Theorising About Life After Death Using Mathematics

A simple, mathematical problem

Given that you are reading this right now, it's obvious that you are alive.  This means that the chance that you were born is 100%.  Of course that's just you, a single point estimate, which is not very good statistics, and doesn't prove that the chance is always 100%.  It does, however, prove that the chance that someone is born is > 0 (greater than zero).  That is the same as saying, "It is possible to be born."

The problem that I have is when people tell me that one only has one life, and one is never born a second time.  The obvious problem here is the equation that they offer:

Chance of being born a first time > 0 AND chance of being born after having been born = 0.

Surely it makes more sense that:

Chance of being born is always > 0.

The thing that really gets to me is that some people have absolute blind faith in their belief that one has only one life, without even being able to define who they are, or what consciousness is.  As for me, I prefer to present my questions and hypothesis, and hope for an intelligent, open minded discussion.  The mathematics presented is not as simple as it may seem.  The words being used, like "chance of being born," need to be very well defined.  

I watched a video recently where Eliezer Yudkowsky and Massimo Pigliucci discuss the possibility of a time when one's consciousness could be uploaded to machines.

If you don't know who these guys are, Eliezer is well known as the co-founder of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and Massimo is a well known author of books related to science, biology and critical thinking.

One might think that two such highly respected thinkers would agree on the topic of consciousness, but interestingly, their points of view in this video are very different.  Massimo believes that consciousness requires the body, whereas Eliezer seems to believe that it is some kind of pattern, which can be transferred.  The importance of their differences of opinion are actually incredibly important, because if someone ever tries to do what Eliezer believes (transfer consciousness), and Eliezer is wrong, they might not only die, but could appear to be conscious without being conscious and no-one will know that they are dead.

If you'd like to understand their points of view, go ahead and watch the video (they start talking about consciousness from about 25 minutes in), however, it is not really what this blog post is about.  Eliezer and Massimo each have their own point of view, but neither seems to have enough evidence to back their point of view (at one point in the video they debate about who the burden of proof falls on).  I have my own point of view, which I consider it to be just a theory.  That is how science works... one comes up with a theory, which seems accurate, and then attempts to disprove it.  If one can't, one gets other people to try and disprove it.  So, here is my theory, which I have been unable to disprove, and I would like you to try and find its faults.

If I told you my theory straight away, you'd probably either not understand or disagree straight away, so first I have to give a few scenarios in order to get us on the same page:

Scenario 1

Imagine the universe existed, but there wasn't a single life form.  No humans, no dogs, no plants, no virus, no cats.  It simply contained planets, rocks, stars, and more planets, rocks and stars.

The value of anything is subjective.  That means that something only has a value if someone cares about it.  It also means that if nothing lived in the universe, the universe wouldn't have any value.  It wouldn't matter at all.  It's like the question:  If a tree fell in the forest, and no-one was there to hear it, did it make a sound?

The answer is, that it doesn't matter, and neither would the universe.

Life is something that has the ability to experience.  If the smallest, and simplest, single object, with the ability to experience, existed in the universe, then the universe would start to have value, or meaning.  It's as if the universe would suddenly exist.

I call this thing or simplest possible life form a unique point of experience.  Religious people might refer to it as the soul, and philosophers might call it consciousness, but in order to keep this as scientific as I can, I'll stick to "unique point of experience."

The simplest, unique point of experience could be as simple as a switch.  On is happy, off is unhappy, where its environment determines whether it is happy or unhappy.

As humans, our unique point of experience is a little bit more complex, because we can experience more than just on or off.  We have a range of happiness, and so we can be represented as more of a dial than a switch.

Scenario 2

Imagine if science had advanced to a level where we had a machine that could copy anything.  It could recreate whatever you put in it, by building it out of protons, neutrons and electrons, the building blocks of atoms.

Now imagine that the scientist copied you, atom for atom.

If my theory that you are a unique point of experience is true, then you couldn't be both of them.  But, which one would you be?  Would you be the copy, or the original? 

I could ask this another way... if you were an evil person, who liked killing people, but enjoyed life, which one would you kill, and which would you keep alive?

I guess the conclusion that most people would come to is that you are the original, and not the copy, even though the two are physically exactly the same.

Using my terminology, one might believe that the original has the same unique point of experience that you had before the copy was made, and the copy, if it has a unique point of experience, has a different one.

With me so far?  I hope so :)

The interesting thing here is that Eliezer's point of view is, if he were to use the same terminology as me, that, since a unique point of experience only exists at a single point in time, one is not the same person that one was a second ago, and it doesn't matter which person is killed.  Massimo finds that quite hard to agree with, assuming that one's body retains a unique point of experience.  I'll discuss that a bit more later, but for now, let's move on...

I think of the unique point of experience as being who you actually are, and that your body is the interface between yourself and the universe.

If you've followed me so far, I can continue with the mathematics.

Think about the probability of having lived.

Another way of saying that, is, "What is the probability, at the start of the universe, that your unique point of experience would experience something during the time that the universe existed?"

It's a difficult question, but it has two possible answers.  One is very high, and the other is very low.  I'll explain later why it doesn't actually matter what the answer is, but for now, let's think about how this could be worked out.

Some people would consider that you are your brain.  I disagree, since I understand your unique point of experience to be much simpler than that.  So, assuming that your unique point of experience was two particular protons working together, then the chance of you living now would be about one in the number of protons in the universe.  I don't know the exact number of protons in the universe, but I'd guess that your mind could not comprehend that number, so I'm going to simply use the closest known number, one in a googol.

If you've never heard of a googol before, it's the word which Google was named after, and it means ten to the power of one hundred.  It looks like this:  10,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000.

If, however, your unique point of experience consisted of three specific protons, then your chance of living would be one in a googol squared.  I won't even bother with the chance of you living if your unique point of experience consists of your entire brain.

The simple point is this:  

The chance of you living right now is so ridiculously small that, since you are actually living right now, it is not true that that you are living by chance.  Your life is inevitable, and the fact that you are alive right now, is normal.

I'll phrase that another way, you are normally alive.  You are normally conscious.

Put even another way, and get ready to start throwing tomatoes:  You will probably live again and again, and again.

But what do we become in our next life?

Some religions teach that in their next lives people become nicer creatures based on how good they were.  Of course this idea is neither based on science, nor mathematics, nor any kind of logic, so moving on...

Chances are, you're actually going to be smart, whether you were good or bad.

The problem with my answer is that it might be a bit tricky to understand, nevertheless, I'll attempt to explain it anyway.

My answer is based, once again, on a single point estimate: myself.  And, yes, it's really bad statistics, seeing as it would be much better to base this on thousands of examples, but unfortunately when trying to understand a unique point of experience I can only base the stats on myself.

Think about it this way... of all the creatures on earth with a unique point of experience, what is the probability that you could have been human?

The problem with this question is that I don't know which creatures have unique points of experience, so I'll give two possible answers:

1. There are 3 X 10 to the power of 33 living things according to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, Supremely Satisfying, pages 348 and 349 (I don't know how they counted them).

2. Trying to find an estimate of the number of smarter animals on the planet is even more difficult, but it looks like there are millions of species and trillions of animals.

There are about 7 billion people.

So, given that you are a unique point of experience, the probability that you are human now is probably somewhere between 7 X 10 to the power of 9 divided by 10 to the power of 12 and 7 X 10 to the power of 9 divided by 3 X 10 to the power of 33, which gives us:
0.007 to 0.0000000000000000000000023

This means that it's highly unlikely that you are human by chance, but what's so special about humans?  My guess is that it's because we are smarter than other animals.  And therefore it means that it's likely that, in your next life, you will be a smart creature.

From my own point of view, I am a particularly smart human.  I don't mean to brag, but I did particularly well in mathematics competitions and statistics back in 1995 and 1996, including 15th place in a competition between about 400 schools.  Based on this (and noting that I know this is a point estimate that probably makes no sense when read, but only when written), chances are that: not only is it likely that we're going to be as smart as humans, but it's also more likely that we're going to be in the smartest percentage of the smartest species.

If you've been following so far, you may have realized a problem...

The problem with the theory that one is more likely to be intelligent

Assuming that each living thing has one unique point of experience gives a mathematical problem that unique points of experiences cannot be divided up equally among them; an ant cannot have the equivalent unique point of experience that a human has.

A possible theory for solving this is that creatures can have multiple unique points of experience.

This is something I have difficulty comprehending, and I'm guessing that you might too.  The theory is that the smarter a creature is, the more unique points of experience it has.  Perhaps for every brain cell there is a unique point of experience?  

Another way of thinking about it is by relating it to time.  Imagine, for argument's sake that one could have a certain number of experiences per second.  For example, a smart being, like a human might have a hundred experiences per second, while an ant only has ten.  That way, if there were a billion ants and a billion people alive at the same time, it would be ten times more likely that you would be a human than an ant.

I'm just guessing as to how exactly it works, but it does have some interesting implications, for example eating an animal may not be as bad as eating a human for the simple fact that you are sacrificing a few points of experience to feed many.  If one continues to think along these lines, one may come to similar conclusions to Hitler, but read on, and you'll find a theory which will make you want to live in a world where all points of experiences are happy.

If you think that having multiple unique points of experiences causes a problem for free will, you may want to read my blog post on free will.

Other implications

My theory so far (if it is true) also sheds some light on aliens.  One theory I've heard on why we never come across aliens (I know some people disagree with me, but that's a subject for another blog post) is because they have become so advanced that their greed, combined with their advanced technology caused them to destroy themselves - which is where some people believe we are heading too.

My theory, however, suggests that humans might be the most intelligent species in the universe, or if not, then right up there with the smartest of the smart.  

Therefore it is unlikely that any aliens have developed any better technology than we have.

Another implication, and this is really important, is that, if people knew that when they died, it is likely they would become another randomly selected human, perhaps they might have a bit more compassion for the billion hungry people around the planet.  Perhaps we may wake up one day and find ourselves in poverty, unless we do something about it while we can.

There's more...

I do need to point out that there's more to ponder on this topic, like the mathematical probability of life forms existing.  Apparently life forms have been around on Earth for 3.5 billion years, so life forms have only existed for about 25% of the time the universe has existed.  What's perhaps more relevant is that, in theory, they've been around for 77% of the time that Earth has been around, which is pretty high.

Humans, however, have only been around for 200,000 years, which may sound like a long time, but it's really just 0.0015% of the age of the universe or 0.0044% of Earth.  Even more interesting is the probability that we are now in this century, which is by far the most interesting century in the history of our planet: 0.00002%.

...and now for the crazy bit...

This part is going to sound even more ridiculous than the previous ideas, but I've got to say it, just because this rounds everything off nicely into a neat little package, and I cannot think of any other possibilities.  

When one goes to sleep, one could say that one's consciousness has died.  When one wakes up, one could say that one's consciousness has come back to life. 

Imagine that, every time you went to sleep, you woke up as someone else.  Would you know?  In other words, if your point of experience jumped from one person to another, how would you know that it had?  

Let's say that you were John one day, and the next day you woke up as Mary.  When you became Mary, you had Mary's thoughts, Mary's memory and Mary's body.  You had no recollection that you were John.  There's no way you would know that you've swapped bodies.  

When you think about an event, you're either remembering something, or anticipating a past event.  Nothing that you experience is now.  Now could be such an infinitely small period of time that you cannot think of now, because as soon as you've started on 'n', now is already in the past.

Remember the idea I said earlier, about becoming someone or something else when you die?  I don't really think it happens like that.  It doesn't really make sense that one would only swap bodies when one dies.  The reason being that, if the population keeps growing then it would require more and more points of experience to come into existence, and that is something I cannot fathom.

The only working model I can think of is as follows (noting that this is simply a theory):

• There is only one point of experience (you)
• Your point of experience doesn't only travel forwards in time, but also sideways (or two dimensionally).  This means moving between all living beings.
• At any point in this two dimensional graph of time vs intelligence, you are a being with a memory which makes you believe you are that being.
• Since you are actually everybody, perceiving only one being at a time, you should probably be nice to every living thing, since they are you.

Please post a comment to let me know what you think about this, and feel free to disagree if you have a well thought out or researched argument.


...and one last thought...

In this video, Robert J. Sawyer, a science fiction author, talks about the idea that losing consciousness is like dying, and waking up is like being born, in which case we might be experiencing "life after death" every day.  

Here's another way of understanding this:

http://soberauer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-infinite-improbability-of-me.html

Images 
1. Courtesy of vierdrie at stock.xchng
2. Courtesy of shed at stock.xchng
3. Courtesy of milan6 at stock.xchng
4. Courtesy of yenhoon at stock.xchng
5. Courtesy of artM at stock.xchng
6. Courtesy of spekulator at stock.xchng
7. Courtesy of cahdequech at stock.xchng