The following takes into account
my understanding of the
Many
Worlds interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics, and a healthy dose of navel-gazing
(
warning --
a) I am in no way a physicist, and
b) I’m only
half serious about my “conclusions” and this is most probably
BS...funny BS, though):
In the moment preceding my death (let’s say by a Mack truck), the universe branches off
into an infinity of possible following moments. I turn, startled and frozen in place, to see the
truck barrelling towards me, metres from my body. Next, anything can happen, and does happen.
In the vast majority of universes, I am killed on impact, and I am dead and buried.
In a very small fraction of those infinite universes, however, I survive. When the wavefunctions
of all the particles involved in my death are collapsed, there is a
very small probability, for instance, that all the molecules which make up the truck
suddenly jump a few metres to the other side of the road, and the truck passes by me without
injury. Or I could be saved any number of other ways, and in all those universes, I live to see
another day.
In our moment-to-moment experience, we’re collapsing wavefunctions left, right, and centre. The
result of that continuous collapse is whatever the next moment is. In a moment, I will be split up
into infinite selves, each an equally valid though unequally probable “me”. When
the truck hits me, in most universes I will be dead, so the apparent continuity of my identity and
experience will end. Poof!
So, that continuity of identity will instead be forced to take one of the paths through the
branching tree of universes which results in the continuation of my life. This will keep on
happening. Again. And again.
Once I’m a hundred and fifty or so, with a variety of near-death experiences under my belt, I’ll
no doubt be world famous. By five hundred, I will probably be in a coma and live
only in dreams (since it would be extremely improbable for me to be conscious at
that age) unless science has found a way to revive me by then. Of course, they’ll probably figure
it out eventually, so eventually I’ll be walking again with an eternity to marvel at
the fact that I’m still alive and to sort out The Really Hard Questions in Life (unless they've figured those out too). The same will
happen to you too, in other universes.
In short, I can’t die because when I do I’m someone else...me. :)