j9fd3s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide



borrowed from another forum.... and wikipedia, its perfect for a monday



A physicist sits in front of a gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, then the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into one world in which he lives and another world in which he dies. After many runs of the experiment, there will be many worlds. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist. However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the physicist will notice that he never seems to die, therefore "proving" himself to be immortal, at least from his own point of view.

1988RedT2

Dammit! I think you just made me pull a muscle in my brain! Ow!

Baldy

That's like the phrase, "I plan on living forever, so far so good." Like, as far as I know, I'm immortal, because I'm not dead.



I don't know why this "interpretation" has to incorporate a decaying atom with Russian roulette and some sort of time travel concept.

GreyGT-C

Jeff20B

There was a movie ten or more years ago where a guy would sit in front of a shotgun hooked up to some sort of similar (will it trigger or won't it?) device. I think Jeff Fahey (Lawnmower Man, McBride) was a main character in the movie. Anyone remember it?

sidewinderx7

Youre too old Jeff, youre just too old.

1988RedT2

You're too old when you can't feed yourself or control your bladder.