What We Observe After We Die
In my first article on the topic of the Omniverse, I talked a lot about what a sentient simulated being observes when you stop executing their code (spoiler: nothing changes). In my second article, I expounded on it by describing the many scenarios where the conditions of a reality may be inherently malignant to sentience, and presented some ideas for why our own reality somehow allowed sentient beings to evolve. But what happens from the perspective of a sentient being who dies “naturally” - expiring according to the deterministic laws of their universe?
Following the preceding logic, each of us lives our particular life and dies in the same particular way in an infinite number of realities. Now think about how in some subset of those realities, simply due to the infinite variety of permutations in the omniverse, you would observe yourself still alive and wondering how you have survived. Simultaneously, try to keep in mind that there will be zero realities in which you observe yourself as dead, since by definition you are no longer an observer.
But are any of your alternate selves in those other realities still you? Do you get to enjoy this newfound lease on life or do you cease to be?
An Analogy Using Cellular Automata
Glider 1
Glider 2
An analogous issue could be found in Conway’s Game of Life. For the uninitiated, this is a kind of cellular automata that has 3 rules (from wikipedia):
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives.
Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
All other live cells die in the next generation. All other dead cells stay dead.
In each of the two animations above, there is a pattern called a “glider” slowly making its way from the top left to the bottom right. Each runs into a block and “dies” after about 12 frames, so they follow an identical lifespan. Are the two gliders one and the same, or are they different because they are in separate universes? It’s a bit like asking if the “X = 1+1” in one equation is the same as the “X = 1 + 1” used in some other equation.
Glider 3
Now say that there is a 3rd simulation that is the same as Glider 1 without running into a block; it just keeps going. Is it the same glider in both? Could it be that they are identical up until the point they interact with (“observe”) something different, like running into one of the blocks or other patterns in their universe?
Consciousness, as complex as it is, still amounts to a pattern just like the glider. Asking whether you truly cease to exist when your pattern ends is, at its core, a lot like asking whether there is any difference between glider 3 and glider 1.
Consider further: Because these gliders are simulated in a computer, there’s several levels of indirection making it even more difficult to qualify what makes the pattern still “itself” from one moment to the next. For one, the glider’s pattern and the code performing the rules would constantly be shuffled around in memory, which in turn is represented by transient electrical charges of constantly moving electrons. And if we halt execution and trace the code on paper, it's now in ink or graphite, or maybe temporarily the brain of the programmer as they follow the steps of the trace. Do we count these details in asking which glider is which, and whether it is still “itself”? I’m not sure I have an answer, but it’s something to think about.
Realities Where You Observe Yourself Surviving Death
I wanted to get an idea of what it would look like to observe yourself surviving death, whether in this or some other reality. Given the infinite possibilities, it might not be possible to get a comprehensive overview, but I think it would help to imagine some scenarios to make the question more relatable and figure out what kinds of issues can arise. These are some that I came up with; maybe you can think of some more.
Intelligent Regeneration - Your corpse is revived in the future.
“Intelligent Regenerative” Model
A reality in which we devise a means of reviving the dead some time from now. Your brain and/or entire body might have been preserved after you died. You resume consciousness after having your cells/organs regenerated in place.
“Intelligent Cloning” Model
Intelligent Cloning - A clone of you is made in the future.
A reality in which some (possibly hidden) mechanism that recorded the state of your mind (and/or entire body) at the last instant before cessation of consciousness. It repairs the fatal problems virtually, then reconstructs you again.
“False Memory” Model
False Memory. Was your life just a delusion? (Dramatization)
A reality in which the memory of your death (and perhaps the conditions causing it) turns out to be illusory, caused by brain trauma, illness, drugs or, perhaps, an anomaly in the new reality’s algorithm affecting your neurons. You may awaken feeling as if you have escaped death by travelling to an alternate world, but to everyone else it is only your memories that have changed.
“Avatar” Model
Avatar Model (Comedic dramatization)
A reality that (from your perspective) is identical to this one in every other way, but in which your consciousness is stored and run separately from your body, maintaining the outward appearance of brain function in such detail as to be indistinguishable to you and anyone inspecting it (and, somehow, replicating the effects of aging, illness, drugs, or injury on your remote consciousness) . At the moment of death, your consciousness continues separately from the body, much like the player of a video game continuing separately from the game’s avatar.
“Random Regenerative” Model
Random Regenerative Model - Anomalies randomly reverse whatever caused your death.
A reality in which an anomaly (random variation in the algorithm/physics/data) repairs whatever caused your death and puts your brain back in the last state it was before your consciousness ended; you experience it as a near miss.
Since it’s an anomaly, it’s quite possibly imperfect, perhaps only buying you a few more moments of consciousness before you expire again. But there should always be a reality in which you are revived, ad infinitum.
“Random Cloning” Model
Random Cloning Model - Clones of you randomly appear in other realities, each believing they are you.
An otherwise completely different reality with an algorithm and starting variables that, by sheer random chance, has a assembled a collection of particles with exactly the precision needed to replicate your mind at the instant of death, allowing you to live long enough to observe yourself as still alive. As with the anomaly example above, you may soon die, but there should always be a reality in which a copy of you is revived again.
These revival scenarios have various overlapping properties that I wanted to keep in mind for a later time:
Some occur due to the infinite random permutations of algorithms and starting conditions comprising the omniverse while some occur due to purposeful actions by sentient beings (who themselves will have evolved deterministically based on random algorithms and starting conditions)
Some take place in a reality that is separate from ours while some may take place in our current reality
Some copy the mind while some leave the mind in the same physical place it died in
Each of these brings up the question, “are any of these people still you?” Instinctively you might say that it’s only really, truly yourself if you’ve been regenerated using the same biological cells, made of the same atoms, in the same universe you died in, such that it’s more like you were knocked unconscious and then awoken later. And you might think that the other cases you experience some kind of cessation, nothingness, rest, or peace.
But there is another angle to consider.
You May Have Already Died
If there are infinite possible realities, it follows that for any any given moment we are still alive, there would be an infinite number of universes where we perished. You only get to observe the realities in which you survive, so you may already be existing in what your earlier self would consider to be an extremely lucky universe where events conspired in just the right way to keep you living.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a cartoonish scenario of continued narrow misses (I immediately tend to think of all the times I’ve felt lucky to avoid a car accident), but instead at a more intrinsic, physics-based level relating to the sheer apparent unlikelihood by which we even continue to exist. In the previous post I discussed the perplexing issue of survivorship bias and posited hypotheses for why it is that our reality even works, much less works in a more or less stable fashion without observable artifacts (anomalies). Malignant anomalies could appear at any point, and, perhaps, they did. It’s conceivable that each instant of time you only represent one of a small number of alternate selves that survived the previous moment.
We may even be incorrectly understanding our entire system of physics such that 99% of the time, it wouldn’t even support life. For instance, what appears to be universal physical constant (gravitational constant, Planck constant, etc.) might not be constant at all, but continuously varying either randomly or according to some pattern - only if it’s anything other than this one particular value, we all die. Or there may be some essential formula that we got wrong because if a certain variable is anything other than 1 or 0, we all die, so we don’t even know the variable is there. Even if this isn’t the case for us, there is likely to be some sentient being, in some reality, for whom this is the case, and whose continued experience is objectively an infinitesimal unlikelihood, yet subjectively, feels natural and stable for them.
From this perspective, the few realities that keep you alive are the only ones that matter. But not all of the realities that keep you alive are the ones you want to be in. Consider the “Random Cloning” model above; it’s terrible, but if somehow events conspire that this is the most likely way/only possible way your consciousness survives, that’s going to end up your new reality, eventually.
What Can/Should We Do About This?
It may be that there is nothing to worry about - we may die and observe nothing unpleasant. These other realities may simply not matter. But that is necessarily a gamble. We may find ourself in a reality which is a heavenly utopia or we may find ourself experiencing an eternity of painful near death existence, without knowing the probability of either.
In the previous post I discussed the idea that for each reality in which sentient beings create a simulation of another reality of sentient beings, the probability that the beings simulated find themselves outside the simulation decreases. I presented this as a possible argument for why our universe appears stable and not riddled with random, perhaps deadly anomalies, but the same principle should hold true with regards to death - which is to say that each time a someone simulates a reality in which lifeforms are preserved in some way after death, it decreases the probability such lifeforms ever experience death (or worse, such as unending life in a series of random disconnected worlds.)
I hope in the next post to give an overview of what such probability manipulation would look like, and begin to argue why it’s essential for us to consider.