Unfamiliar Realities and Jumping Universes and Immortality

originally posted by: whereislogic

originally posted by: Jay-morris
...I really do not understand why some peopke look at this sith a completly closed mind. ...

See my signature. Some people today are like sponges; they soak up whatever they come across. It is all too easy to absorb whatever is around us.

But it is far better for each individual personally to choose what he will feed his mind. It is said that we are what we eat, and this can apply to food for both the body and the mind.

Yes, but can that be a bad thing too? Can you see that in itself, it turns into some sort of belief system hidden behind the word science?

Obviously there is something in these theories, and if there is something in these theories, then they may be right, or they may be wrong. Theories are just theories at the end of the day. But you, me, or anyone else has the right to say they are right, or they are wrong.

Its great we have theories like this. Like it's great we have theories about conciousness. Its about trying to understand who we are, what we are, the universe, everything.

a reply to: Jay-morris
It's either dishonest or misleading* to give people the impression that this stuff about the 3 subjects I mentioned is "science" (i.e. a familiarity with things that are factual/true/certain, see definition for "science/knowledge" given earlier) or that so-called M-theory and String Theory are scientific theories. (*: depending on motive and awareness, if they don't know any better themselves, then it's just misleading, if they are aware of what they're doing and why they are presenting it as such or are OK with people getting that impression without reminding them of the truth of the matter in order to avoid giving a false impression, then it's dishonest)

I can see that it's often done on purpose for increased 'sales' (even when not spelled out as "scientific theories") and that that is the impression many people get when they hear the terms "M-theory" or "String Theory" from scientists or in such a way that they end up thinking of it as science. The reality is that this is pseudoscience. You might want to look up the definition for that word if you don't fully understand it.

Philosophies based on neurotic speculation for profit and entertainment purposes is not "science". At least in the entertainment industry they somewhat label it correctly as Science-Fiction, or Sci-Fi (although they often don't make it very clear that the reliance is more on fiction than science). The multiverse is pure fiction. When it's presented under the marketinglabel "science" (i.e. giving people the impression that this is science or scientific), then it becomes pseudoscience.

originally posted by: whereislogic
a reply to: Jay-morris
It's dishonest to give people the impression that this stuff about the 3 subjects I mentioned is "science" (i.e. a familiarity with things that are factual/true/certain) or that so-called M-theory and String Theory are scientific theories.

I can see that it's done on purpose for increased 'sales' (even when not spelled out as "scientific theories") and that that is the impression many people get when they hear the terms "M-theory" or "String Theory" from scientists or in such a way that they end up thinking of it as science. The reality is that this is pseudoscience. You might want to look up the definition for that word if you don't fully understand it.

Philosophies based on neurotic speculation for profit and entertainment purposes is not "science". At least in the entertainment industry they somewhat label it correctly as Science-Fiction, or Sci-Fi (although they often don't make it very clear that the reliance is more on fiction than science).

Sorry, but I seriously cannot believe I am reading this! Are you saying there are no respectable physicists out there who are looking into these theories, and the physicists that are, are only doing this for money, fame, attention etc

That's the most ridiculous thing I have heard, and mskes you sound like a new age scientist. You know, the ones that hold on to theirs beliefs like religous people do.

Its called string theory for a reason! Because it's a theory. What made the big bang happen is a theory but you except that because it's mainstream right?

Just lost for words really!

Twisting my words won't change the reality of the situation, the truth of the matter.

I’ve thought these same thoughts before. Excellent thread! But I don’t think immortality will work for me. By the time I make it to 130 years old, I’ll know death is a lie and then I will blink out of existence as a penalty for cracking the code.

originally posted by: whereislogic
Twisting my words won't change the reality of the situation, the truth of the matter.

I am not twisting your words, but it's pretty sure that your new hour science lime another person views their religion. Both use a set of beliefs, and very rarely sway from them beliefs.

Def not good when it comes to science.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I occasionally read stories on the Internet about people who for whatever reason find themselves in what they generally describe as alternate realities .........................

Very interesting.

I attended a conference yesterday on Azure and cloud computing concepts, and particular focus was paid to redundancy strategies and recovery strategies. At a base level you can fault tolerance built into your disks, then that scales up to having servers (on the same site) mirrored or clustered, so that one takes over should the other fail. Scale it up again and you have multiple sites in the same region, if one goes down another takes over. Scale it up even further and you have replication between regions (generally agreed by Microsoft to be a minimum of 300 miles apart), so if there's - for example - some kind of natural disaster in one area, another takes over. The idea is that your cloud data & services are always available.

As you scale it up, naturally the volume of data and complexity increases - sometimes exponentially. As no human designed system can claim to be perfect, and as we are still limited by current physics when it comes to bandwidth, naturally the possibility of some data loss during site replication exists - even at a miniscule level. There is no service provider on the planet who will ever offer a 100% watertight guarantee of data recovery in the event of a disaster or loss of service, they will go to 99.9% perhaps but not 100%.

The reason I mention this is that I've a very strong interest in topics on the universe being a simulation, because every time I read a well written one I see more parallels between some of the computer concepts that we have created, and phenomena which have seemingly occurred naturally in the universe.

Now take your first post, and imagine that the universe was a simulation. Are those slight shifts in our reality happening as the simulation transitions between some kind of universal replication systems?

I like the taking control of our own reality aspect, but why in this collective created reality we all are living in, do people still die of horrible accidents and murder illness etc? Is this the best case scenario right now?

I for one don’t really like the pulling back the curtain concept, I think things are not as complex as we desire them to be.
a reply to: Blue Shift

a reply to: Jay-morris

You did the 'are you saying...'-routine followed by something I didn't say because that's how you wanted to spin what I actually said to make it sound more unreasonable. I've made some edits to counteract the spin and make it extra clear what I was talking about with words such as "often" (instead of all cases, which was not what I was talking about). Also I added "or misleading" to indicate that such behaviour can also be unintentionally misleading when it's not done on purpose to satisfy the pressure to 'publish or perish' in the sciences. Initially "it" in the 2nd paragraph was referring to when the impression that this is "science" is dishonestly given on purpose as was discussed in the 1st paragraph, not all cases. The reality is that the 3 subjects I mentioned falls under unverified philosophy and speculation, thus when it's deliberately, while knowing better, and dishonestly* presented under the marketinglabel "science" without any caveats reminding people that this is not science/knowledge, so that a number of people will end up thinking of it as science/knowledge, it becomes pseudoscience. (*: having no issue with readers or listeners getting the wrong impression, conveniently making no effort to avoid that because you don't really mind people getting that impression. Thinking: it sure won't hurt the number of people taking an interest in my 'work', or supposed 'contributions' to the sciences; that sort of thinking or motivation. That's dishonest in that context there. Or also dishonest, I can think of more extreme examples and attempts to satisfy the demand to 'publish or perish' in the sciences, making one's publications appear more worthwhile, or beneficial/useful to the sciences than they actually are.)

Then you ignored my actual point about how lots of people perceive it when they see the word "theory" used in scientific literature or mass media, especially the general public. They often get the impression that these are scientific theories, yet M-theory and string theory do not classify as a "scientific theory" as that term is defined in the Encyclopedia of Scientific Principles, Laws, and Theories. Why don't they* call it M-speculation and string speculation to make it clear what kind of theory they're publishing about? Might it have something to do with how people would react to such honest and clear terms that cannot be confused with scientific theories? Might that maybe influence some people's decision on how to label their unverified philosophies/ideas and speculations? Might that wake some people up to the distinction between science/knowledge (a familiarity with facts/certainties/truths/realities) and philosophy (marketed under the marketinglabel "science", making it pseudoscience when it's not made clear what it really is as opposed to a familiarity with facts/certainties acquired by personal experience, observation, or study, i.e. science/knowledge)?

*: those who use, or have used the terms M-theory and string theory in so-presented scientific publications (both in scientific literature and newsmedia that presents itself as covering the news about "science"; the latter usually copies the terminology of the former, yet can still decide to do otherwise for clarity purposes as to not give the wrong impression and to acknowledge the distinction between real science/knowledge and philosophy, rather than blurring the lines as I so often encounter, especially once the newsmedia picks it up and begins to exaggerate and appeal to their audience's desires to have their ears tickled with the intriguing, so-perceived 'latest science')

originally posted by: whereislogic
a reply to: Jay-morris

...Or also dishonest, I can think of more extreme examples and attempts to satisfy the demand to 'publish or perish' in the sciences, ...)

edit: "pressure", not "demand"

From the wikilink earlier:

"Publish or perish" is an aphorism describing the pressure to publish academic work in order to succeed in an academic career.

Successful publications bring attention to scholars and their sponsoring institutions, which can help continued funding and their careers. In popular academic perception, scholars who publish infrequently, or who focus on activities that do not result in publications, ..., may lose ground in competition for available tenure-track positions. The pressure to publish has been cited as a cause of poor work being submitted to academic journals.
...
This phenomenon has been strongly criticized, the most notable grounds being that the emphasis on publishing may decrease the value of resulting scholarship, as scholars must spend more time scrambling to publish whatever they can get into print, rather than spending time developing significant research agendas. Similarly, humanities scholar Camille Paglia has described the publish or perish paradigm as "tyranny" and further writes that "The [academic] profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. ... One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book."
...
Also, publish-or-perish is linked to scientific misconduct or at least questionable ethics. It has also been argued that the quality of scientific work has suffered due to publication pressures. ...

Those "questionable ethics" become more apparent to me once the publication is about the multiverse (also referred to as parallel universes). Sir Roger Penrose explains how the subjects of M-theory and string theory tie in with the subject of the multiverse in the video I shared earlier. Notice what it is that he applies the phrase "they're hardly science" to (in response to the 2nd question about M-theory). Note that a synonym for "ideas" is "philosophies". If only he had be willing to really stick his neck out and tell it as it is:

This stuff is not science/knowledge, a familiarity with facts/truths/realities/certainties acquired by personal experience, observation, or study.

I guess I'll just have to settle for "hardly science", at least he admitted that much. Many people aren't ready to let go of the ever convenient Agnostic Code (in all its forms) anyway; it's just too useful for satisfying the pressure to 'publish (unverified philosophies) or perish' in the sciences. And marketing pseudoscience as intriguing 'possibilities' or 'plausibilities'.

a reply to: Blue Shift

An interesting theory I like about quantum immortality is that whenever we survive a particularly low-likelihood event, we move into a reality where novelty/randomness is higher as a result. A progressively weirder universe, I'd like to think. The reason for this is that the probability of an event happening, instead of another, is calculated from the set of all identical past events. However, as we shift towards the edges of the bell curve in a larger way, that higher novelty state could become noticeable, as unlikely events would suddenly become slightly less unlikely every time we have a brush with death that had a particularly low probability of survival, requiring us to branch off onto a path that required more changes/causal steps to avoid death.

I found a sci-fi short story with a similar premise once, but I can't remember the title or author right now. I'll edit this post if I remember.

Edit: also, quantum immortality is probably not physical immortality, even if it turns out to be more than a thought experiment. It stands to reason that eventually, as our body decays from entropy, our probability of death would get close to or reach 100%, and only non-zero probabilities would provide an available branching to follow, leaving us with no way out. Or accidental events with a negligible chance of survival might be near-inescapable...that would also depend on a likelihood threshold, a quanta of probability if you will, that would determine how many branchings are available, and whether this graining averages out to at least one continued alive branching from that point forward, from the available paths. We'd just live until we could no longer find a way forward, basically, but we'd eventually run out.