"I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection." - Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729
Quantum Physics and the Pensions Crisis
by James Higgo
The latest advances in quantum physics suggest a way out of Europe’s unfunded pensions crisis.
First, a disclaimer: Niels Bohr, the founder of modern quantum theory said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it". The quantum mechanics (QM) presented here is quite mainstream, even though it still seems crazy to physicists, who have no choice but to accept it. The one assumption I have made is to adopt the Everett ‘Many-Worlds’ Interpretation (MWI) of the Scrödinger equations, which is just one of half a dozen competing interpretations of QM. According to various polls, MWI and the original 1927 ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ have an equal share of the votes among physicists, but many of the ‘big names’ (Hawking, Feynman, Deutsch, Weinberg) subscribe to MWI.
The weirdness of quantum physics is best shown by the parallel-slit experiment. This shows that individual particles seem to split into two ‘ghost’ particles, which can nevertheless interfere with each other as if they were waves. For a full explanation of how this implies parallel universes, see Vaidman (1996). The MWI explains the strange phenomena exhibited at the level of atomic physics by postulating a near-infinite number of parallel universes. At the level of individual particles, universes are continually ‘splitting’ as, for example, a particle decays in ‘our’ universe, but not in the other ‘branch’. (The Copenhagen Interpretation explains the phenomena by saying that the wave function ‘collapses’ when observed by the experimenter; i.e. that there is some kind of relationship between the experimenter’s consciousness and the particle – and this was the orthodox interpretation of over 60 years!)
There is one way of proving that the MWI is true and the Copenhagen and other interpretations are wrong. Unfortunately, the experimenter can only prove it to himself, and never persuade anyone else of its validity. Tegmark (1997) describes the ‘Quantum Suicide Experiment’ as follows (I have simplified the text and removed the mathematical proofs):
The apparatus is a "quantum gun" which each time its trigger is pulled measures the z-spin of a particle [particles can be spin up or spin down, seemingly at random]. It is connected to a machine gun that fires a single bullet if the result is "down" and merely makes an audible click if the result is "up"…. The experimenter first places a sand bag in front of the gun and tells her assistant to pull the trigger ten times. All [QM interpretations] predict that she will hear a seemingly random sequence of shots and duds such as "bang-click-bang-bang-bang-click-click-bang-click-click". She now instructs her assistant to pull the trigger ten more times and places her head in front of the barrel. This time the "shut-up-and calculate" [non-MWI interpretations of QM] have no meaning for an observer in the dead state… and the [interpretations] will differ in their predictions. In interpretations where there is an explicit non-unitary collapse, she will be either dead or alive after the first trigger event, so she should expect to perceive perhaps a click or two (if she is moderately lucky), then "game over", nothing at all. In the MWI, on the other hand, the … prediction is that [the experimenter] will hear "click" with 100% certainty. When her assistant has completed this unenviable assignment, she will have heard ten clicks, and concluded that the collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics [all but the MWI] are ruled out to a confidence level of 1-0.5n ≈ 99.9%. If she wants to rule them out "ten sigma", she need merely increase n by continuing the experiment a while longer. Occasionally, to verify that the apparatus is working, she can move her head away from the gun and suddenly hear it going off intermittently. Note, however, that [almost all instances] will have her assistant perceiving that he has killed his boss.
What this means is that, in most universes, there is one less experimenter, but the experimenter herself does not experience death. All we need to solve the pensions crisis is to persuade enough pensioners that MWI is true. The state could offer to pay everyone a basic pension of say £10,000 per year. For each time the pensioners conducted the ‘quantum suicide’ experiment, their pension would be increased by 25%. Hence the state’s liabilities decrease by 25% for each pull of the quantum gun’s trigger, but the pensioner’s income goes up by the same amount… for as long as they like!
The disadvantage is that there would be a lot of dead pensioners to clear up in most universes, and that those who did not believe in the MWI would campaign quite strongly to stop what they would see as a kind of ‘Logan’s Run’ solution.
But if just 10% of pensioners could be persuaded of the MWI, and they therefore ran the experiment until they were millionaires, the pensions liabilities of European states would be reduced by almost 10% - about £500,000,000,000.
One thing is certain: you won’t read this anywhere else.
References: