Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?

[Michael Rosefield]

*Phew!*; this afternoon I finally got round to reading the 190-odd messages I have received from this list....   From: Saibal Mitra Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test various versions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach.   By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travel to different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will die within a year. If you could delete the information that you have this particular disease (and also the information that information has been deleted), branches in which you don't have the disease merge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So with very high probability you have travelled to a different branch. I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that I'm not the only person to think of this ;D. http://pub45.ezboard.com/fwastelandofwondersfrm1.showMessage?topicID=353.topic&index=5  I'm guessing this is quite a common idea? Rats, I thought I was so great....   I _did_ think of the following today, though:    If you take this sort of thing one step further, an afterlife is inevitable; there will always be systems - however improbable - where the mind lives on. For instance, you could just be the victim of an hallucination, your mind could be downloaded, you could be miraculously cured, and other _much_ more bizzare ones. Since you won't be around to notice the worlds where you did die, they don't count, and you are effectively immortal. Or at least you will perceive yourself to live on, which is the same thing.   When I thought of it, it seemed startlingly original and clever. Looking at the posts I have from this list, I'm beginning to suspect it's neither.... Anyhow, while this sort of wild thinking is wonderfully pure and cathartic, it never seems to lead anywhere with testable or useful implications. So far, anyway....   What's the opinion here on which are more fundamental - minds or universes? I'd say they're both definable and hence exist de facto, and that each implies the other.   Well, I'm new here. Is there anything I should know about this list? Apart from the fact that everyone's so terribly educated.... Feel free to go a bit OT ;).   Michael Rosefield, Sheffield, England "I'm a Solipsist, and I must say I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- letter to Bertrand Russell