On who invented quantum suicide, the following is from the biography of Hugh Everett by Eugene B. Shikhovtsev and Kenneth W. Ford, at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/
"Atheist or not, Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death --- and so on ad infinitum. (Sadly, Everett's daughter Liz, in her later suicide note, said she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father...)" The reference is to Everett's views in 1979-80, but there is no reason to suppose that Everett had only just thought of it at the time. On a personal note, some time in the '80s I met one of Everett's co-workers who told me that Everett used to justify his very unhealthy lifestyle on exactly these grounds. In our world, Everett died of a heart attack aged 52. I have always assumed that John Bell was thinking along these lines when he commented on Everett's theory: "But if such a theory was taken seriously it would hardly be possible to take anything else seriously." (1981, reprinted in _Speakable & Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics). For that matter, this idea is implicit in Borges' story "The Garden of Forking Paths" (written before 1941), which provides the epigraph to the DeWitt & Graham anthology on The Many Worlds Interpretation. ====================================================== Dr J. P. Leahy, University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Observatory, School of Physics & Astronomy, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 9DL, UK Tel - +44 1477 572636, Fax - +44 1477 571618 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
