“Imagine you had a perfectly sealed box. Nothing can come in, and nothing can escape. Into this box you placed an apple and sealed it shut. If you waited long enough, the apple would go through various states of decomposition. After billions and billions of years, it would eventually break down into molecules, then chemical energy, which would heat up and nuclear-fuse it together to become a super-hot plasma, until it decayed into protons and fundamental particles. After billions more years, those fundamental particles will reconfigure themselves into all the possible permutations they could, and one of those states will be the apple again. In fact, every possible state that could exist in the box, would exist in the box and they would do it an infinite number of times. This is the power infinity has over the finite. 

And here’s the thing. We don’t know that we aren’t living in a box like that. For all we know, we could be, because we live in a finite space, with a finite amount of energy. If the universe is infinite, then we could be subject to the same laws as those that govern the box, because all the current configurations of atoms would ultimately be destined to repeat themselves, over and over again, infinitely. That means there would be copies of ourselves out there. An infinite number of copies.”

Brian Greene

Theoretical Physicist, 

from A Trip to Infinity on Netflix

The theory behind this story is based in mathematics, rather than practicalities. It’s one thing reconfiguring the molecules of an apple, but quite another to do it with a human being that has lived a whole life. For example, which configuration of me will be reassembled? The foetus version, the youth, the middle aged man, or the old one? And will everyone be reassembled at the same time, in the same way and in the same places? Will all of my loved ones be reassembled at exactly the same time as me? Will every aspect of my consciousness be the same? Surely not, because then all my memories would have to be identical, which would mean every aspect of the earth, every person, every event, every innovation, every microcosm, would have to be completely synchronous and identical. So no, I’m not buying it. The mathematics may be indicating that, but the actualities of it don’t lead me to believe it will happen like that. There may be someone who looks likes like me, and who talks like me, but they won’t be me. They’ll be an infinite number of new, unique Paul Carney’s, and the universe will be better for it.