Thursday, 2 August 2007

Unitarity


I know, it's been a while since I wrote an entry. But here it is now. It's going to be amazing. It'll blow your minds. In fact you will be so impressed by the precision and eloquence of my writing that forever onwards you will rue the day you registered such perfectness. For to experience such a hyper-realistic, transgressive, forceful text is to taste that essential nectar which even the gods crave.

But the gods don't have the internet, so they won't be able to read my blog. So, score: 1 to humanity.

Ummmm...yeah.

Anyway, I did in fact read something the other day which unsettled me. As an atheist, I was recently acquainted to the possibility of an afterlife even after physical demise. That is, whilst keeping within the godless universe!

The concept is unitarity and it originates from quantum mechanics. It states that any information created or previously existing in the universe cannot be destroyed. Much like energy, but much more complex, since new information (presumably) can be created.

Stephen Hawking used to believe the converse, that information can be destroyed under certain circumstances. If rather unfortunate pockets of data go on a somewhat unromantic date with a black hole , information loses out at singularity. However, as it so happens, Stephen Hawking's unnecessary demonisation of the cute and cuddly black hole was baseless; he himself admitted so. That is, even whilst that packet of information has a nice 'flat white' at Fidel's on Cuba with the black hole, the packet tends very much to remain intact.

In terms of an afterlife then, one cannot assume of course that our full consciousness will remain intact. That is, we cannot (and this is my deduction, and I could be completely wrong) presume that our consciousness will survive our death, but certainly that the packets of information we accumulated do not disintigrate with us. By packets of information I mean things like: your first ice-cream memory, or 100th; you're mum's apron's colour; or whatever. The point being that even useless, trivial bits of information which we consider so vital to a cumulative understanding of selves remain intact after we've shed this mortal coil.

Leaving the possibilty (however infintisamly small) that we can be brough back to life (in terms of a computer simulation perhaps) if a future sentient being wishes ever so benevolently to do so.

Though not as optimistic as the theistic position. It is perhaps some consolation (or not) that our death certainly does not mean the complete dissolution of our consciousness.

If someone knows more about this topic than I do, then please advise me, as I would love to know more.

Sweet as.

Parv

1 comment:

  1. O_o ...bit random to read this after my going on bout k's tatt living on after death in the ashes etc.. lol i love hawking!

    ...and speaking of my prime no thing...and how u dont know for sure if theyre infinite...remembered that euclid came up with a proof that the set of primes cannot be finite...

    all non primes can be constructed by multiplying 2 primes ie. 4= 2x2

    so if u take a finite set of primes
    2,3,5,7,11...
    2x3x5x7x11=whatever no
    so if u consider
    2x3x5x7x11 +1 then u get a number which cannot be obtained using only the set of finite primes...

    hopefully that made sense.

    :D

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