Clearly a photo of me isn’t me, nor is a movie of me, and even a perfect physical copy of me wouldn’t be me, but my twin. Copying matter doesn’t copy reality but if quantum events cause physical events, as quantum theory suggests, why not copy them? Can quantum cloning save and reload reality?
Unfortunately, the quantum no-cloning theorem explicitly excludes this (Wootters & Zurek, 1982). To copy a quantum state, it must first be observed but according to quantum theory, observing a quantum wave restarts it at a point, which destroys it. Observing a quantum state makes it disappear, so quantum cloning is impossible.
To understand why, consider a laptop with a central processing unit (CPU) plus memory registers to store data. The CPU can copy the data in its memory registers but not its own state, because the act of doing so changes that state before the copy. It can input and output data but it can’t copy itself, because trying to read itself, changes itself. It follows that a quantum network of CPUs only, with no memory registers, as quantum theory describes, can’t copy itself by the logic above. Quantum theory then implies the no-cloning theorem because it describes a network of processors that have no data storage!
The quantum network proposed has no storage because it is constantly active. The quantum waves upon it also never stop, as they are either expanding, or restarting to expand again, in the observations we call the physical world. It is like a star that constantly shines without pause, even in empty space.
Our Internet networks need memory buffers to handle overloads but the quantum network doesn’t have this luxury. Cell-phones save and reload physical states but the quantum network can’t store or reload quantum states by the no-cloning theorem. It has to run by itself alone, with no backups, buffers, or saves to fall back on if it fails, so it can’t operate as our networks do.
It also follows that McCabe’s argument against virtualism doesn’t apply to quantum network because it doesn’t store any information. Information needs physical states to exist but quantum events don’t. They create physical events but don’t depend on them, so quantum processing has no physical context.
One might expect processing powerful enough to generate our physical world as a virtual reality could save a copy of itself, but it can’t. It follows that all talk of uploading or downloading universes, minds, or ourselves is just wishful thinking, because the quantum network has nowhere to store anything. We live in a world of events that can’t be saved, not things that can (Seibt, 2024).