yeah, interesting. That's one word for it.

> But I'm not stupid, and I don't believe you are either.

Thanks, but I can't return the favor. I do believe you are
stupid. Not in all ways, no doubt, but in important ways.

> > I suspect
> > I will unsubscribe from this newsgroup before long. I'm a scientist, not
> > a suicide counselor.
>
> I didn't ask for any counseling.

But if your wife dies or leaves you or whatever that could change
and I might be in a situation where your life or more depends on my
persuasiveness. Who needs that? Or it might not be you, it could be
anyone who thinks as you do. It could be worse too than just a suicide.
It's only a matter of time if this list continues to grow and you guys
keep thinking like this.

Ken Fisher

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Jun 21, 1999, 6:50:48 AM6/21/99
to everyth...@eskimo.com
> Everett too died at a young age... but I don't know the
> circumstances of his death.

He died of a heart attack, presumably related to his chain-smoking.
The risks of his habit were well-known by that time and it seems
reasonable to assume that the implications of many-worlds would have
occurred to him when assessing those risks... but I'm not sure that
makes him a victim of quantum suicide.

Ken Fisher

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