No, I cannot, and its growing acceptance of among physicists distresses me greatly. I’m a moron by comparison, but I can empathize with Einstein’s feelings toward quantum uncertainty, as I feel the same disgust toward the idea of the many worlds theory.
Personally I think the appeal is fear and laziness; troubling problems simply evaporate once you buy into it. IMO that’s not a virtue, but rather a cowardly sidestep. Not that I have any ideas about what makes a waveform collapse, but just sticking my head in the sand to say that all possibilities materialize so no collapse is needed is a) untestable, and b) a cheap and easy cop-out.
Despite being a hardline atheist, my favorite debunking of the many worlds theory is the concept of your soul. I don’t believe in souls, but if (general) you do, you’re totally screwed by this theory. Every choice in your life when you could do good or bad, you always do bad. You always do good, too, but what that means is that you never actually make any choice. So what does your soul have to answer for on judgement day? Everything, since you were never able to not do the wrong thing!
This really beefs up the whole idea of impure thoughts as a sin, because every time you ever imagined something bad that you (of course) didn’t act on, a new universe spontaneously erupts into existance where you actually do that bad thing.
For these reasons I can’t imagine how anyone other than an atheist buys into the theory. As for an atheist like me, I’m very invested in the concepts of free will and identity, so the lack of choice aspect to it makes it a non-starter for me.
But what if every universe has its own Judgement Day?
Look at it this way - it’s only “you” until the split. Once that happens, you’re two seperate individuals with two seperate lives, each judged by its own merits.
OTOH, maybe it’s all about averages - how many of you do the right thing, and how many don’t.
Speaking of the many worlds theory, I love it when I see a scientist say on television something to the effect of “our math shows that if we were to focus high powered lasers at a single point it would open up a hole between dimensions.”
The matter for the dupe has to come from somewhere. Even if it’s sucked as energy from the quantum foam and converted. We know that Danton-A and Danton-B aren’t composed of the same molecules, because they move and think independently of one another after the duplication. So one of them’s still not physically continuous.
The quantum level is essentially unrelated to the macro-world. A couple quick examples include Schroedinger’s cat. In reality, it’s not possible for a macro-world object (like a cat) to be a superposition of two states of being. Only subatomic particles can do that. (The cat is just an illustration.) The probability wave must collapse before the macro-world can be affected.
Another example is the identity thing, where all macro-world things are absolutely unique in their identity, while all subatomic particles with a given set of characteristics are exactly the same and freely interchangeable, meaning they share an identity.
This is a good answer. He might have even had one of his assistants make sure that Borden came on stage as a witness.
I remember a line in the film indicating that they didn’t know who the father was. They seemed to agree that it didn’t matter and she belonged to both of them. Interesting now that the non-Sarah Borden (I agree with your assessment fully) is the only father she has. Weird that she doesn’t know the difference.
It’s not a conclusion, so much as the definition of the word “transferred.” Danton is standing in place A. A duplicate is copied at place B. To create that duplicate, the information about Danton has to be transferred from place A to place B. Since part of that information includes a copy of Danton’s consciousness, then that consciousness (even if it’s not “his” consciousness) must also be transferred, otherwise it would never get to the other place.
But that’s probably a moot point, since you’re using some sort of distinction between “transferred” and “duplicated” that I don’t quite follow, so I’m assuming that you’re using a specialized definition of the word “transferred.”
I think it’s a really bad idea to assign moral values to scientific theories. Look, for example, at what that sort of attitude has done to the teaching of evolution in this country.
I don’t think that really follows. If the quantum physicists are correct, then the physical world is infinitely more weird that we thought. It follows, if one it is a theist, that the spiritual world is also infinitely more weird. If there’s any sort of divine judgment in a quantum universe, it does not beggar the imagination to conceive of an afterlife that can distinguish between quantum versions of the same person, and reward or punish each version as fits the dictates of that religion.
Here’s a simpler example. Suppose we are discussing Starship Troopers. In that film, there are large insectoid aliens.
If someone argues that such aliens are impossible because ants cannot scale up to that size, that argument is fallacious. The film has established that such creatures exist. It may be because their internal structure is different from Earth ants. It may be because gravity is different on the alien world. Or it could be another reason.
You cannot suddenly declare out of the blue that you believe the aliens must be mechanized androids because if they are biological, they should collapse under their own weight.
All of the evidence laid out in the film indicates the aliens are biological, not mechanical.
By similar logic, you should not declare that in The Prestige, an inferior copy has been made, when the film says identical duplicates appear in two locations. (i.e. the case where the consciousness splits / branches)
I rewatched The Prestige last night, and thought of this endless thread. I’m going to have to weigh in that the original Danton, the one we saw through most of the movie, died long before the climax of the film. He was either shot after the first use of the machine by his clone or he drowned when he did the trick for the first time with the tank. Either the person who stepped into the machine was transported some distance from the machine, or the person who stepped into the box remained in the box and ended up drowning. From Danton’s POV, he survives every show because his consciousness survives. His consciousness remains intact, on a forward trajectory in time, with a series of memories behind him, informing all of his decisions and fears. The consciousness is duplicated by the machine, that’s why he thinks he survives every night. The bodies are expendable. They’re meaningless. Arguing which one is the “original” is pointless because that original body is long dead.
In fact, the film gives you the key to unlocking this problem. When Danton uses a body double who literally acts like him, and of course, looks exactly like him, but is most obviously not him. The beauty and wonder of the machine is that he’s not creating a body double–a being that looks like him but isn’t him. He’s creating a being that is him in every single way. The machine makes it possible for a single man to exist in two places at the same time, as has been argued since the first page. It’s pretty self-evident to me. The film itself removed all possibility of the “original” Danton surviving when it made a point of showing the distant man being shot and the man in the box being drowned.
Also, I agree that the Borden who loved Olivia was the one who died.
The distinction is the same as mailing your actual birth certificate (transferred) to somebody as opposed to faxing them a copy. (duplicate) (I’m trusting that you aren’t pulling my leg with feigned confusion, but I’m pretty sure my definitions are the standard ones.)
Whatever you mean by “even if it’s not “his” consciousness” is the core of my position.
Sorry to bump this thread; I was perfectly content to let it drop as everyone having said their piece. But the Star Trek transporter thread included a link to a cool theory that I’m thinking might help my position: The No-cloning thereom. Could this apply?
(I’d point out that I intuitively appealed to the uncertainty priinciple numerous times in this thread, so I’d feel very good about myself if this did, in fact, help my case. heh.)
It’s not obvious to me that it can. To be applicable, I think it would have to be that A only counts as the same person as B if every particle constituting A has an identical copy among the particles constituting B. That seems implausible to me, since I’m the same person I was a few seconds ago even though countless particles constituting me now have no identical copy among the particles constituting me a few seconds ago.
