Clearly a photo of me isn’t me, nor is a movie of me, and even a perfect physical copy of me isn’t me. Copying matter doesn’t copy reality but if quantum events cause physical events, as quantum theory suggests, why not copy them? Maybe quantum cloning can 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.
Our computers have processing units plus memory registers to store data. The processor in your laptop 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 can’t copy itself, as trying to read itself changes itself.
A quantum network of processors only, with no memory registers, matches what quantum theory describes. Each network point can still represent matter or space by its output, but it can’t copy itself by the logic above, so the quantum network has no data storage!
The quantum network proposed has no storage because it is constantly active. The quantum waves acting upon it also never stop, as they are either expanding or restarting to expand again, and those restarts are the observations we call the physical world. Like a star that constantly shines, it is constant activity without pause.
Our cell-phone and Internet networks use buffers to handle overloads but the quantum network doesn’t have this luxury. Computers and cell-phones save and reload physical states but quantum processing 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 realism because the quantum network 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 is context free.
One might expect processing powerful enough to generate our physical world as a virtual reality could save a copy of itself, but the no-cloning theorem doesn’t allow this. It follows that all talk of uploading or downloading universes, minds, or ourselves is just wishful thinking, because the quantum network proposed has nowhere to store anything. We live in a world of events that can’t be saved, not things that can (Seibt, 2024).