this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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That's a terrifying thought. But then what happens when you get very old? We don't live forever. And even if some life extension technology is discovered before we die, what about everyone in the past who died? Did they all end up in a reality where some incredible technology figured out how to keep everyone conscious indefinitely? What about people who lived before we even knew what viruses were? As intuitive as it feels, it doesn't seem to pass the smell test. I would guess that some of the "intuition" I'm feeling is actually just a fear of dying
There's this hypothesis called Quantum Archaeology, I'm not a scientist and I don't know how believable this is (If you think you understand Quantum Physics, it means you definitely don't and all that), but there's an idea that the universe may "remember" details about.. well.. everything, and this "memory" could be tapped into by a sufficiently advanced computer capable of datamining reality itself.. Allowing you to bring anyone back from the dead, provided you have enough ink in your 3D Printer and all the 1's and 0's that make up what ancient people mistook for a soul.
I gave you how I understand it, it's likely more complicated than that if it's indeed real. (Never got a solid answer one way or another, a friend of mine talked about it once... He was very anti-mysticism and pro-rationalism, so I took it more seriously than I would have if some Spirit Science Hippie told me about it.. He up and vanished one day, never found out what happened.)
If Quantum Archaeology AND Quantum Immortality/Quantum Suicide hold true, it's possible that once you get old enough the only timelines left to "jump to" are societies in the far future where Quantum Archeaology is a puzzle that's been cracked.
Heck, maybe Heaven & Hell and are merely some Dyson Swarm powered Alien Satellite somewhere that's just been left to "Crunch the numbers" as it were. I don't know, anything's possible in an infinite and unknowable universe.