An argument against Quantum Immortality

In essence, quantum immortality is this: if I survive with nonzero non-one probability p after each quantum event, then in the surviving "pocket universe" I will continue to exist.  History is written by the victors, as they say.  In the same way, I exist in my pocket universe, so that bad thing that might have killed me, didn't.  In this view, no event other than one with a true zero probability of survival will wipe me out (in my pocket universe).

It's like the case of the unexpected hanging...  More on that later (maybe).

And it's like the case of the Chinese Land Grab...  More on that, later (maybe).

Old soldiers don't die, they only fade away...  More on that, later (maybe).

Here's the real problem with quantum immortality:  There is no true Identity with a capital "I".  That is, there is no invariant essence of "me-ness" that makes me me.  To put it simply, molecules are passing in and out of what I call "me" all the time, and the molecules that make "me" up are undergoing chemical reactions all the time.  Heck, they say that half the dust in a person's house is made up of his dead skin cells.  So I'm constantly changing.  

Here's an analogy: a sand dune.  Like pornography, everyone can recognize a sand dune when they see one.  Have you ever seen a time lapse photo of a sand dune?  It's really cool.  They move along the desert floor, pushed by the prevailing winds.  But here's the really cool thing: the sand dune is made up of completely different grains of sand from one day, week, year, to the next.  Like old soldiers, sand dunes don't ever die.  They fade away.

So what if a sand dune had a 10% chance of being vaporized in any given universe each day?  But then what if it had a 100% chance of eventually fading away, in every universe?  Would the sand dune (if it were sentient) ever be able to claim immortality?  I say no, because at some time before it fades away, it ceases to be *recognizable* as itself.

My claim is the same thing happens to humans, in all their pocket universes.  Like old soldiers, we fade away.

Quantum immortality is like the unexpected hanging in this way: It's guaranteed for sure that you'll lose your ability to function as a sentient human some time in the next 1000 years, just due to "old age".  But you'll never see it coming, that's a promise.  So, you'll reason that it can't be on the last day, right?  Or you would see it coming.  So by that reasoning, it can't happen on the 2nd-to-last day, etc, etc.  One day, though, in *each* pocket universe, you will cease to be recognizable to yourself or anyone else as you.  Bam!  (as Emeril would say) you've been unexpectedly hanged.

Quantum immortality is like the Chinese Land Grab.  Quite honestly, I don't know if that's the right name for it (I don't want to cast aspersions on the Chinese, but I was told by an actual Chinese person that this is a Chinese folk story), but it goes like this.  A powerful landlord has given a tenant farmer a plot of land to use to feed himself and his family.  One day, the landlord simply moves the fence, depriving his tenant of 20 feet of land.  The tenant is upset, but it's not worth fighting over just 20 feet.  This happens again, and again.  Each time, it's not worth fighting.  Eventually, the tenant has no land at all.  This is how an individual ceases to exist, too, not necessarily all at once, but little by little.  And in each pocket universe, it's *inevitable.*


An interlocutor objects: Within the context of Many Worlds I think that all seems pretty reasonable.  I'm not sure why the lack of me-ness is a problem necessarily, though.

Graeme's answer: The lack of "me-ness" strikes at the heart of quantum immortality because quantum immortality depends on a surviving "me" in some pocket universe after every event.  However, if the "me" fades away in every pocket universe, like a sand dune that has been gradually flattened by the wind, then there's no "me" to survive forever.  The "me" ceases to exist at some random but finite time in the future, and as in the unexpected hanging, "me" find this (unpleasantly) surprising.

Interlocutor: Quantum immortality is an artifact of the Many Worlds interpretation.  It's interesting to consider, but I don't take it too seriously either. 

In any event, you were describing a sequence of events that have a probability between zero and one of resulting in the death of the individual.  This isn't consistent with the individual eventually being dead in 100% of the universes in a finite number of such events.  The partition of universes that still contain a living "me" will decay exponentially with time, but it will only become empty in the limit of an infinite number of such events.

I don't think a continuous sense of self is necessary for quantum immortality; only an observer with a memory (or record).  I.e. the many worlds interpretation doesn't describe or assume any sort of essence.

I can also think of ways to escape biological senescence, such as encoding my consciousness in a different type of hardware.  So, within the context of quantum immortality, I might claim that some sort of persistent existence might be possible arbitrarily far into the future.

Quantum immortality actually seems like the (weak) anthropic principle applied to individuals.  Unfortunately, both are basically untestable conjectures.

In terms of likelihood, I agree that senescence and death are the safe bets.

Graeme replies: Regarding your comment, "This [sequence of events with 0<p<1] isn't consistent with the individual eventually being dead in 100% of the universes in a finite number of such events," I totally agree.  My view is that the "me-ness" of the individual is what fades over time (due, as you say, to biological senescence), and eventually becomes so "not me" that the "me" is certainly gone by any measure.  You put your finger on this problem -- and some possible solutions -- with your suggestions of ways to escape biological senescence.  The point I'm making, and which you seem to appreciate as well, is that my "me-ness" is not on or off -- one or zero -- but, like a sand dune, gradually ceases to be itself without any instant in time that one can point to where it happened.  So the thing ("me") that can be said to have quantum immortality also can be said to have slipped away somehow.  

Interlocutor: I agree. This "me" that we are talking about isn't really very well defined.  I would venture to say that objectively there is no such thing as "me". 

Is it really so bad if a vacuum bubble wipes out the universe?

There have been a number of articles quoting scientists, for example, Dr Joseph Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, who are looking into the possibility that we're living in a universe pervaded by an "unstable vacuum".  These scientists say they're still crunching the numbers, but it's possible that the 126 GeV/c^2 mass of the Higgs boson (I just threw the c^2 in there to show I can get the units right) gives rise to the possibility under the Standard Model that our universe, most of which appears to be at vacuum state, is in fact a "false vacuum".

The best analogy that explains this is a glass of super-heated water, which is a state of liquid water that can be achieved in a standard microwave oven in which the temperature of the water exceeds the ordinary boiling point, but nothing has nucleated a bubble of steam (yet).  Then, some event happens, such as a sound wave, perhaps, that jolts the system into forming a bubble of water vapor.  Water in this bubble is at a lower energy state, and systems "like" to roll downhill, so to speak, so the bubble expands, and soon takes over the whole container.

So is our universe at a "false vacuum"? If so, then with some possibly nonzero probability, p, a bubble of true vacuum may appear somewhere in the universe, and expand outwards at the speed of light, gobbling up what *we* think of as the universe as it expands.  For all we know, such a bubble may have already appeared at a point 5 billion light years from earth, but we don't know it yet, because the bubble began only 4.9 billion light years ago.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Consider the case that a growing bubble of true (or truer) vacuum can wipe us out in an instant, and that it can happen any time -- but at random and with very very small, but, importantly: nonzero (and non-one) -- probability.  And then combine this with the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics that says that *both* possible outcomes of any quantum event (and by extension, *all* outcomes of any series of quantum events) exist, but each in their own parallel universe.

So did a vacuum bubble wipe us out yesterday?  Almost* certainly!  I can say that because the probability of it happening in any given nonzero period of time is nonzero.  But it didn't happen in *our* universe.  I can say that, because if it happened in our universe, we wouldn't be here to report on it. (I wrote "almost*" because if there are a finite number of "pocket universes" in the multiverse, then it's possible for an event with nonzero probability to still not occur in any one of the pocket universes.  But if the number of pocket universes is infinite, then the "almost*" can be deleted.)

So, to me, the interesting part is the consideration of a proposal that two things are true:  1. the nonzero probability of our known universe being wiped out any give day, and  2. the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics -- that there is *no way to disprove that proposal* (in our pocket universe).

The probability that the universe will end tomorrow doesn't even have to be very low for this proposal to be unfalsifiable!  Consider, for example, the case that on any given day there is a 10% probability that the universe will end, and that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true.  We know from that interpretation that a probability of 10% means that in 10% of the "pocket universes" the event happened, and in the other 90% of pocket universes, the event didn't happen.  So the only instance of "me" that survives is the one in those pocket universes in which the event didn't happen.  And that's the case, day after day!

So, you see, the universe could be extremely unstable, but as long as these two things are true:  nonzero (and non-one) probability of instability on any given day, and many worlds, then we (and by "we" I mean "I") will never know it!

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

Here's an article I wrote around about 2004 or so about the origin of the expression, "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny" and its misquotation as "Ontology..."

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is a catchy phrase coined by Ernst Haeckel, a 19th century German biologist and philosopher to mean that the development of an organism (ontogeny) expresses all the intermediate forms of its ancestors throughout evolution (phylogeny).   His theory was later proved wrong, but the catch phrase remains.

I'm ashamed to admit that for many years, I had a page of this website that misquoted Ernst Haeckel as having said, "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny".  Then, on June 11, 2004, I received an email from Richard Cranford saying,

Ernst Haeckel most certainly did not coin the phrase "ontology recapitulates phylogeny."  Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.  What Haeckel said is that ontogeny--the development of an individual organism from embryo to adult--recapitulates phylogeny.

Can you see the egg on my face?

I wondered where in the world I could have gotten the ridiculous idea that Ontology was the thing that recapitulated phylogeny, so I did a Google search for the phrase (in quotes), "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and, can you believe it?  I got results from 67 different websites (including my own!).  Some of the websites were blogs and message boards, so the website owner doesn't endorse the views expressed on it, and so there's no point in emailing him with a correction.  But I did email many of the others, pointing out the error.

Michael Anton Parker sent me an email asking why this very web page you are now reading skirted all around the fact that Willard Van Orman Quine, the American philosopher, (and not Timothy Leary) invented this corruption of Haeckel's quote. 

Mike wrote: It's plain remarkable that your webpage gets so close to touching on this special topic, but gives the impression of innocent unawareness!  Talk about a convoluted affair!  For the record, now that I understand the historical context to Quine's phrase, I find the original version only moderately interesting, while finding my awe at the profundity of Quine's phrase doubled upon realizing such an insight could fit into a shape chiseled for unrelated purposes.

[Isn't that pretty?  No?  Then reread that last paragraph, you ingrate!]

I wrote,

> I think the "ontogeny" quote came first, as part of the now discredited
> theory proposed by Haeckel.

Mike replied: By all means, absolutely, yes. The "ontology" version was a clearly intentional allusion to the 19th century quote reflecting the concerns of 20th century formal philosophy.  I pointed out,

> I have seen the "ontology" quote attributed to Timothy Leary. But a quick
> google search brings up a number of pages attributing it to Quine -- I see
> another chapter [which you are now reading] of my web page on the horizon!
> Thanks for the info.

Mike replied: There's no chance whatsoever the quote is due to Leary. The chronology alone rules it out. Since writing to you, I've verified that Quine himself attributed it to James Grier Miller, but it would appear that the quote's currency owes to Quine's fame and that Quine virtually deserves to get credit for the quote, despite actually acquiring it from Miller. I have no idea who Miller is. I hope to learn more about the matter eventually though.

Here's a partial summary of the websites with this same goof [or, perhaps this intentional or unintentional tipping of the hat to Quine]:

Jerry's Quarry and Lost Pencil Areas / The Galapagos / Ontology ...
... Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny - 5.11b A1 FA: unknown New Route: no
Number:0, ...

I posted a comment on the website's message board, asking for them to check whether this rock-climbing route is really called "Ontology recapitulates..."

FoRK Archive: BISCA-97.
... ) Still, it points out how painfully unaware of so many aspects of knowledge
representation I am... All I know is, ontology recapitulates phylogeny. ...

This message, in the Friends of Rohit Khare archive is making a joke, I think.  In any case, the message is all about ontology, and includes a fairly nifty definition of it:
The subject of ontology is the study of the categories of things that exist or may exist.  The product of such a study, called an ontology, is a catalog of the types of things that are assumed to exist in some domain of interest from the perspective of a person who uses some language (natural or artificial) for the purpose of talking about that domain.  The types in the ontology represent the predicates, word senses, or concept and relation types of the language used to discuss topics in the domain.

SENIOR EXAMINATIONS Spring, 1999 Examination Time: 2 hours Answer ...
... 1. From the claim of the romantics of the relation between the macroscopic and microscopic
worlds, to Ernst Haeckl's "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and van ...

I sent an email to the seven professors of the philosophy department of this university suggesting they correct this misquote, and asking if they also misspelled Haeckel's name.

[PPT] The Science of Life
File Format: Microsoft Powerpoint 97
... history. The saying “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” addresses
the age old problem - which came first - the chicken or the egg. ...

This PowerPoint presentation, created by the Wilmington Area High School science teacher, Mrs. White, defines ontology incorrectly as "the study of an individual's biological history (development)".  On the next slide, the presentation misquotes a saying as "ontology recapitulates phylogeny", without attributing the saying to anyone.  Maybe Mrs. White found the error on my web page!  I sent the principal an email.

BJP -- Sims 179 (6): 558
... Man (1871). He is now perhaps best remembered for his ‘biogenetic
law’ (ie that ontology recapitulates phylogeny). For human ...

I sent in a reply to the article to try to set the record straight.  However, the reply mechanism asks for an email address, which is then posted on the Internet.  Since I'm not willing to get all the spam that would engender, I used a false email address.  Sorry.

Rocky Road: Ernst Haeckel
... Haeckel championed the notion of "ontology recapitulates phylogeny," in other words,
the development of an individual shows the evolutionary history of its ...

This very brief biography of Haeckel begins,

In a letter to her son in the 1870s, Emma Darwin, the great naturalist's wife, wrote that a recent guest was "very nice and hearty and affectionate, but he bellowed out his bad English in such a voice that he nearly deafened us."  The guest was Ernst Haeckel.  An early and ardent proponent of Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel worked for a time as a doctor before toying with the idea of becoming a scientist — or a landscape painter.  He ultimately chose science, though his brand of science was highly speculative.

It goes on to criticize Haeckel for his racist ideas, such as the idea that humans comprised 12 species, with one superior to the others.  Can you guess which species Haeckel belonged to?

The Theory Of Common Descent
... Ontology recapitulates phylogeny"; Fetal development; Biogeography; Agreement between
different kinds of evidence; Why have no new major groups appeared recently? ...

PBS's Evolution Series is Propoganda, not Science: Gilder, Josh
... embryos showing that all vertebrates pass through almost identical stages in development
(the source of the famous phrase, "ontology recapitulates phylogeny"). ...

Disguised as a harsh critique of the Public Broadcasting System's Evolution series, this article presents the "rational" argument (as opposed to the religious one) against evolution.  Cleverly written by a former Reagan speech writer, Josh Gilder, the article takes pains to distance itself from the religious right.  Instead, it points out that Darwin didn't get it exactly right, that efforts to recreate evolution in the lab have failed, and that, like a car engine, a cell has interconnecting moving parts which could not have evolved separately, and which could not have sprung into existence all at once, either.  Modern scientists have uncovered some errors in Darwin's original theory, but these modern ideas are simply not presented in the TV series.  For example, Michael Behe, a molecular biologist at Lehigh University, published a book in 1996 entitledDarwin's Black Box that raised new and interesting theoretical objections to Darwinism.  And, in 2000, U.C. Berkeley Ph.D. biologist Jonathan Wells published his groundbreaking Icons of Evolution, which dismantles the "proofs" of evolution, one by one.

Dr. Douglas O'Handley Lecture
... Ontology recapitulates phylogeny we will be able to study how life
would react in microgravity at any point in evolutionary history. ...

[PDF] 29 - 1 Lecture * µ (r) rR (r) dominated by small lobe (n ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... Page 4. 29 - 4 5.73 Lecture #29 updated September 19, 4. Do all of this more rigorously:
QDT Mulliken: “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” intra-core nodal ...

This page quotes Mulliken as having said this phrase.  Maybe he did, because Haeckel sure didn't say it.  I sent "Feedback" to the MIT chemistry department.

Out of the Teeming Sea: Influences
... Biologists may know Haeckel for his statement "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny,"
but the general public is more familiar with his stunning drawings of related ...

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, DANE RUDHYAR AND ME
... and throw it away. My story is a good illustration of the old saying:
"ontology recapitulates phylogeny". In my own evolutionary ...

Stephen Caesar's Articles
... To "prove" the greater myth of evolution, Haeckel invented the lesser myth known
as "ontology recapitulates phylogeny." In a nutshell, he claimed that ...

"Another Evolution Fraud Exposed" presents the argument that since Haeckel was a fraud, and he believed in evolution, then it follows that evolution is wrong.  If this "logic" holds water, then I suppose all I need to do to discredit Creationism is to find one false statement in Stephen Caesar's article!

SSSITALK Archives, June, 1999 - Present: Dreaming.
... thinking the old model, trying to integrate the theory-methods-substantive model,
maybe into a cohort model where ontology recapitulates phylogeny or something ...

This is a short but rambling plea for a deep discussion on the topic of dreaming.  It was written by Donna Darden, who exhorts us to put the fun back into dysfunctional.

One Hand Clapping: The Tao of Music - Page 29
... As ontology recapitulates phylogeny in the development of the foetus, each
successive stage in evolution is incorporated into the next stage. ...

This is an article designed to lure the reader to a web page where psychic readings can be given via email.

[PDF] Theories on the Evolution of Language I. Overview
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... Notes: • “Ontology recapitulates phylogeny”— Evolutionarily prior stages
of an organism are frequently replicated in the development of an immature ...

Katherine Crosswhite thanked me for the email I sent her to tell her of this mistake, and went on: I do actually know both of those words, so I am embarrassed to have gotten them mixed up.  I don't know how that happened.  Have you looked for any mistakes in the opposite direction, such as philosophers mistakenly referring to Descarte's "ontogenetic argument"? ("I grow, therefore I am"? ;-)
I replied, no, I didn't search for misuse of ontogeny where the author meant ontology.  But another kind of reverse mistake would be "ontogeny recapitulates phylology".  The only trouble is "phylology" isn't a word.  The closest word is philology. "Ontogeny recapitulates philology" would mean the biological development of an organism parallels the comprehensive study of language, a mistake no sillier than the one you and I both made in our websites.  But there was not a single instance of this twist anywhere in the Land of Google.  Interestingly, there was one website containing the phrase with the non-word phylology -- a deep and pompous tome called A Frozen City of Ideas.

There you go, Here we are.
... 4. Wild Blackberries, n/a, fake swedish folk song, no data. 5. I Remember. mb, ontology
recapitulates phylogeny, no data. 6. Yoo Doo right, n/a, the Can classic, no data. ...

This website tries to sell a CD called "There", which contains a number of songs, including "I Remember", which is described on this website as "ontology recapitulates phylogeny".

[PDF] RECLAIMING THE HIGH SIERRA: A CREATIONIST’S REVISION OF THE “ ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... Yet Haeckel’s concept that “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” (that is, the
development of an individual embryo “relives” the supposed evolutionary ...

Written by a confirmed creationist, this essay describes the authors efforts to find a suitable new name for Mt. Darwin and other landmarks that have been named after evolutionists.

Einstein's God 7101
... We can organize religions in order of increasing sophistication by
using the principle that "Ontology recapitulates Phylogeny". ...

This website is a hierarchically structured book entitled Einstein's God; the Science of Zen. It is a holistic view of human behavior including science, religion and enlightenment organized around a history of social evolution. Mr. Eklund includes this warning: The contents of Einstein's God and the Science of Zen are scientific in the best sense but it contains "new paradigms" that will not be accepted by the scientific establishment for another generation. In other words, and I say this with kindness, he's a crank and he admits it. That puts him head and shoulders above most cranks. Furthermore, although the converse isn't true, most great thinkers were regarded as cranks in their time.
An index of Karl Eklund's other writings can be found at http://www.angelfire.com/ma/karlek/index.html, which has a lot of good stuff, including a photo of the author.

A Starter Web Page
... support life? Chance-- guided? Ontology recapitulates phylogeny; What
is wrong with Big Bang? Why couldn't God have used it? Sludge? Is ...

Christian Evidences
... Haekel stated that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny." In other words, the stages
of the development of an embryo repeat the various stages of evolutionary ...

Phrases and clauses: A ten minute tour
... I wonder whether ontology recapitulates phylogeny. [direct object].
Whatever is lurking under the bed has started to snore. [subject]. ...

This is a lesson on English usage that just uses the phrase as an illustration of grammar.  Still, it would be nice if they got the quote right.

DARWINISM-WATCH.com - Responding Evolutionist Propaganda in the ...
... Yet evolutionists have still not lost faith in the idea that "ontology recapitulates
phylogeny," and are trying to resuscitate this hoary old chestnut under ...

Another proud debunker of evolution.

Science 1000 Evolution - Tutorial and Review Questions
... scientific? 12. What do the terms "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and
"descent with modification" refer to? Who coined these terms? 13. ...

Re: [Futurework] Two sorts of evolutionary economics
File Format: Unrecognized
... environment. As the biologists say, "In the womb, ontology recapitulates
phylogeny" (or the other way round -- I can never remember!). ...

The Gilbar Story
... college career, I came to understand two things: Ontology recapitulates
Phylogeny, in the social sphere as well as the physical. ...

Med magazine
... Of organic chemistry and embryology, I remember benzene rings, the ortho-, para-
and meta-positions, that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny," and something ...

Spiral Dynamics
... Ontology recapitulates phylogeny" is an old dictum indicating that
each of us in our development relives the growth of our species. ...

[PDF] The Healing Breath
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Page 1. The Healing Breath, Volume 2, No. 1, January 2000 1 7KH +HDOLQJ %UHDWK
D -RXUQDO RI %UHDWKZRUN 3UDFWLFH 3V\FKRORJ\ DQG 6SLULWXDOLW ...

GNP FAQ - References
... It has been axiomatic since Haeckel that ontology recapitulates phylogeny —that
the individual in Hir development repeats, step-by-step, the evolution of the ...

Society, Technology and Culture
... She confirms the notion of “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” when she
makes a connection to the philosophical perspective on technology. ...

[PDF] Gl obal In sp ir at io n Co nfe re nc e – 19 9 9
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... Ontology recapitulates phylogeny” is an old dictum indicating that
each of us in our development relives the growth of our species. ...

The Extended Mind
... line. Ontology recapitulates phylogeny as the system moves through all
of the state of stability through which it once passed. Languages ...

you think it's like this, but it's really like this.
... (I have a whole theory on the evolution of dancing, and it fits nicely into the
whole "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" thing, but I think I'll save it for ...

This blog gives a high school girl's view of life, including an encounter with a fox on an over-watered suburban lawn, and her theories of the evolution of dancing.  After I brought this "ontology" error to her attention, she called me "Sir", which cut me to the quick.  She continued, "I know the difference between ontology and ontogeny.  It was a simple flub, as when somebody as miscegeny when meaning misogyny."  I replied in a way I hope was kind, saying, in part that I did enjoy reading the blog.  I pointed out that if she wants to start a pseudo-scientific journal, she'll have to compete with uk.arxiv.org, which is already in existence.  By the way, I couldn't find miscegeny in any dictionary.  However, the dictionary of obscure words defines "miscegene" as a "person of mixed racial heritage".  So would I be right in guessing that miscegeny is the practice of bringing into the world persons of mixed racial heritage?
I never received a reply from the girl who wrote the blog, but John, an attorney researching miscegeny laws wrote,

I enjoyed your page on ontogeny vs. ontology ... I think you might find it interesting that I found your site with a google search involving "miscegeny."  I think that it is interesting that this page of your web site is high in the google returns for the word "miscegeny.".  I am an attorney in Louisiana and I was specifically doing a little research into out miscegeny laws ... interesting how miscegeny is indeed mistaken for misogyny.  It happen a lot!  Again, I enjoyed your web site.

John

I replied,

Yes, I do find it interesting (and fun) that my website is high in the ranking for this and various other obscure words.  This particular word, miscegeny, ranks me pretty high because, as near as I can tell, it's not a word.  (If it were a word, I theorize it would mean "the practice of bringing into the world persons of mixed racial heritage".  I guess there are laws against this in some states.)  Other non-words in my website, such as "hunnerd", rank me pretty high, too.  My website has been around for almost a decade now, and many of its pages are so full of "crap" that many people link to them with titles like "click here for a really uninformed opinion on gun control" and the like.  This, and the fact that the site contains way over a thousand pages, with more added weekly, tends to make me rise in the rankings.  Being linked-to is like publicity: say anything you want, but spell my name correctly!  Almost all the people who visit my site come from Google.  Three years ago, yahoo was my biggest referrer.  Three years before that, it was altavista.  (I still remember the days when altavista was altavista.digital.com, which truly dates me in the Internet age, since Digital has since been swallowed, twice, by bigger fish Compaq and then HP.)  Queries for obscure things bring thousands of people every day to my site, which makes me almost famous in an obscure sort of way.  I estimate that about 0.1% of the people who visit my site send me an email, which I always appreciate.  I appreciate this email you sent me almost as much as I appreciate the ones that say I am a [biological function deleted] [anatomical reference redacted] [lifestyle preference excised]!

Look hard at Embryology
Look hard at Embryology. Yup, that’s right, Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny!! ...

Evolution and Morphogenesis
... If indeed "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny" is a useful descriptive principle, then
evolution and morphogenesis would be expected to have a tight relationship ...

Child
... Some developmental theorists such as the radical branch of German Herbartianism
emphasized the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" argument, suggesting that ...

Seymour Papert: Microworlds
... Finally, as Piaget consistently reminded us, the biologist's maxim that ontology
recapitulates phylogeny has at least a metaphorically suggestive analog here ...

DISCUSSION FORUM MESSAGE>
... Or as they say in biology, ‘Ontology recapitulates phylogeny.’ …Warren McCulloch,
one of the fathers of neuro-computing preferred a heterarchy of values ...

Key Theorists/Theories in Psychology - G. STANLEY HALL
... Through all of this, Hall is also important for his work with the child study
movement with his emphasis that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. ...

Monsters
... Timothy Leary adapted this quote to say 'ontology recapitulates phylogeny', that
is, that the development of an individual's world view (ontology) mirrors the ...

This website got the phrase right, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".  In other words, the website continues, the developing human fetus goes through stages of development which mirror the development of the human species, taking on various forms such as tadpole-like, to reptilian, to monkey-like and so on.  Timothy Leary adapted this quote to say 'ontology recapitulates phylogeny', that is, that the development of an individual's world view (ontology) mirrors the development of the species."
I was not aware that Timothy Leary used the word Ontology intentionally in a corruption of this famous piece of misinformation.  I must say the use of the word "ontology" to mean "world view" is really quite a stretch. According to Digital Polytheism, by Timothy Leary and Eric Gullichsen, ontology recapitulates theology, which means our understanding of knowledge parallels the study of God and his relationship to man.  Maybe Timothy Leary said both things.

21st-An NLP Primer on Spirituality ... Or as they say in biology, “Ontologyrecapitulates phylogeny.” Hence we have the precedent for Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels. ...

From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andrew John Farrow ...
... can find the coining of the terms "ecology", "phylogeny", and "phylum." A contemporary
of Darwin, the phrases "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and "politics ...

Study Guide Sheets
... Do more different kinds of animals exist on land or in the ocean? 4. What
is meant by "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" (not in your text). ...

Atheists of Britain - Atheist Humour
... that during its embryological development an organism repeats its ancestral history,
or to use Haeckels own way of putting it, 'ontology recapitulates phylogeny ...

The Rude Macedon
... (an interesting thing about it all - in biology we learn that "ontology recapitulates
phylogeny" (something like that - it's late and I don't have time to ...

The Evolution of a Great-Big Headache (MushroomExpert.Com)
... For a brief diversion, notice how the Column Modifications theory here appears to
give credence to the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" idea, first asserted ...

[PDF] KNOWLEDGE AREA MODULE 2
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
... G. Stanley Hall, an educator and anthropologist, provided the premise that ontology
recapitulates phylogeny, or in other words, the development of the ...

Rev. Leander S. Harding Ph.D.'s Journal
... the hopes of desperate people. In High School Biology class I learned
that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. That means that the ...

AW! Discussion Pages 048. From AC. Askwhy! Publications.
... ago. He was an enthusiast for evolution and saw in the growth of embryos
what he called “ontology recapitulates phylogeny". In ...

20030927
... Recapitulates phylogeny to the extent I am still scratching my head - about to step
into a crosswalk for which I had a green light to proceed, a guy in a late ...

[PDF] Arctic Village “Most Wired” On Earth
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Page 1. Willem Barents didn’t set out to discover new land, but that’s
what he is remem- bered for. At age 45 he was one of the ...

The Desert of the Real
... In the same way that ontology recapitulates phylogeny we see that dynamics
of complex systems create similar trends in dissimilar bodies. ...

I would dearly love to have this page listed first by Google for the phrase "Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny" so I'll repeat the phrase just one more time: Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny.

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I received this email from Kieran McCarty, which is jam packed with kindly criticism and new insight.  Here it is.  Feel free to comment!

I liked your page about ontology and phylogeny, but (although you discuss the "reverse error", "ontogeny recapitulates phylology" and say that "phylology" isn't a word but "philology" is, and then go on to discuss Timothy Leary and the possibility that he said either "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" (I agree with you, not a very sensible statement, but what do you expect from someone who burnt out his rational brain with too much LSD?) or "ontology recapitulates theology" (which is a little more promising as a philosophical proposition) but completely ignore the possibility that "ontology recapitulates philology" is an interesting statement deserving of analysis.  Given Judeo-Christian scriptural tradition regarding the Word (as a name for the Christ "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God") and the power of the word to create reality, e.g. "What is" (not to mention God the Father being called "I am" or "I am what am" --- what more ontological statement could be made? --  ("God said 'let there be light' and there was light" etc), the relationship of ontology and philology would seem to be profound.

What is probability? (Quantum Theoretical View)

One answer views probability as an "emergent" property of Quantum Theory, the Many Worlds interpretation, and the meaning of Identity of an Observer.

We think of probability on the macro scale -- the probability of a coin landing "heads", or of a die landing on 3.  But this macro view of probability is the culmination of an enormous (but finite) number of tiny events such as electrons and other subatomic particles bouncing off one another, popping into or out of existence, etc.  These smallest events are described by quantum theory, so the thing we think of as probability is grounded in quantum theory.


Sean Carroll gives a really good overview in this 14 minute video of the current state of interpreting Quantum Mechanics.  In 2011, Quantum Mechanics experts were asked "What is your favored interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?"  The result was that less than half favored the "textbook" interpretation, which is called the Copenhagen Interpretation, although this was still the most popular interpretation.  Sean Carroll favors Hugh Everett's "Many Worlds" interpretation, because it doesn't have the kind of problems faced by the Copenhagen interpretation, particularly the special status of the observer.  He is careful, however, to point out that there are several other interpretations that solve the Copenhagen interpretation's problems, so the Many Words interpretation is not necessarily the correct or best one.  It's just better than the Copenhagen interpretation.

I'm personally persuaded by the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics because it avoids the main pitfall of the Copenhagen interpretation, which is the special status of the "observer".  However, it introduces a new problem, which I call the "Identity Problem", namely whether "I" exist in all the so-called "pocket universes" that are created as a result of each quantum event.  I'll set that aside, for the moment, but it might come up again later!


A new paper by physics professor Andreas Albrecht and graduate student Dan Phillips at the University of California, Davis, makes the case that these quantum fluctuations actually are responsible for the probability of all actions, with far-reaching implications for theories of the universe.

Taking these interpretations together -- the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the "Quantum" interpretation of probability, then the probability of an event occurring, is the "emergent" probability that the "observer" will be in a pocket universe in which the quantum events (that aggregate up to that event occurring) happened.

This Quantum Probability view brings us back to the existence of a single "observer" who exists in a subset of all the pocket universes that split off from the one universe extant just before the event occurred.  Here is where the "Identity Problem" rears its head, and in even if this question is answered,  Quantum Probability raises the question of whether it makes sense to ask what is the probability that the "observer" will exist in this subset of pocket universes.

The language of comparisons

Purists require you to say "different from" rather than "different than", but that's not the issue I find most troubling with comparisons I read in popular websites and blogs.  The error I find so troubling is the comparison of things on different levels of hierarchy.  Let me give you an example.

Joe's car is a different color than my car.

So what's being compared?  The color of Joe's car is being compared to my car.  What was meant here is that the color of Joe's car is different from the color of my car, not different from my car.  Here's how the sentence should be fixed:

Joe's car is a different color than that of my car.

I think a lot of grammarians (whoever they are) would agree this sentence is clearer and all-around better.  Now, let's take it up a level.  Consider this comparison:

The tread on the tires of Joe's car is more worn than that of my car.

See?  I used "that of".  This fixed the problem, didn't it?  No.  There is no "that" meaning tread of my car.  Cars don't have tread.  Cars have tires, and tires have tread.  To fix it properly, you would have to say:

The tread on the tires of Joe's car is more worn than that of those of my car.

But no one says this, or even advocates saying it.  Why?  Do no situations like this ever come up in real life? Yes.

Phys.org reports in article New experiments challenge fundamental understanding of electromagnetism that Quantum Electrodynamics theory (QED) predicts what will happen when an electron orbiting the nucleus collides with a passing particle.  Then it goes on to say,

"The NIST team found that electrons in highly charged helium-like ions that are excited in this fashion give off photons that are noticeably different in color than QED predicts."

Here, phys.org is comparing a noun to a verb, which needs to be fixed this way:

"The NIST team found that electrons in highly charged helium-like ions that are excited in this fashion give off photons that are noticeably different in color than that which QED predicts."

But there's still a problem.  QED doesn't predict a color.  In phys.org's own words, QED predicts "what will happen", i.e. a sequence of events, or events for short.  One of the events predicted by QED is that a photon of a certain color is given off.  This is the color of the photon of the events predicted by QED.  Clear?  QED predicts events which have a photon which has a color.  So then to fix it, the sentence becomes:

The NIST team found that electrons in highly charged helium-like ions that are excited in this fashion give off photons that are noticeably different in color than that of that given off by that which QED predicts.

Alright, I know this is silly.  The point is that comparisons of things on different levels of hierarchy are wrong, and in scientific writing particularly, the sloppy comparisons might lead to misunderstandings of important details.