From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 08:31:02 MDT
On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, gts wrote:
> I pose this philosophical question: "Is true and certain immortality
> achievable in principle for you and me given the problem of quantum
> tunneling?"
>
> For the moment I am inclined to answer "no." However I am open to
> arguments that might convince me otherwise.
I would be inclined to agree with this. Our current view of the
universe seems to suggest there will come a time when resource
constraints require that you dedicate an increasing amount of
matter & energy to preserving your mind. Quantum tunneling
may flip bits and you will need matter for bit redundancy
and energy to restore those bits.
*But* quantum tunneling *does* take a very long time (when
one is dealing with the level of protons, molecules, etc.
rather than photons or electrons) and so it may depend on
how much matter and energy one has aggregated to know whether
you can resist tunneling effects within the current predictions
for the lifetime of the universe.
It raises an interesting theoretical question. I don't believe
this is answered in either Dyson's "Time Without End" paper or
the paper Anders wrote on the physics of superobjects.
It requires knowing how much information the mind contains,
how the information of the mind is stored, how susceptible
that storage form is to tunneling, how much matter and energy
are at your disposal for redundancy and correction and
a relatively clear idea of how the universe evolves to
put constraints on these factors. If the physicists are
talking about fundamental constants in the universe
changing over time -- does this also alter the rate
at which tunneling takes place?
Its at least a paper, perhaps a PhD thesis question.
Robert
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