This is the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which physicist Hugh Everett posed in 1957.Ĭlassical computers operate like the classical world. In other words, everything that can happen, does happen, in other universes. But many experts now believe that when a particle is identified in one place and condition or state in our universe, it’s simultaneously locked in each of its remaining possible states in other universes. ![]() Physicists still debate what the wave-function collapse means, how it works, or whether that’s even an accurate way to describe the phenomenon. When they are observed, the wave function is said to “collapse,” leaving behind a specific particle that can be measured in a particular state. But in the quantum world, particles exist in superposition-they could be anywhere and everywhere in a wave of probabilities-until they are observed. In the classical world, particles exist in specific, measurable places. And while that sounds like an exotic theory, it’s partly based on something quite mundane: the fact that quantum processes use energy more efficiently than classical processes. ![]() He believes that quantum computing derives some of its computing power from other worlds. In essence, “you would have created this very difficult situation for yourself.”īut what if we weren’t planning to spend eternity in the computer? What if, like Deutsch, we just wanted to travel the multiverse to see what our otherworldly counterparts were up to?ĭeutsch, who wrote one of the initial papers in 1985 that proposed quantum computing, is a visiting professor, researcher, and author affiliated with Oxford University. It would have all of your memories it would believe your family was its family, your job was its job, your money was its money-and it would believe it had the same rights as you. If you met that person on the street after they were scanned and said, ‘Hey we just scanned your brain, we’ve uploaded you into the cloud … you’re good, you can just walk into traffic right now and get run over by a car,’ they would say ‘No.’”īut now, he says, there would be a copy of you in a computer that truly believes it is you. “They have no idea that a copy exists in a computer somewhere, so they wouldn’t suddenly feel like ‘Oh I got transported into a computer system.’ It wouldn’t be them. “First of all, they would have no idea that they were scanned, right?” Rosenberg says. He poses this thought experiment: if one of these “magical brain scanners” was placed on a busy street where someone inadvertently passed under it, and it scanned their brain, would they transfer from their body to the computer? No. “This computer copy would believe it had a body, and coping with its lack of a body might drive it mad.” “And then the very next instant, as soon as it started having its own experiences … it’s going to diverge from you.” ![]() “For an instant, that copy would be identical to you,” he tells Popular Mechanics. Even if we manage to devise a machine capable of scanning someone’s entire brain-their memories, thoughts, and behaviors, down to the molecular level-and recreate it inside a computer, it wouldn’t actually prolong your experience of life. He points out that your uploaded self is really just a copy of you. Rosenberg is an author, and CEO and chief scientist at Unanimous AI which creates artificial intelligence algorithms to capture collective intelligence. For a price, you can update your avatar and even “physically” interact with living folk if they wear haptic-feedback bodysuits that let them experience touch.īut author Louis Rosenberg, an engineer with a doctorate in philosophy, throws a wrench in this digital Valhalla. In Amazon’s series, Upload, people’s brains are scanned and uploaded into an avatar body in one of several metaverse worlds: posh, resort metaverses exist for the rich, and meager post-death accommodations greet the poor. Ideas about what it would be like if we could use computers as our “bodies” vary.
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