In the theory of the multiverse you live your life forever and in all possible outcomes in some parallel universe. You live your current life an infinite amount of times and you live your life with just small or big changes an infinite amount of times. In one universe you watch this video now while in the other you watch a video about cat babies. In another universe you are actually a millionaire or engaged to a celebrity. And all of those lifes repeat themselves an infinite amount of times. That's really a scary thought.
@@JackoBanon1 I strongly suspect that we exist again and again because if time is infinite then there's no way an infinite amount of time has actually passed since your last period of existence, perhaps it was an extremely and absurdly long amount of time like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ eons or maybe not as long but eventually we should exist again once all of the exact parameters line up in such a way that your brain and body are produced inside your mother again down to the very last atom or particle that makes you who you are. The only thing about that last part is there's supposedly a period of about 5 years or so in which all of your bodily atoms have been replaced by new ones, so how exactly do we remain as ourselves if our atoms are recycled? Perhaps only the initial configuration matters and if that's the case then all we need is time. It doesn't seem like we perceive any passing of time at all when we're dead or nonexistent, so it could be an instantaneous birth into your next life with you only perceiving time again once you are born.
Yes it is. My instinct though is that infinite cycles probably do not exist in nature. The concept of infinity opens up too many weird possibilities. I suspect nature does not allow it.
Isn't the "dead by 30" thing a myth? It was infant mortality that brought the life expectancy down, but people did live past their 30s and even 50s back then. They just had to make it past childhood.
Some people lived long lives (by the standards of their own times), but they were a very small minority. Someone like the Holy Roman emperor Otto I could live to die a natural death at the age at 60, but his eldest legitimate son Liudolf died a natural death at age of 27 as did Liudolf's son duke Otto (who might have reached 28), and Otto I's younger legitimate son and successor Otto II died a natural death at age of 28 while his son Otto III died a natural death at age of 21. Otto I's illegitimate son archbishop Wilhelm died at 38 or 39. Pope Gregory V, the great-grandson of Otto I, died at age 26 or 27. Gregory V's brother count Henry died around the age of 20. Henry's son, emperor Conrad III reached the mighty age of around 49.
I remember watching a documentary on ending aging back in the 1980s. One of the scientists they interviewed estimated that if aging could be stopped, but the accident rate remained the same, the average lifespan would be around 300 years.
When I hear that I just think of all those cute fanciful turn of the century articles in which people in 1900 tried to guess what the year 2000 would be like. Our technology has been advancing at a nearly exponential curve in recent history and with AI progressing as it is it seems we may be very close to a more vertical climb in that curve. I would like to hope that with the help of AI we could not only solve the mortality problem but also the accidents problems too. A less dystopian WALLe outcome perhaps.
Nah Wall-E outcome is most likely. Also being biologically Immortal would be cool, accidents do happen and it seems like a reasonable outcome for what we could achieve.
@@hazonkuWe’re so far away from reaching a singularity event or even achieving AI that would be capable of that. There’s still far too many unknowns for what needs to be achieved on a fundamental level to even suppose that it would be here in the near term.
Hey John, I just wanted to say how much I love your content! Your videos on science, space, and the universe are mind-blowing and always leave me feeling inspired and in awe. You're one of the main reasons I developed a love for science, and I can't thank you enough for that. Keep doing what you're doing, because you're truly making a difference in the world of science communication. Cheers to you, and here's to many more fascinating and thought-provoking videos!
The digital immortality is the one you should not want. A tyrant outside could put everybody inside in hell for eternity, especially if one second on the outside equates to decades in the digital realm. That is too scary to even contemplate going in.
all the things you can enjoy in this life are finite. Similarly, tyranny for all the unfortunte mortals is finite, too. if we were immortal, the possibility of fun would increase, and so would the possibility of suffering. It is a trade off. If I had the chance to become immortal, the chance of infinite suffering would not hold me back. Just like the chance of finite suffering does not make my finite life a bad choice.
The multiverse immortality thing can be pretty creepy. I know one scifi author posited that everyone who ever lived has, somewhere in the multiverse, outlived everyone else and gone insane due to loneliness at the end of time. These insane creatures become Lovecraftian old ones bent on destruction of the multiverse through meddling with time travel to manipulate events in the past.
The "not having a choice in immortality" is one of the few things that scare me. A lot. I WANT to be immortal, but i want it to be on my terms, cause if something else dictates how i get my immortality and what it entails, then i may end up in eternal agony.
Human lifespan was not significantly shorter in the past. Infant mortality was higher. This brings down the overall _life-expectancy_ of a given population, but not the average _lifespan._
Infant mortality does bring down average lifespan though, unless you decide to only start counting "lifespans" of people who survive to some arbitrary age.
@@unicornswag888 you’re confusing "lifespan" with "life expectancy." "Lifespan" isn’t an average; it’s the maximum number of years a person *can* live. That’s essentially 120 or so, and there’s no evidence to show that it was ever less than that. That’s just how long a human body can function. "Life expectancy" is an average. It’s how long any individual can be expected to live based on the average age at death of everyone in a population. While the two terms may seem like they mean the same thing, they actually don’t. Most people don’t use them correctly, of course…
Thanks for sticking a new existential thought into my head: from a certain point of view, I haven’t even been born yet. From a certain point of view, I’m already dead.
oooo what a cool video this is gonna be! thank you for another banger 🔥 immortality has always scared me cus either you remember everything or you eventually forget everything. scary concept
I’m confident that with the arrival of the singularity, we will be granted the gift of immortality, and it will just be a stepping stone to something far greater
This video cries out for millions of views. I love every video by JMG but this is the next level, like the Magnum Opus. Philosophy, future technology and existential crisis, everything packed in less than 17 minutes. Let's share it, comment and like in order to help the algorithm spread it around the globe and-who knows-even Proxima b sentient beings.
JMG, another fascinating series of possible futures told in your inimitable and entertaining narrative. The added bonus is that your episode sign off still gives me a chuckle every time, even if it closely resembles my 11-year-old self trying to "burp" the alphabet... "in which we liiiiiiiive." Priceless!
I personally like the theory of alternative universes where there are copies of you, but you experienced every possibility in life. For example, in this reality I am a Transit bus driver. But in other realities, I am President of the United States, a convicted murderer, a movie star, etc. In some realities I have already died. I ponder such possibilities and find them fascinating. I think it would be fun if I was able to talk to an alternative version of me. But of course, that's impossible even if the theory was true.
I wouldn't want immortality either, but I wouldn't mind a bit longer, maybe similar to the lifespan of a Vulcan 🖖. 200 or so years then I think I would be ready for the big sleep.
I always thought that the Transporter tech in Trek wasn’t used to its ultimate potential… immortality, they could effectively store everyone in transporter banks everyday and if something happens to anyone they could pull that stored backup from the bank…
Scotty actually did something similar to that in TNG. I think it was the Dyson Sphere episode. I'm not sure of the lore, but I think it would raise the same ethical questions as cloning and genetic manipulation does (which the federation wasn't too fond of). Not to mention, different avenues of immortality were explored such as downloading a consciousness to an immortal android body, physical immortality such as the Q, cloning + memory transfer such as the Vorta, etc.
The concept of a cyclic universe for me always brings to mind buddhist cosmology. The ending part about the Poincare recurrence time especially brings to mind a part from the Lotus Sutra where the Buddha is describing the length of time that has passed since a parinirvana of a certain buddha: “O monks, it has been an extremely long time since this buddha entered nirvana. Suppose there were a man who ground the earth of the entire great manifold cosmos into powdered ink, and he were to then pass through a thousand worlds to the east, where he let fall a single particle of ink, the size of a speck of dust. “After passing through another thousand worlds, he let fall another particle; and he continued in this way until he had completely used all the ink. “What do you think about this? Do you think that a mathematician or a mathematician’s pupil would be able to count those worlds to the last parti- cle or not?” “O Bhagavat! No, they could not.” “O monks! Suppose that all the worlds this man passed through, whether letting fall a particle or not, were all ground into dust, and one speck of this dust were equal to one kalpa. The time since the parinirvāṇa of this buddha surpasses this number by immeasurable, limitless, incalculable hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of kalpas; and through the power of the Tathā- gata’s wisdom and insight, I can see his distant past, as if it were today.”
I think you missed one, the one where you fall into a black hole and right at the singularity, time slows for you and you potentially experience an infinitude of time, even if you cannot act (or even think as a reaction) in that frozen moment.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 any immortality is sorta lame. It's basically a childish inability to digest the fundamental temporary reality of existence. Even our quest of life extension is stupid, if we're not first trying to perfect the time we already have allotted. But equating quantity with quality is indeed our cultural tendency, our weakness, and our probable downfall, so at least we're on-theme.
This is a common misconception about black holes. The object going into the black hole just goes into it at their normal time experience. It's the observer on the outside that sees them slow down to near frozen state.
@HUSEYIN LAFCI i don't think that's true, afaik it's just a question that we do not know the answer to, it's still completely theoretical. i'm a dumb person but i saw brian cox talk about it a few months ago and he explained the issue in a super easy to understand way someone smarter than me might fill in the blanks, but it had something to do with an equation about the speed of time in a black hole relative to your distance from the centre. the issue is that the solution to the equation checks out all the way out of the black hole to inside it... until you get to the centre. At a certain small distance from the centre the answer goes into the negative, suggesting time goes backwards and leaving smart people scratching their head or something like that
@@CeroAshura maybe. We would find out if consciousness is based in the brain, or if it is based "elsewhere" and merely expressed through the brain, I suppose.
Love your vocal fry joke. One caveat about the Many Worlds interpretation is that true death is possible when every possible version of you in every universe has died. Also, you didn't mention quantum immortality AKA quantum suicide which is a possible consequence of Many Worlds. On the surface it sounds great, until you think a bit about it and realize it's a truly frightening.
I think it's important to note that life expectancy in the past does not mean that the average person died around 30. Rather, infant mortality brings down the average death date. However, if you survived to about 15, you could be reasonably expected to live until 50 or 60 with minimal issues. I'd also point out that most of our current life extension is less life extension and more preservation. It's true that people can live to be 90 or even 100 today much more easily than in the past, but it's often a dependent existence characterized by heavy medication and other technological support. Personally, I'd rather die independent and relaticely healthy at 70 than get to live to be 200 but spending most of that existence feeble, brittle, and losing my mental capabilities.
Wow, so Deja Vu happens because of infinite doppelgangers far beyond my observable universe living across infinite periods of time, and infinite more living copies during this exact period.
I love how you differentiate the spiritual and science but it's also important to realize they are more closely related then we believe I love these little Christmas presents of information right before I go to work
What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets, their hatred fuelled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other. -Intro video from the game Total Annihilation (1997, Windows)
The idea of cyclic universes which are identical to themselves reminds me of the thought experiment of "eternal return" which was suggested by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Thank you John for another great video and kalimera from Greece.
@@saferugdev8975 For me, it is more of a thought experiment: how would I like to live my life if I were to live it countless times in cyclic universes?
John's avatar pic let's everyone know that he has mastered "the look"...The look that let's you know that he knows that you did something wrong, and that you should take corrective action immediately.
I remember when I was 5 years old, one day I was playing in the front room corner. I had this strange feeling come over me, and felt like my future self entered my mind and I was like, (" O crap! I've got to live this whole crappy life all over again!") I was terrified! I believe that the past still exists.
How about cybernetic, robotic or organic replacment? Like replacing parts of a car with new or better parts. I would think this is a step down the road of biologic immortality. Just raises a question about the raw amount of raw neural data or pathways that could be created. You my live forever but you may not have infinite memory.
What part would you want replaced first? I dunno myself since I am missing most of the ribs on the right side of my chest and my right hand only has 2 bones in each finger instead of 3, plus my twin died 30 days after birth thanks to my "loving" mother doing drugs (nothing changes 44 years later) but my issues are enhancements... I might choose 🍌 enhancement options... Or 🧠 enhancements... 🍌🧠🤯
@@dancingwiththedogsdj I have pegs in an arm bone due to a bad break, wear glasses, will eventually need hearing aids, and have clips where my gallbladder used to be. Let's not discuss my teeth, which are more not-me than me. None of that makes me any less me, really.
I've liked the idea of Quantum Immortality for years. But instead of having to worry about being lucky enough to be born into the Universe where you end up Immortal, your conciousness shifts to an almost identical universe where you didn't die, if you do end up dying. If this is true, it would mean that literally everybody is immortal, but only from your first person perspective. Other people will still die, but you continue on in this universe because you didn't die.
Heh, you could use that to kind of explain the Mandela Effect, maybe? That Earth came to an abrupt end, perhaps, and those people got rocketed over to join their consciousness over here, and just don't remember the disaster?
I was just thinking about that this morning) What would you appear as physically though if you never die in your personal timeline what do you turn into you can't age forever
I hate everyone's idea of immortality. I love life but will be ready when it's my time. So much pain in this world. I don't want to remember it forever.
I had this thought once driving (too fast) on a mountain road. I took a turn a little aggressively and felt on the verge of losing control. I had this moment where I was snapping back to attention and it felt almost like a bad edit of two timelines. I thought to myself that in another universe I had drove off the road and that I was lucky I was in this one. Then I thought, what if my 'self' is just cruising along only ever 'choosing' or falling into the universe where it continues to exist? Afterwards I felt bad for all my friends and family in that other universe and thought about how it was unfortunate I was 'stuck' in one where some of my friends and family were already dead and not in the ones where they are alive.
People who want to die are weird. I don't ever want to die. The timeline of humanity has proven to be quite a wild thing and I think to only get a handful of decades of the human experience is a raw deal.
Oh. I would love to see fighters transition seamlessly between space carriers and aircraft carriers. But I also have debilitating anxiety and depression. Life is an exhausting slog of getting repeatedly fucked over by either those who claim to be working in our best interests, while they sociopathically exploit the system without any significant negative consequences or accountability, or those who somehow magically stumble their way along while paying increasingly less attention to the world around them because they are absorbed in their own little worlds and appear to be giving barely any consideration to anything around them between their limited glances up from their screens. That's on top of the genetic lottery interacting with our physical environments.
For some people, their lifespan is perceived as too short. For others, it is perceived as too long. Forever can be a sort of hell. You certainly have a gift for communicating ideas. I certainly appreciate your work. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to absorb it.
These immortal humans will want to die after at least 500 years. Maybe 1000 but I don't think our brains would even care to do anything after that much time
With respect to number seven, I frequently go outside at night with a neon sign that displays Planck's constant and point to my eye and then to the sky as to say: "I see you". I do this in hopes of messing with the mind of any life-forms that might take notice twenty-five to fifty million light-years in the future. Essentially sending them a message from the past✨
Well, I have a simple explanation for black holes: Given the Poincare recurrence theorem, the cause of black holes is caused by library late fees. Actually not the late fees themselves but the record of the fees.
Very interesting. I've dreamed of being immortal through cryogenics or through tech advances and even through genetic breakthroughs. The latter, I believe, has the most promising path forward, time wise. Wouldn't that be great? Just turn off certain genes and we live another 50 or 100 years. Such an appealing idea to me. Of course I'd take the other options. I've dreamed about uploading my mind to a robot body and set off by rocket to search the universe for other life, knowing I couldn't die. Just some daydreamer here. 😁
Why though? Everything in the universe needs to live and die in one sense or another. What kind of life would immortality be anyway? To see everything you've ever known live and die in accordance with the natural order. I mean within a thousand years it seems like life would become immensely boring... after two...
@@trolly4233immortality would be horrible. I want nothing to do with it. I love life. I'm fine with my life. Have seen so many horrible things in my life. I don't want to remember it forever. No thanks.
11. Simple philosophical argument: you can't experience non-experience (/the nothingness of death). Therefore there is only experience (the somethingness of life).
The thing I can’t get past is that all computers are Turing machines, and the brain is not a Turing machine. That seems to imply that no amount of Turing machines could ever emulate the brain.
an atom is not a circle, yet they make up a circle. when talking about human equivalent AI, something we find indistinguishable, its really just a matter of finding how to make a different process feel the same as the original process. at that point most people wouldn't care. though I personally would worry about people not caring about strict biological standards for humanity, I can't say if people would either become extinct as "humans" out compete homo sapien, or if they are never seen as an equal due to their fundamentally different nature, or any other potential future. all quite existential dread inducing though :c
A copy isn't the original, so a computer could someday maybe be sentient and a copy of a person, but that person will end. The back up would be nice for a loved one but for the original, no more immortality than having a clone. Your clone won't be you.
i can't remember who was talking about it, i think it might've been michio kaku but they were saying that the brain would not be able to comprehend immortality. they were saying the brain would not be able to register the passage of time at a certain point and you'd end up just fast forwarding to the end of the universe. more than likely explained it poorly but that was the gist more or less.
Something which has never made sense to me about Cryogenics is this, if you've already died what good is freezing your body? Even if the disease or whatever you died of is cured in the future if you are "defrosted" how could your dead body be reanimated even if the disease you died of is now curable? Surely you have to freeze your body whilst you are still alive and diagnosed with some terminal disease, then I could understand you could be potentially treated in the future with the cure? Does this make sense or am I missing something?
The idea is that nanotechnology would repair the bodily machinery, one atom at a time if necessary, while it is frozen. As such, it would only be necessary to freeze them before they have deteriorated to the point where information is lost from the brain. Which probably is some number of hours without oxygen. And the damage done by the freezing itself is also significant, and in fact probably more than the underlying cause of death or illness so it wouldn't just be about being able to cure it. Ice crystals forming around cells impale them from a thousand directions, so one thing they try to do now which was mentioned in the video is "vitrification", essentially embalming with a special solution that freezes to an amorphous solid like glass before freezing, but the problem there is these solutions are inevitably toxic so it solves one problem and creates another. No one's saying this task is easy, and it may indeed never be feasible even when technology has advanced as far as it can.
The really tough part as I see it is accessing the full 3 dimensional structure of the tissue to be repaired. How do you burrow into it to repair the stuff on the inside without wrecking the stuff on the surface?
I thought about cryogenics that way too. How can the people in the future repair a dead body that has been frozen for hundreds of years? Why do we put so much faith that medicine in the future will advance or even be feasible to bring a dead person back. And what about the person that was frozen, how can they want to live 200 years into a time where everyone they knew is dead and the world would be so different for them to adapt to. It's it like bringing George Washington back from 1790 and showing him our world in 2023.
according to the bible everyone will live forever somewhere, you don't think eternity in heaven would be good? sure beats the alternative that's for sure....
In a way, humans are technically Boltzmann Brains. The universe could also be a brain where every atom in every neuron is a brain, simulate a brain using the cosmic web and learn everything.
I'm a bit worried about how casually John mentioned the Idea of a digital Backup of a person emulating them once the real person has died. I think that's a very immoral idea, for someone to be there for others because they don't feel like coping with the loss, but not being there for themselves because they are no longer real.
With infinite time comes the certainty that your exact consciousness would manifest, at least for a short while. It's just down to chance, and it's a non-zero chance for it to happen.
Although the "6. Many Worlds" (@8:44) section did come close, I don't think it really presented the (actually rather horrofic) idea of Quantum Immortality to its full gory. If you've seen the 1992 movie Death Becomes Her, you might know where this idea leads to. Basically, any time you would die, you are miraculously saved and keep on living as long as there is at least one universe, where you are saved. Assuming infinite number of universes, you would always "find" yourself in one where you are still alive, even after hunderds and thousands and even millions and billions of years. Of course being alive would not mean your life would be peachy. Oh, no, not in the slightest. More likely you'll end up with a broken body and eventually just a husk that lives on only by the powers of quantum mechanics. Everyone would end up in their own personal and literal hells. Only way to avoid it would be to not be able to survive with a 100% certainty, which in an infinite multiverse would be asymptotically impossible. Of course there would also be an infinite instances of you screaming in agony with both same and more or less different histories. Well, I think we all know why John Michael Godier did not talk about this possibility. 😁
Everyone always extols the hellishness of immortality: “I’m not worried about death, father. I know there is no real death anymore, only amnesia. That my body might -will- die a hundred thousand local deaths, but my mind, my essence, can be printed out from the pulses of my last backup. I’m worried about changing. How will I know I’m Thaddeus after a hundred, or a million years?” His father, nostalgic for a time when he had worried the same exact same thing, waved his hand and a sand dune materialised in front of them, whispy and fragrant. “Before the end of death, people thought electromagnetic waves propagating in a vacuum were not real things at all. They had a sort of fetish with solidity. And it’s still buried back in our genome nestled together with other genes that preserve and stimulate our humanity.” He pointed at the crest of the dune, “see there.” Wind was cascading over the top, rustling little nests of sand along with it. “The wind is constantly working against the dune, but it only can manage to move the top few sand grains over the crest.” A timelapse of the dune showed a few days, then weeks, then months. “The whole dune moves bodily across the desert, one grain at a time. It is never quite the same structure, nor is it ever composed of the same sand grains, but it still manages to retain its arc across the desert.” Thaddeus shuddered. He’d hoped his father had come in to offer the customary comfort still incomparably provided by parents. But his explanation could mean only one thing: Thaddeus would be slowly bifurcated across the narrow porthole of the quantum effects that maintained his processor, but also, that in that collapsed wave function of his own personal universe, he would be annihilated, one piece at a time, again and again, until the end of time.
Gosh, now I feel totally doomed. (I always had, but this adds a whole new layer.) "Time marches on Time stands still Time on my hands Time to kill. Blood on my hands And my hands in the till Down at the Seven-Eleven. The past is realler than the present to me now. I've got memories to last me. When the sky is gray The way it is today I remember the times when I was happy. Same old Sun Same old Moon It's the same old story Same old tune. They all say, "Someday soon My sins will all be forgiven. " Gentle rain Falls on me And all life folds back into the sea. We contemplate Eternity Beneath the vast indifference of Heaven. The Vast Indifference of Heaven." ~Warren Zevon
What if conciseness doesn't exist at all? How do you know you're not just a collection of impulses, reflexes and memory? Or what if it only exists for a short time, for instance your conciseness dies every night when you go to sleep? Or every hour? Every Planck time? Maybe its unsupportable in physics for longer than that. Conciseness may be overrated.
If everything happens outside of consciousness in an instant, and the passage of time is an illusion, I would think that illusion is better than reality.
That cyclic universe theory is just terrifying.
Going through my childhood once was too many.
Anything that is greatly profound is terrifying, acceptance is key, embrace it.
In the theory of the multiverse you live your life forever and in all possible outcomes in some parallel universe.
You live your current life an infinite amount of times and you live your life with just small or big changes an infinite amount of times.
In one universe you watch this video now while in the other you watch a video about cat babies.
In another universe you are actually a millionaire or engaged to a celebrity.
And all of those lifes repeat themselves an infinite amount of times.
That's really a scary thought.
@@JackoBanon1 I strongly suspect that we exist again and again because if time is infinite then there's no way an infinite amount of time has actually passed since your last period of existence, perhaps it was an extremely and absurdly long amount of time like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ eons or maybe not as long but eventually we should exist again once all of the exact parameters line up in such a way that your brain and body are produced inside your mother again down to the very last atom or particle that makes you who you are. The only thing about that last part is there's supposedly a period of about 5 years or so in which all of your bodily atoms have been replaced by new ones, so how exactly do we remain as ourselves if our atoms are recycled? Perhaps only the initial configuration matters and if that's the case then all we need is time. It doesn't seem like we perceive any passing of time at all when we're dead or nonexistent, so it could be an instantaneous birth into your next life with you only perceiving time again once you are born.
noooooooooo dont send me back to Uncle Touchy!
Yes it is. My instinct though is that infinite cycles probably do not exist in nature. The concept of infinity opens up too many weird possibilities. I suspect nature does not allow it.
Isn't the "dead by 30" thing a myth? It was infant mortality that brought the life expectancy down, but people did live past their 30s and even 50s back then. They just had to make it past childhood.
It is but dying early was overall pretty common a cut that gets infected is enough to kill you
Some did live past 30, most didn’t. Today some live past 90, most don’t…
Some people lived long lives (by the standards of their own times), but they were a very small minority. Someone like the Holy Roman emperor Otto I could live to die a natural death at the age at 60, but his eldest legitimate son Liudolf died a natural death at age of 27 as did Liudolf's son duke Otto (who might have reached 28), and Otto I's younger legitimate son and successor Otto II died a natural death at age of 28 while his son Otto III died a natural death at age of 21. Otto I's illegitimate son archbishop Wilhelm died at 38 or 39. Pope Gregory V, the great-grandson of Otto I, died at age 26 or 27. Gregory V's brother count Henry died around the age of 20. Henry's son, emperor Conrad III reached the mighty age of around 49.
@@RaimoKangasniemi they were all poisoning each other for inheritance and power...and by everybody else
Look up average age in saharan countries
Some of them are down at 18 y. avg.
Right now, today :(
I remember watching a documentary on ending aging back in the 1980s. One of the scientists they interviewed estimated that if aging could be stopped, but the accident rate remained the same, the average lifespan would be around 300 years.
When I hear that I just think of all those cute fanciful turn of the century articles in which people in 1900 tried to guess what the year 2000 would be like. Our technology has been advancing at a nearly exponential curve in recent history and with AI progressing as it is it seems we may be very close to a more vertical climb in that curve. I would like to hope that with the help of AI we could not only solve the mortality problem but also the accidents problems too. A less dystopian WALLe outcome perhaps.
Nah Wall-E outcome is most likely. Also being biologically Immortal would be cool, accidents do happen and it seems like a reasonable outcome for what we could achieve.
@@hazonkuWe’re so far away from reaching a singularity event or even achieving AI that would be capable of that.
There’s still far too many unknowns for what needs to be achieved on a fundamental level to even suppose that it would be here in the near term.
Hey John, I just wanted to say how much I love your content! Your videos on science, space, and the universe are mind-blowing and always leave me feeling inspired and in awe. You're one of the main reasons I developed a love for science, and I can't thank you enough for that. Keep doing what you're doing, because you're truly making a difference in the world of science communication. Cheers to you, and here's to many more fascinating and thought-provoking videos!
Well said!
It was thought provoking, really gets you thinking.
Agreed!!!!!
I bet not a single one of you can name an ancestor from a thousand years ago, yet you suck up to this nonsense like it means something! :D
The digital immortality is the one you should not want. A tyrant outside could put everybody inside in hell for eternity, especially if one second on the outside equates to decades in the digital realm. That is too scary to even contemplate going in.
Yep - watch the prime show, upload, for a watered down version of this
all the things you can enjoy in this life are finite. Similarly, tyranny for all the unfortunte mortals is finite, too.
if we were immortal, the possibility of fun would increase, and so would the possibility of suffering.
It is a trade off. If I had the chance to become immortal, the chance of infinite suffering would not hold me back. Just like the chance of finite suffering does not make my finite life a bad choice.
Or they could just delete you.
I hadn't thought of that. It could end up with worse suffering than any human being in the real world has ever endured.
Well the only likely scenario is some kind of quantum/digital/analog hybrid computer mind back up.
The multiverse immortality thing can be pretty creepy. I know one scifi author posited that everyone who ever lived has, somewhere in the multiverse, outlived everyone else and gone insane due to loneliness at the end of time. These insane creatures become Lovecraftian old ones bent on destruction of the multiverse through meddling with time travel to manipulate events in the past.
Whoah
Is this a book? If it is I need to read it.
Dang....that is a scary thought. Living forever all by yourself sounds like the worst form of torture...and I say that as an introvert!
Sounds like a really cool theme for a concept album.
why only one person? why not like 10 people become eternal?
You officially made my night better 🙏, love the late uploads.
Nothing better than checking your videos before going to bed and seeing a new JMG upload waiting for you.
The "not having a choice in immortality" is one of the few things that scare me. A lot.
I WANT to be immortal, but i want it to be on my terms, cause if something else dictates how i get my immortality and what it entails, then i may end up in eternal agony.
As a reverse Pascal's wager, there's no way to avoid an eternity.
Personally im less scared because i can easily change it later down the line
Human lifespan was not significantly shorter in the past. Infant mortality was higher. This brings down the overall _life-expectancy_ of a given population, but not the average _lifespan._
Infant mortality does bring down average lifespan though, unless you decide to only start counting "lifespans" of people who survive to some arbitrary age.
@@unicornswag888 you’re confusing "lifespan" with "life expectancy." "Lifespan" isn’t an average; it’s the maximum number of years a person *can* live. That’s essentially 120 or so, and there’s no evidence to show that it was ever less than that. That’s just how long a human body can function.
"Life expectancy" is an average. It’s how long any individual can be expected to live based on the average age at death of everyone in a population.
While the two terms may seem like they mean the same thing, they actually don’t. Most people don’t use them correctly, of course…
@@unicornswag888Wouldn't expect some moron with a name like "unicornswag" to understand basic logic.
Thanks for sticking a new existential thought into my head: from a certain point of view, I haven’t even been born yet. From a certain point of view, I’m already dead.
"So I am a ghost. To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you. We must be nothing." --Clara to The Doctor
From a certain point of view, Darth Vader isn’t your father…
😂😭😂😭😂
Thank you for what you're doing, John.
oooo what a cool video this is gonna be! thank you for another banger 🔥 immortality has always scared me cus either you remember everything or you eventually forget everything. scary concept
Another banger. Nice job.
I’m confident that with the arrival of the singularity, we will be granted the gift of immortality, and it will just be a stepping stone to something far greater
Your voice is top shelf my friend. If you can manage to push out a few more good ideas like this one then boy you’d be really doing something.
RUclips has made John Michael Godier immortal, and that is amazing.
This video cries out for millions of views. I love every video by JMG but this is the next level, like the Magnum Opus. Philosophy, future technology and existential crisis, everything packed in less than 17 minutes. Let's share it, comment and like in order to help the algorithm spread it around the globe and-who knows-even Proxima b sentient beings.
Biological immortality might sound like a good idea but imagine how many odd socks you would have after a few millenia
Near zero. I discard all odd socks about every six months.
@@BronzeDragon133 there would be entire planetary systems filled up as landfills for odd socks in that case
@@BronzeDragon133same !
None. After some period of time, an identical odd sock would appear, making the original odd sock and its now-identical mate no longer odd.
You buy socks that don’t match all of your others?
I want to be turned into an industrial piece of mining equipment so I can scour the kuiper belt for 1000 years hoarding a bunch of rare metals.
That sounds awesome. Me too.
JMG, another fascinating series of possible futures told in your inimitable and entertaining narrative.
The added bonus is that your episode sign off still gives me a chuckle every time, even if it closely resembles my 11-year-old self trying to "burp" the alphabet... "in which we liiiiiiiive." Priceless!
I personally like the theory of alternative universes where there are copies of you, but you experienced every possibility in life. For example, in this reality I am a Transit bus driver. But in other realities, I am President of the United States, a convicted murderer, a movie star, etc. In some realities I have already died. I ponder such possibilities and find them fascinating. I think it would be fun if I was able to talk to an alternative version of me. But of course, that's impossible even if the theory was true.
So . . . you're Bill Clinton?
To me, only thing scarier than death would be not being able to die.
I wouldn't want immortality either, but I wouldn't mind a bit longer, maybe similar to the lifespan of a Vulcan 🖖. 200 or so years then I think I would be ready for the big sleep.
if this would be the case you could kill small parts of your brain untill you dont have consciousness anymore
@@100percentSNAFU or become a undead Vampire ‼️
Ideally it would be a form of immortality you could discontinue if you decide you don't want to live any longer.
I always thought that the Transporter tech in Trek wasn’t used to its ultimate potential… immortality, they could effectively store everyone in transporter banks everyday and if something happens to anyone they could pull that stored backup from the bank…
Thomas Riker is a clone of William Riker caused by a transporter accident.
Scotty actually did something similar to that in TNG. I think it was the Dyson Sphere episode.
I'm not sure of the lore, but I think it would raise the same ethical questions as cloning and genetic manipulation does (which the federation wasn't too fond of). Not to mention, different avenues of immortality were explored such as downloading a consciousness to an immortal android body, physical immortality such as the Q, cloning + memory transfer such as the Vorta, etc.
They even used it in exactly that way, _twice_, before forgetting about it by the next episode.
Something similar was used in some scripts.
@@lunaticyoshi1 Relics is the name of the episode
Clicked so fast. Never stop uploading!
The concept of a cyclic universe for me always brings to mind buddhist cosmology. The ending part about the Poincare recurrence time especially brings to mind a part from the Lotus Sutra where the Buddha is describing the length of time that has passed since a parinirvana of a certain buddha:
“O monks, it has been an extremely long time since this buddha entered nirvana. Suppose there were a man who ground the earth of the entire great
manifold cosmos into powdered ink, and he were to then pass through a thousand worlds to the east, where he let fall a single particle of ink, the size of a speck of dust.
“After passing through another thousand worlds, he let fall another particle; and he continued in this way until he had completely used all the ink.
“What do you think about this? Do you think that a mathematician or a
mathematician’s pupil would be able to count those worlds to the last parti-
cle or not?”
“O Bhagavat! No, they could not.”
“O monks! Suppose that all the worlds this man passed through, whether
letting fall a particle or not, were all ground into dust, and one speck of this
dust were equal to one kalpa. The time since the parinirvāṇa of this buddha
surpasses this number by immeasurable, limitless, incalculable hundreds of
thousands of myriads of koṭis of kalpas; and through the power of the Tathā-
gata’s wisdom and insight, I can see his distant past, as if it were today.”
for reference, a kalpa is a very long time, on the order of millions of years
"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens" -- Talking Heads fucking nailed it.
"And the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night..." - Leonard Cohen
I think you missed one, the one where you fall into a black hole and right at the singularity, time slows for you and you potentially experience an infinitude of time, even if you cannot act (or even think as a reaction) in that frozen moment.
That's the lamest kind of immortality ever.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 any immortality is sorta lame. It's basically a childish inability to digest the fundamental temporary reality of existence. Even our quest of life extension is stupid, if we're not first trying to perfect the time we already have allotted.
But equating quantity with quality is indeed our cultural tendency, our weakness, and our probable downfall, so at least we're on-theme.
This is a common misconception about black holes. The object going into the black hole just goes into it at their normal time experience. It's the observer on the outside that sees them slow down to near frozen state.
@HUSEYIN LAFCI i don't think that's true, afaik it's just a question that we do not know the answer to, it's still completely theoretical. i'm a dumb person but i saw brian cox talk about it a few months ago and he explained the issue in a super easy to understand way
someone smarter than me might fill in the blanks, but it had something to do with an equation about the speed of time in a black hole relative to your distance from the centre. the issue is that the solution to the equation checks out all the way out of the black hole to inside it... until you get to the centre. At a certain small distance from the centre the answer goes into the negative, suggesting time goes backwards and leaving smart people scratching their head
or something like that
@@CeroAshura maybe. We would find out if consciousness is based in the brain, or if it is based "elsewhere" and merely expressed through the brain, I suppose.
Love your vocal fry joke. One caveat about the Many Worlds interpretation is that true death is possible when every possible version of you in every universe has died. Also, you didn't mention quantum immortality AKA quantum suicide which is a possible consequence of Many Worlds. On the surface it sounds great, until you think a bit about it and realize it's a truly frightening.
Great list! 8,7 and 6 are my favorites. Thanks for the video, John!
My body wants to die, my mind wants to live forever.
This video automatically intrigues me.
Heroes get remembered but legends never die.
I think it's important to note that life expectancy in the past does not mean that the average person died around 30. Rather, infant mortality brings down the average death date. However, if you survived to about 15, you could be reasonably expected to live until 50 or 60 with minimal issues.
I'd also point out that most of our current life extension is less life extension and more preservation. It's true that people can live to be 90 or even 100 today much more easily than in the past, but it's often a dependent existence characterized by heavy medication and other technological support.
Personally, I'd rather die independent and relaticely healthy at 70 than get to live to be 200 but spending most of that existence feeble, brittle, and losing my mental capabilities.
Fantastic, John! Another amazing video! Thanks!!! 😃
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Another great upload, John. Thank you!
True immortality with no escape would be the worst torture possible. It would never end, even if you desperately wanted it to.
Wow, so Deja Vu happens because of infinite doppelgangers far beyond my observable universe living across infinite periods of time, and infinite more living copies during this exact period.
I love how you differentiate the spiritual and science but it's also important to realize they are more closely related then we believe I love these little Christmas presents of information right before I go to work
No.
@@semi-mojo You dropped your fedora 🤓
@@T25l what is wrong with his response ? it's not like you have to be an atheist to disagree with that you know.
What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets, their hatred fuelled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other.
-Intro video from the game Total Annihilation (1997, Windows)
Enough vodka watching this makes me feel immortal... until tomorrow morning.
Great Video John
The idea of cyclic universes which are identical to themselves reminds me of the thought experiment of "eternal return" which was suggested by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Thank you John for another great video and kalimera from Greece.
Oh god how many rounds have we gone? How many times have i lived this life? The implications….
theres a thousand ways in which this theory is impossible and a thousand ways in which this theory is impossible to be impossible :)
@@Williamfuchs420 Imagine: I wrote this comment countless times and I will write it countless times more.
@@saferugdev8975 For me, it is more of a thought experiment: how would I like to live my life if I were to live it countless times in cyclic universes?
The dead by 30 is partly an over exaggeration, recent studies of bones the whole dead by 30 started ending 30000 year ago. Just a fun fact
John's avatar pic let's everyone know that he has mastered "the look"...The look that let's you know that he knows that you did something wrong, and that you should take corrective action immediately.
I like the phrase "end up immortal." It implies that you didn't plan it. Like you just woke up and realize that you can't die lmao.
I remember when I was 5 years old, one day I was playing in the front room corner. I had this strange feeling come over me, and felt like my future self entered my mind and I was like, (" O crap! I've got to live this whole crappy life all over again!") I was terrified! I believe that the past still exists.
How about cybernetic, robotic or organic replacment? Like replacing parts of a car with new or better parts. I would think this is a step down the road of biologic immortality. Just raises a question about the raw amount of raw neural data or pathways that could be created. You my live forever but you may not have infinite memory.
What part would you want replaced first? I dunno myself since I am missing most of the ribs on the right side of my chest and my right hand only has 2 bones in each finger instead of 3, plus my twin died 30 days after birth thanks to my "loving" mother doing drugs (nothing changes 44 years later) but my issues are enhancements... I might choose 🍌 enhancement options... Or 🧠 enhancements... 🍌🧠🤯
@@dancingwiththedogsdj I have pegs in an arm bone due to a bad break, wear glasses, will eventually need hearing aids, and have clips where my gallbladder used to be. Let's not discuss my teeth, which are more not-me than me.
None of that makes me any less me, really.
Sounds like the novel Time Enough for Love in many ways
I want a 18 inch slinger know what I'm sayin
I've liked the idea of Quantum Immortality for years.
But instead of having to worry about being lucky enough to be born into the Universe where you end up Immortal, your conciousness shifts to an almost identical universe where you didn't die, if you do end up dying.
If this is true, it would mean that literally everybody is immortal, but only from your first person perspective. Other people will still die, but you continue on in this universe because you didn't die.
Heh, you could use that to kind of explain the Mandela Effect, maybe? That Earth came to an abrupt end, perhaps, and those people got rocketed over to join their consciousness over here, and just don't remember the disaster?
I was just thinking about that this morning) What would you appear as physically though if you never die in your personal timeline what do you turn into you can't age forever
I hate everyone's idea of immortality. I love life but will be ready when it's my time. So much pain in this world. I don't want to remember it forever.
Damn so maybe I can smoke crack everyday
I had this thought once driving (too fast) on a mountain road. I took a turn a little aggressively and felt on the verge of losing control.
I had this moment where I was snapping back to attention and it felt almost like a bad edit of two timelines. I thought to myself that in another universe I had drove off the road and that I was lucky I was in this one. Then I thought, what if my 'self' is just cruising along only ever 'choosing' or falling into the universe where it continues to exist?
Afterwards I felt bad for all my friends and family in that other universe and thought about how it was unfortunate I was 'stuck' in one where some of my friends and family were already dead and not in the ones where they are alive.
This was such a great video. Thank you!
This channel deserves a million subs
People who want to die are weird. I don't ever want to die. The timeline of humanity has proven to be quite a wild thing and I think to only get a handful of decades of the human experience is a raw deal.
Oh. I would love to see fighters transition seamlessly between space carriers and aircraft carriers. But I also have debilitating anxiety and depression. Life is an exhausting slog of getting repeatedly fucked over by either those who claim to be working in our best interests, while they sociopathically exploit the system without any significant negative consequences or accountability, or those who somehow magically stumble their way along while paying increasingly less attention to the world around them because they are absorbed in their own little worlds and appear to be giving barely any consideration to anything around them between their limited glances up from their screens. That's on top of the genetic lottery interacting with our physical environments.
Your vids are just right for me... not too abstruse but not too dumbed-down either.
For some people, their lifespan is perceived as too short. For others, it is perceived as too long. Forever can be a sort of hell. You certainly have a gift for communicating ideas. I certainly appreciate your work. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to absorb it.
Forever is always a choice. But it is an easy choice if you go with friends.
These immortal humans will want to die after at least 500 years. Maybe 1000 but I don't think our brains would even care to do anything after that much time
@@highlorddarkstar I don’t have friends ):
That "Liiiiiiive" has gotten longer with each passing year I've watched you. It's expanding with the universe.
Fantastic video!
You had me at bizarre
With respect to number seven, I frequently go outside at night with a neon sign that displays Planck's constant and point to my eye and then to the sky as to say: "I see you". I do this in hopes of messing with the mind of any life-forms that might take notice twenty-five to fifty million light-years in the future. Essentially sending them a message from the past✨
Excellent video, fascinating pontificating!
Well, I have a simple explanation for black holes: Given the Poincare recurrence theorem, the cause of black holes is caused by library late fees. Actually not the late fees themselves but the record of the fees.
Very interesting. I've dreamed of being immortal through cryogenics or through tech advances and even through genetic breakthroughs. The latter, I believe, has the most promising path forward, time wise. Wouldn't that be great? Just turn off certain genes and we live another 50 or 100 years. Such an appealing idea to me. Of course I'd take the other options. I've dreamed about uploading my mind to a robot body and set off by rocket to search the universe for other life, knowing I couldn't die. Just some daydreamer here. 😁
Maybe the ancient Chinese had it correct with drinking tea
Why though? Everything in the universe needs to live and die in one sense or another. What kind of life would immortality be anyway? To see everything you've ever known live and die in accordance with the natural order. I mean within a thousand years it seems like life would become immensely boring... after two...
Read the Bobiverse books by Dennis E. Taylor. You seem like you would like them, I sure as hell did. Also no, immortality would not be boring.
no.
@@trolly4233immortality would be horrible. I want nothing to do with it. I love life. I'm fine with my life. Have seen so many horrible things in my life. I don't want to remember it forever. No thanks.
Love your videos!
Thank you John and Eryn!
“It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.”
Voltaire.
I was only looking for one! Thanks John!
11. Simple philosophical argument: you can't experience non-experience (/the nothingness of death). Therefore there is only experience (the somethingness of life).
Great job John
Hell yeah science playa a new jmg podcast is here
In an infinite universe, an exact replica of our solar system and us in the exact same time period would occur an infinite number of times.
There'd be a replica of our solar system except there's a giant drawing of a dick on the face of the moon.
The sign off always gets me! 😂 Love it.
i like how you combined 10 and 4 in supermind, super spooky idea! i should read that again, it's been a while
The thing I can’t get past is that all computers are Turing machines, and the brain is not a Turing machine. That seems to imply that no amount of Turing machines could ever emulate the brain.
an atom is not a circle, yet they make up a circle. when talking about human equivalent AI, something we find indistinguishable, its really just a matter of finding how to make a different process feel the same as the original process. at that point most people wouldn't care. though I personally would worry about people not caring about strict biological standards for humanity, I can't say if people would either become extinct as "humans" out compete homo sapien, or if they are never seen as an equal due to their fundamentally different nature, or any other potential future. all quite existential dread inducing though :c
Something doesn't have to be a Turing machine for a Turing machine to emulate it.
A copy isn't the original, so a computer could someday maybe be sentient and a copy of a person, but that person will end. The back up would be nice for a loved one but for the original, no more immortality than having a clone. Your clone won't be you.
Your bite-sized idea videos always spark my sentimental overshares and wordy comments.
My personal definition of immortality requires continuity of consciousness.
I appreciate your content, very insightful
Thank you
17 minute video posted 6 minutes ago. I know your comments are premature!
Right?
With the internet we are all digitally immortal in a sense
I love how so many of the theories discussed on this channel I have seen on Futurama
Thanks for the new video
i can't remember who was talking about it, i think it might've been michio kaku but they were saying that the brain would not be able to comprehend immortality. they were saying the brain would not be able to register the passage of time at a certain point and you'd end up just fast forwarding to the end of the universe. more than likely explained it poorly but that was the gist more or less.
Kaku is smoking the ganja. He's out to lunch.
I love the channel and John you will live on eternally via these videos... Or at least until the sun sends an EMP that wipes out computers globally
Awesome video
Something which has never made sense to me about Cryogenics is this, if you've already died what good is freezing your body? Even if the disease or whatever you died of is cured in the future if you are "defrosted" how could your dead body be reanimated even if the disease you died of is now curable? Surely you have to freeze your body whilst you are still alive and diagnosed with some terminal disease, then I could understand you could be potentially treated in the future with the cure? Does this make sense or am I missing something?
The idea is that nanotechnology would repair the bodily machinery, one atom at a time if necessary, while it is frozen. As such, it would only be necessary to freeze them before they have deteriorated to the point where information is lost from the brain. Which probably is some number of hours without oxygen. And the damage done by the freezing itself is also significant, and in fact probably more than the underlying cause of death or illness so it wouldn't just be about being able to cure it. Ice crystals forming around cells impale them from a thousand directions, so one thing they try to do now which was mentioned in the video is "vitrification", essentially embalming with a special solution that freezes to an amorphous solid like glass before freezing, but the problem there is these solutions are inevitably toxic so it solves one problem and creates another. No one's saying this task is easy, and it may indeed never be feasible even when technology has advanced as far as it can.
The really tough part as I see it is accessing the full 3 dimensional structure of the tissue to be repaired. How do you burrow into it to repair the stuff on the inside without wrecking the stuff on the surface?
I thought about cryogenics that way too. How can the people in the future repair a dead body that has been frozen for hundreds of years? Why do we put so much faith that medicine in the future will advance or even be feasible to bring a dead person back.
And what about the person that was frozen, how can they want to live 200 years into a time where everyone they knew is dead and the world would be so different for them to adapt to. It's it like bringing George Washington back from 1790 and showing him our world in 2023.
Maybe the most likely outcome is having your conciousness downloaded into a stack of Playstation 4's like in that movie Chappie.
I can't imagine a fate worse than being immortal. An infinity of anything is terrifying.
according to the bible everyone will live forever somewhere, you don't think eternity in heaven would be good? sure beats the alternative that's for sure....
I bet you'd take a 10-year life extension each time it was offered . . .
An infinity of nothing is even more terrifying
@@iamBlackGambit thats the problem with infinity, you don't get to choose. You have to eventually experience BOTH heaven and hell.
@user-ki2cr9ce6w no it's either or! You spend infinity in hell or heaven
In a way, humans are technically Boltzmann Brains. The universe could also be a brain where every atom in every neuron is a brain, simulate a brain using the cosmic web and learn everything.
Nobody, not nobody, rolls out the sci-non-fi bangers like JMG. True story.
I often go to sleep listening to ole mate John
I'm a bit worried about how casually John mentioned the Idea of a digital Backup of a person emulating them once the real person has died.
I think that's a very immoral idea, for someone to be there for others because they don't feel like coping with the loss, but not being there for themselves because they are no longer real.
With infinite time comes the certainty that your exact consciousness would manifest, at least for a short while. It's just down to chance, and it's a non-zero chance for it to happen.
Engagement comment to show gratitude for great vids!
Thank you
Thought provoking, as usual.
Although the "6. Many Worlds" (@8:44) section did come close, I don't think it really presented the (actually rather horrofic) idea of Quantum Immortality to its full gory. If you've seen the 1992 movie Death Becomes Her, you might know where this idea leads to.
Basically, any time you would die, you are miraculously saved and keep on living as long as there is at least one universe, where you are saved. Assuming infinite number of universes, you would always "find" yourself in one where you are still alive, even after hunderds and thousands and even millions and billions of years.
Of course being alive would not mean your life would be peachy. Oh, no, not in the slightest. More likely you'll end up with a broken body and eventually just a husk that lives on only by the powers of quantum mechanics.
Everyone would end up in their own personal and literal hells. Only way to avoid it would be to not be able to survive with a 100% certainty, which in an infinite multiverse would be asymptotically impossible. Of course there would also be an infinite instances of you screaming in agony with both same and more or less different histories.
Well, I think we all know why John Michael Godier did not talk about this possibility. 😁
Good stuff!
Everyone always extols the hellishness of immortality:
“I’m not worried about death, father. I know there is no real death anymore, only amnesia. That my body might -will- die a hundred thousand local deaths, but my mind, my essence, can be printed out from the pulses of my last backup.
I’m worried about changing. How will I know I’m Thaddeus after a hundred, or a million years?”
His father, nostalgic for a time when he had worried the same exact same thing, waved his hand and a sand dune materialised in front of them, whispy and fragrant.
“Before the end of death, people thought electromagnetic waves propagating in a vacuum were not real things at all. They had a sort of fetish with solidity. And it’s still buried back in our genome nestled together with other genes that preserve and stimulate our humanity.”
He pointed at the crest of the dune, “see there.”
Wind was cascading over the top, rustling little nests of sand along with it.
“The wind is constantly working against the dune, but it only can manage to move the top few sand grains over the crest.”
A timelapse of the dune showed a few days, then weeks, then months.
“The whole dune moves bodily across the desert, one grain at a time. It is never quite the same structure, nor is it ever composed of the same sand grains, but it still manages to retain its arc across the desert.”
Thaddeus shuddered. He’d hoped his father had come in to offer the customary comfort still incomparably provided by parents. But his explanation could mean only one thing: Thaddeus would be slowly bifurcated across the narrow porthole of the quantum effects that maintained his processor, but also, that in that collapsed wave function of his own personal universe, he would be annihilated, one piece at a time, again and again, until the end of time.
Love it. What's this from?
Gosh, now I feel totally doomed. (I always had, but this adds a whole new layer.)
"Time marches on
Time stands still
Time on my hands
Time to kill.
Blood on my hands
And my hands in the till
Down at the Seven-Eleven.
The past is realler than the present to me now.
I've got memories to last me.
When the sky is gray
The way it is today
I remember the times when I was happy.
Same old Sun
Same old Moon
It's the same old story
Same old tune.
They all say, "Someday soon
My sins will all be forgiven. "
Gentle rain
Falls on me
And all life folds back
into the sea.
We contemplate Eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of Heaven.
The Vast Indifference of Heaven."
~Warren Zevon
JMG, you're awesome
Hey John, have you ever considered uploading your content as podcasts? Seems like a perfect fit & even more (well-deserved) reach. Just a thought ☺️
Err, I think they are.
how are your audiobooks coming along?
Pro tip: death, is not a 'discontinuence' of mortality anyway. Welcome to club eternity.
What if conciseness doesn't exist at all? How do you know you're not just a collection of impulses, reflexes and memory? Or what if it only exists for a short time, for instance your conciseness dies every night when you go to sleep? Or every hour? Every Planck time? Maybe its unsupportable in physics for longer than that. Conciseness may be overrated.
If everything happens outside of consciousness in an instant, and the passage of time is an illusion, I would think that illusion is better than reality.