For all intents and purposes, when a conscious being considers something as so, to him, until his opinion is changed, such thing is so. And this applies over all conscious beings.
So let me use DoTA as an analogy. We have Hero X. Some people feel that Hero X is overpowered. Some people feel that Hero X is underpowered. And, for all intents and purposes, Hero X is simultaneously overpowered and underpowered. Naturally these people feel that they are right and possess a justified point of view.
Humans are all logical beings. From a human's point of view, everything that said human performs is fully logical in his or her opinion. Naturally alot of such opinions are biased. One may not fully grasp all the related facts. For this reason, some opinion are weighed heavier than others. For this reason, we have something called professional opinion.
But what is the one constant that we can relate to? The one value we can agree on? To a certain extent, only one opinion is needed. And yet because other flawed, biased opinions cannot be rejected because they must have an underlying reason, infinite opinions are needed. Applying the law of large numbers, and taking the average of the sample, perhaps one might find the true contant value. And yet this is relative. After all, who is to say that the opinion of six billion people ain't biased? It needs to be infinite for all possibilities to be truly realized. And yet one might say infinite is not enough, since there are also infinite possibilities.
So, after establishing that something can be simultaenously something and not, what is the key to this?
Recognition by conscious beings.
Lets say: If something crashes in a forest and leaves no observable trace -
Has it crashed at all? Can humans recognize that it has crashed? After all, no one can observe it. No one has observed it. And no one will observe it. For all intents and purposes, it DID NOT happen. And yet it DID happen.
So for something to happen-
Its proccess or effect must be observable by at least one conscious being.
And whether or not is existence is recognized-
Depends on whether said conscious beings are able to spread what happened to others.
Perhaps the most powerful beings are those who can spread ideas and information. Perhaps the ability to convince is the greatest power.
Look at Schrödinger's cat for an example. Simply put, a cat is put in a box. It has exactly 50% chance of being killed and 50% chance of surviving. Until the box is opened, no conscious being is aware of the result. So for all intents and purposes, before the box is opened, the cat is both dead and alive. After all, there is a 50% chance of each. Yet it can onlny be either. Once the box is opened, the other possibility vanishes. Into where? Is there an alternate universe where the alternative happens? Is the other possibility snuffed out like a flame by a gust of wind?
The popular theory is that until the box is opened, the cat is both alive and dead. This is because the effects of the experiment is not visible or observable to any conscious being until that point. So simply put, does this reinforce my opinion that something happens ONLY if its proccess or effect is observable by a conscious being, even if it DID happen?
Variations of said experiment include if the cat is videotaped, and the videotape only shown to audience long AFTER the experiment has passed. So then, is the cat simultaneously alive and dead until then? Its outcome, after all, can only be established when it has been observed by conscious beings. Up to that point there is equal possibility of both. Mathematically, it would be half dead and half alive, or rather both alive and dead. Until someone can actually check, nothing can be proven.
Which, perhaps, brings us to the theory of quantum immortality. And quantum suicide.
But first let me talk about the multiple-world theory.
As you may have surmised, simply put it is that 2 worlds are established when there are two possible outcomes, one where one outcome is realized and one where the other outcome is realized. This applies when there are more outcomes and so on. So basically, the world we are living in now is simply one of infinite parallel worlds, and that what we see as now is simply another possibility. A branch of a tree.
But enough of that.
Let me quote wikipedia on this:
"Explanation of the thought experiment
For example, a man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; it's rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won't. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire. If the particle is spinning counterclockwise, the gun won't go off. There'll only be a click.
Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. He pulls the trigger again. Click. And again: click. The man will continue to pull the trigger again and again with the same result: The gun won't fire. Although it's functioning properly and loaded with bullets, no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, the gun will never fire. He'll continue this process for eternity, becoming immortal.
Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. The man pulls the trigger for the very first time, and the particle is now measured as spinning clockwise. The gun fires. The man is dead.
But, wait. The man already pulled the trigger the first time -- and an infinite amount of times following that -- and we already know the gun didn't fire. How can the man be dead? The man is unaware, but he's both alive and dead. Each time he pulls the trigger, the universe is split in two. It will continue to split, again and again, each time the trigger is pulled, and become quantum immortal. This thought experiment is called 'quantum suicide'. It was first posed by then-Princeton University theorist Max Tegmark in 1997 (now on faculty at MIT). However, science fiction author Larry Niven originally proposed a fictional variant of quantum suicide in his short story "All The Myriad Ways" in which the protagonist's final action in the story kills/fails to kill him in a myriad of alternate realities."
So looking at the above theory, the man has two possible outcomes every time he pulls the trigger, And this will branch into infinite possibilities. But as infinite as they are, in all the possible outcomes he dies after pulling the trigger a certain amount of times. And only in one outcome does he survive. And this goes on infinitely. So for all intents and purposes, in that outcome he is immortal.
But assuming he is the only one observing himself, from his point of view he should only be able to observe that outcome. For if he dies, nothing happens, and with no one to observe him he is as good as alive. In all the other worlds, all the other parallel universes, his conscious self is snuffed out by his own hands. So logically his consciousness should only be able to follow the path where it extends infinitely- i.e. the path where he never dies.
And can this be established in the real world as well? When someone dies of circumstances that could have been avoided- is it possible, then, that in an alternate universe he would not have died? And is it possible that from his conscious point of view, he would only be living in said alternate universe because in the universe we are in, his consciousness would have been lost?
Or does it not apply, simply because other conscious beings are observing us? Is it true that if we were locked in a box sealed from all prying eyes with a 50% chance of survival, we would emerge alive because we would only be conscious in one world and not the other? Does the observation of others really matter? Do we really die when everyone regards us as dead? Or does everyone regard us as dead because we die?
Simply put- we are in Universe A. Person B dies of an avoidable car accident. Life goes on for us in Universe A, albeit that Person B has died.
But applying the theory of Quantum Suicide- supposing that in another world, Universe B, Person B avoids the car accident and does NOT die. Shouldn't it follow, then, that Person B's consciousness will live on in Universe B? And from his point of view he would have never died. Why should his conscious live in a universe where it would be eradicated?
Then, perhaps, we are incapable of dying from our own point of view. Until it is totally unavoidable, until no roll of the dice can save us from our fate, we will continue living forever. Others may see us die of various means, but that is already in another universe entirely. Our own established universe, our own possibility. Maybe I, Yu Xuan, have died countless times in infinite universes. But yet I am here typing this. This much shows that my conscious has chosen to follow a universe up to the point where it is still surviving. And why shouldn't it go on like this until my death is unavoidable? In the eyes of others I may already be dead. But that is, of course, in another universe.
So much for that. Maybe death doesnt really occur. Maybe it only occurs because we recognize it as so. After all, if everyone denies the death of something, for all intent and purposes it is alive, is it not? Something cannot be as it is if all conscious beings recognize it as something else, even if it IS what it is and not what others recognize it.
They say denial is the human brain's way of coping with things. But what if everyone denied something? Would it still be denial? Or would it be the gospel truth?
Yes, my thoughts are incoherent. Yes, I am an idiot. Yes, I am wasting my time and yours.
Sorry for being what I am. Perhaps if I deny my own existence hard enough, I'll cease to exist.
This is, after all, my blog. I am entitled to bullshit all I want given certain rules which shall not be stated here.
Hmph.
Simplified, it should be something like this:
So the fact that I am still here shows that I am on the "LIVE" path, right?
So what about those paths where I could have died?
Another world. Another universe.
Simply put, the world as we know it currently, is where all the LIVE paths meet. Of course, some people, from our point of view, have met their ends prematurely on one of the paths. I'm fairly sure most people know a friend, or a friend's relative, or a friend's friend who has lost their life to some accident. Or at least, I do. So the current world is where all those paths meet.
And yet in another world, from said dead person's point of view, he or she is alive. Everyone is alive, the world is same, just that said person is not dead. So there are infinite possibilities for combining the paths of six billion people; or at least so many possibilities that we can regard it as infinite.
So the world as we know it is just a chance combination of the paths we see in front of us. That I am alive typing this, that you are alive reading this, shows that we have chosen the "LIVE" path thus far. Or at least, have been lucky enough to be on the LIVE path.
From my point of view then, perhaps I shall always be on the LIVE path until my death is inevitable, unchangable by random events. From the point of view of others, their LIVE paths may coincide with one of my DEATH paths, and in their world I have died. In my world I have continued to live on. Perhaps that is why there is no communication from the dead. There can only be one consciousness. It has already lived in another world. In an alternate universe, it is still alive and kicking.
What then, constitutes random? We call something like a dice roll random. However, most of what we call random is simply something with so many variables that it would be impossible, or close to impossible to calculate. If one were to judge trajcetory, force, motion, blahblahblah one would eventually be able to mathematically prove that for a throw with a given force in a given direction of a given blahblahblah, the dice would always land on a certain number. But because there are too many variables, we call this random.
Any programmer will know that in the computer world, there is no true thing as "random". The closest would be to introduce so many variables such that one would not read the flow- that, or preset an order. Take early games for an example, for their so called "random" variables they would read off a pre-determined list of values which would eventually loop on itself - such were the early Fire Emblem games. Later games would introduce other variables such as number of steps taken, time of the game, hp of main character and such. However, the fact remains that they are not truly random.
Life, after all, unlike in the case of Quantum Suicide, is not determined by the spin of a quantum particle. How many events in life are truly random? Perhaps, then, there are many less alternate universes present than we think. If I were to assume that an alternate universe would form only if conscious beings are affected in one way or another, such as the deateh of one, than perhaps there would be far less alternate worlds than infinte. Sure, it would still be infinite, but infinitely less than infinite.
Humans are like gears. One small change to one, and its effect will be felt by others, the magnitude of which depending on the size of the original gear and the size of the others. Using the clock as an example - one gear rotating would cause all the other gears to rotate. However it is overly simplistic to believe that the world is merely one big clock. More realistic would be many clocks, all closed systems, since some things absolutely do not affect some people.
And this world of clocks is subjective. When one turns his cogs, one can even go as far as to choose which gears not to turn. So for everybody exists a separate world, a world which is changing constantly with time. And yet all these separate worlds have many in common. All of us are, for example, affected by the large gear which we call the government. And the extent to which we are affected depends on how large of a gear we are. The smaller our gear, the lesser our cogs, the greater we are affected.
