Question

In an interesting article by Schneirav, he raises the following claim: quantum dynamics slow down when many frequent measurements are performed. What would happen, then, if we performed a continuous measurement? The system would simply “freeze,” that is, stop evolving in time. This is exactly the situation of an object that measures itself. Our very existence is known to us evidentially, as Descartes showed, and without getting into a discussion of the concept of measurement, it is clear that at the very least our awareness is a measurement. It follows that there cannot be a superposition of life (self-awareness) and death. These two physical entities cannot be in a composite state, because “life” requires self-measurement and therefore must be in an eigenstate. How, then, can one explain the fact that we observe the creation and destruction of self-measuring creatures? He suggests two possible solutions: with respect to other observers, the self-measuring object can be in a state of superposition and therefore can transition to a different eigenstate. The observer himself is not our concern, since the observation regarding the “death” of some observer is always made by other observers. The drawback of this solution is the assumption that the observer himself remains in the same eigenstate even when, from the perspective of others, he is in the opposite eigenstate. The second possibility emphasizes the non-continuous nature of self-awareness. Since the observer is a physical object, the act of measurement has a certain rate in time; in the interval between one self-measurement and the next, there is no constraint of being in an eigenstate, and therefore one can transition to a different eigenvalue during that period. This solution seems simple from a physical standpoint, but it casts a heavy shadow over the cogito itself. The existence of a living self-measuring object becomes a discrete series of unrelated events, and the consciousness of continuity of existence (that is, the assumption that the “I think” from a few minutes ago is identical to the “I think” now) is understood in this sense as an illusion. Seemingly, both answers leave us with very unintuitive conclusions. Does the Rabbi have a solution to this?