Author's Note: Thanks for reading!
If at any point in the story you weren’t clear on what was going on, please let me know! I’m sorry I didn’t convey myself adequately, but I’d love to explain further if you’re curious.
There are a lot of points of failure in Rosen Bridge’s setup which she’s probably addressed, but I have failed to describe in hopes of not being obtuse. Feel free to complain about them.
Full disclosure- this work is honestly pretty much a heavily expanded version of a 999-word mini-fic I submitted to a site called “Quantum Shorts” in 2013, which wanted quantum mechanics related fiction. The original version, I confess, had nothing to do with ponies. Unfortunately, I decided it wouldn’t be morally objectionable to re-weave the concept of the story into the universe of MLP, so now you all had to read this garbage. I’ll also have you know that the pun in Rosen’s name existed in the original work, where her name was “Alberta Rosenbridge.” I’d post that here too, but I think it would violate site rules by explicitly having nothing to do with pony?
A few weeks’ worth of free time over the course of four years have gone into flushing this out the way I wanted, and the process has made me gain an amazing amount respect for the writers here who are both far more prolific and far more competent than I. Thank you all for reading a busy amateur’s daydream.
If you were fascinated by the implications of this work of fiction, I would google “Quantum suicide” and “Quantum immortality.”
If you were terrified by the implications of this work of fiction, first of all, I’m sorry, and I understand.
I’ve been prone to some pretty abstract irrational fears. When I was 10 years old and I first learned an innaccurate notion of the many-worlds theory from a pseudo-scientist in some movie, I had nightmares for days because I thought I was stuck “in the wrong universe” somehow and that this wasn’t my “real family,” or my “real house.” My parents had a lot of fun with that one. So I understand your terror at the implications of this fic and I do apologize for instilling it in you.
If that’s you (whether or not you’re significantly older than 10 and have significantly more rational fears about the whole mess), please keep in mind that we don’t actually know if this is how quantum mechanics works, and there’s some thoughts on the subject of why subjective immortality might just be a load of hogwash by Max Tegmark (thanks wikipedia!), which I happen to subscribe to myself.
Being an “observer” isn’t as special as you might imagine, and our brains are constantly dying (and reforming, I suppose) in a sense. If quantum immortality was possible, you would have already noticed because the state of your mind would probably be pretty static. For starters, it would probably be impossible to fall asleep from your perspective. Probably.
Heh.
I’m not going to enumerate the set of counterpoints to that because honestly— it’s just more and more conjecture from there on out.
Go read up on it and form your own opinion, I promise it’s probably not as terrifying as this fic makes it seem, especially because you’re not going to take the route Dr. Bridge does here.
If you were terrified by the metalogue, I did warn you. If you weren’t terrified by the metalogue, I’m sorry, I’ll try harder with my descriptions of atrocity next time.
Oh! I’m supposed to always conclude with what I learned from doing this. It’s a personal rule. This story I was trying to learn to set up my character flaws subtly early on so that when they fail it doesn’t seem out of the blue. I think I succeeded, let me know if I could do better! Rosen Bridge’s flaws are mine, or what I perceive mine as a child were when taken to the extreme, so I suppose I had some reference here. This has been “Pros and cons of a type A personality- the fic”
Cripes, what a pretentiously long author’s note!
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9995988
MAYBE!
And that's an interesting thought that she has a bit of a gambling addiction- she really does! It's just her life that she gambles with, not the standard gambling addiction of lotteries and casinos and...
Well I suppose one could argue that's ultimately gambling with your life as well.
The key to QSD would be instantaneous death. An order of magnitude of a Planck second or less. Any more and there probably is enough time for death to become a process rather than a switch. And it would need to be total to remove "observers". Anti-matter annihilation, perhaps, but it might not be fast enough.
Now with that said, I believe we need to explore the superposition of this story. It screams multiple different endings.
Thank you very much! That was quite a story to read. I hope to see more of your work!
10002041
An instantaneous death would certainly be more convenient from a not-experiencing-a-slow-and-tortuous-death perspective in this fic. I think in referring to the planck scale timescale you're referring to the idea that in many-worlds timelines theoretically split off at every instant in time, and therefore if the Q.S.D. kills you instantaneously, then it would be more effective at splitting off these timelines.
I'm actually not convinced that's the case - partially due to relativistic constraints on what "instantaneous" can mean across a volume of space like your body (or brain) and partially due to abstract notions of what the progression of time really is anyway. For the sake of this fic at least, Rosen's consciousness just doesn't go down any of the timelines where it's possible for her to die. That was her theory of how this should work, and it seems to have panned out for her. I have no idea how this would work in real life and don't really want to find out
10002136
You're welcome! Thank you for reading and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The question is, can Dr. Bridge go mad? Is the observer observing if they lack a mind capable of processing the data?
Probably. Most wavefunction collapses occurred before consciousness came into being. But it's... well, not a nice thought. Madness was a mercy in this case. But theoretically speaking, the Dr. Bridge we followed might not have been the grand prize winner, so to speak... though after giving Twilight Sparkle a zero, who's to say if she even succeeded against Nightmare Moon in that timeline.
Fascinating tale of horror on the multiversal scale. Thank you for it.
10002183
Thank you for reading! I'm very glad you enjoyed it!
Honestly I agree with you here. The madness is a mercy. It's probably a testament to Rosen's will and her motivations for going through life that she hung on for 4 months. I'd go mad in much less than that.
In my headcanon Twilight receives a 0 from Rosen even in the main timeline and is part of what drives her away from other ponies and therefore this fic shouldn't actually have an AU tag it fits seamlessly into the canon
Gotta admit, I don't really understand quantum suicide. Specifically, I don't understand why bother with the suicide at all. If there's some, however small probability of - let's take lottery for example, that by definition means that there's a world where a version of you have won it. The suicides are unnecessary. From the perspective of the winning you, all other words had already decohered away and thus are as good as dead. From the perspective of the losing you, the winning universe is similarly unreachable and irrelevant regardless of whether or not that version of you happens to be dead.
If it's possible to ascend by chance, Rosen already did it many times, and so did every other pony, or every single creature capable of it - if only in a very small, relatively speaking, region of the Universal wavefunction.
10151715
Yes exactly!
I think it takes a certain kind of ego to make sure the only instances of you that survive are all lottery winners.
10159116
If MWI is correct, we can count it as the next overthrown pedestal of egocentricity. The Earth used to be the center of the Universe with celestial bodies going around it; now it's barely a speck on the outskirts of an unremarkable galaxy. With MWI, not only your world, but even yourself is only one of countless yous, most of which are just as mundane, but some are more awesome that you can ever hope to be, lol.
I’m confused, if Alicorns are Immortal shouldn’t they be able to heal from anything?
10159138
And also more awful versions, and everything inbetween.
Also, I don‘t think it‘s possible to clearly define which person in the multiverse counts as a version of „you“.
EDIT: Well, it may be possible if you define which "splits" count as versions of you.
Every split after you reached a certain age?
Every split after you where born?
Every split after you where conceived?
Every timeline where your parents have a child?
(If it's the latter, we now have to define which persons in the multiverse count as versions of "your parents". I'd suggest something like
Every split after your parents lived together, minus the timelines where they don't have a child.)
To me, the Metalogue wasn't so shocking because it was predictable.
I understand that Dr. Rose only is immortal based on subjective experience if Quantum Suicide works as intended (see my comment on Chapter 3 for the conditions that have to be met).
For everyone else...well, in the overwhelming majority of timelines, Dr. Roses will be dead, so everyone who lives in these timelines will see her as dead.
(For that reason, I would consider Quantum Suicide extremly selfish)
The reason Quantum Suicide works from the subjective point of view is that in these timelines, Dr. Rose dies fast enough so she doesn't experience it as dying.
11023112
It's fairly difficult to figure out what counts as a "you" in the first place, and it's only getting harder. Calling somebody the same person when they're five and fifty five years old seems little more than a legal fiction. Split brain experiments as well as mapping of the brain appear to show that underneath the sense of self there's a host of sub-conscious entities acting in concord. Let's not even mention the gut bacteria. And so on.
It doesn't really help that there's little progress on the question wtf is consciousness anyway. There is currently a disbalance between what we know about various constituent parts of the hidden mechanics that seem to produce the mind vs. the workings of the mind "itself" - and there's a growing suspicion that there might not be such thing as the mind's "self" in the first place, that the "you" has always been an illusion of some description. Not to suggest that as the final answer; but it's a possible answer.
Everettian splitting adds to the complexity of that, but the notion of personal identity is by its nature incredibly complex. There's no answering it without involving some degree of arbitrarity, and answers that work in some situations might not make sense in other situation.
10002306
Well, when you're fic features many worlds theory, there is a timeline for every canon.
Including the original show, every head-canon, and every fanfic.
Based on the philosophy behind Quantum Suicide, the only way to have a "clear death" (fast enough that you don't experience it as dying, meaning no continuously degrading consciousness) would be a situation where there's like a tenth of a second during which all "splits" result in your death.
This is independent from any QSD.
11023676
I'm not totally sure about that, in this I've interpreted it as "You won't even go down any timelines that ultimately result in your death."
It's sort of like- working backwards from the instantaneous death. If there is a timeline where in the next instant, you will either die or live, you will only witness the one where you live. If there is a timeline where the next instant you're guaranteed death no matter what you do, then you have to keep working yourself back along the timeline to a point where a split includes the possibility of life. You are guaranteed to go down that split, assuming the notion of quantum suicide is accurate. Therefore the death doesn't have to be instantaneous.
I agree that quantum suicide is incredibly selfish. Rosen is really not acting in the interest of others, or being very considerate of them. The "metalogue" is supposed to capture a fraction of just how selfish she is being.
I don't think you've left too many comments. If that's feedback you've gotten before, I think this is an okay amount for me, because I like the engagement. It *is* too many for me to truly respond to though, because I've gotten quite busy in real life.
Thank you for reading and discussing!
11023112
"Which splits count as versions of you?" is a good reduction of the reason I don't think quantum suicide actually works in real life.
11030992
I'm thinking in terms of conscious experience.
Assume conscious experience has to last at least 0.1 seconds or it's too short to "conciously experience" anything.
If there's a timeline where every possible future 0.1 seconds results in your death, it is perfectly possible to conciously experience such a timeline.
(The reason QS works in the story...under certain philosophical premises which are very much debatable...is that the QSD kills Dr. Rosen within <0.1 second so she can't have conscious experiences related to the QSD killing her)
(0.1 seconds as „shortest possible concious experience“ is more or less arbitrary, but you probably know what I mean)
Well, that‘s unfortunate, I find the topic extremely fascinating ( I was able to guess the general topic of the story based on the title and title picture. Y‘know, the title picture is highly suggestive if you‘ve heard of Many Worlds Interpretation.)
But don‘t worry, I‘m not gonna try anything like that in real life :D Even if someone convinces me that the Many Worlds Interpretation is true. Apart from the philosophical arguments which say that Many Worlds Interpetation really shouldn‘t change the way you view suicide and Death, meaning Dr. Rosens reasoning isn‘t actually valid, I think it‘s incredibly unlikely that the conditions I outlined in chapter 3 are fulfilled — starting with the „basics“ of creating a QSD that‘s able to differenciate whether some desirable „survival condition“ (like winning the lottery) is met.
Also, it‘s incredibly selfish.
Also, you‘re drastically, reducing the number of „self“ (or „people extremely similar to yourself“), which is bad even from a selfish perspective if
1. You care about other selfes/„people extremely similar to yourself“
2. You have a notion that a population of X happy people is worse than a population of X equally happy people plus Y slightly less happy people (who still have lifes worth living)
(The last argument doesn‘t work if you care about the „average self“ rather then „total utility of all selfes“. But even one of my first 2 arguments (you can‘t actually build a QSD that let‘s you survive only if a certain desirable condition is met, „the philosophical arguments which say that Many Worlds Interpetation really shouldn‘t change the way you view suicide and Death“) is more than enough.)
That’s an effort.
I was wondering if there was a fic dealing with this concept on the site. It's something I've thought about a lot for basically half of my whole life. The story was interesting, I especially like the imagery of the necklace thing mechanically stabbing the air as the character puts it on. Though the ending is kind of too dark for my tastes.
I'm thinking of maybe writing an Equestria Girls fic dealing with the concept (with Sci-Twi as the protag), though I'm not really sure what direction to take the story in. It would be fun to see the problems with building a device in a more human setting (and of course not having to make up Equestrian analogues for atoms and stuff). Plus dealing with probability manipulation in a world where magic just kind of exists seems a bit unfit to me.