[vankessel]

My reasoning behind this was that there can be multiple futures where you could exist and experience, but some of them shorter than others. E.g.

A------B

\ --------C

If you are travelling towards B, once you reach it, you die. But you can't magically jump last second to parallel reality C, you can only branch from the present. Thus you would have needed to branch down to C in advance. Thanks for pointing this out, I will make my reasoning more clear in a future edit.

[ALittleLight]

Two points:

1. Delayed choice quantum eraser experiments suggest to me, unless I've misunderstood them (which is highly possible), that effects can affect causes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_erase...

2. Getting shot in the head isn't always fatal. The bullet could deflect off your skull, or even go through your brain and just not hit you. The bullet could experience spontaneous existence failure, or simply fail to interact with the matter in your body and pass through you. My limited understanding of physics says that things like these are possible but massively unlikely at large scale. However, if some set of things are possible but rare, and the only alternative things are impossible, then something rare will happen.

[marcofiset]

That's what I understood based on the gun example. However the same would hold true for any deadly disease you develop, wouldn't it?

[vankessel]

True, the doctor example is really just supposed to be segue into thinking about how a direct message could work. Although, perhaps facing death and recovering turns you into the kind of fellow who will live their life in a vastly different way leading to a longer life?