On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 03:59:39PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> > Schroedinger came up with his
> > cat's paradox. Tegmark came up with the quantum suicide experiment.
>
>
> I came up first with the comp suicide, and much later after with the
> quantum suicide and with the "kill the user" sort of quantum
> computation, well before Tegmark, and I am not sure this has helped to
> make my work more "acceptable" or "comprehensible". For me "quantum
> suicide" was a confirmation of the fact, easily derivable from comp,
> that even for purely empirical reason we can doubt "mortality", or
> doubt that the mortality issue is simple, like so many materialist tend
> to think.
James Higgo published a web page describing the history of quantum
suicide aka comp suicide. The notion obvious predates both Tegmark and
Marchal - and there is some anecdotal evidence that Edward Teller knew
about the argument in the early eighties. It appears to have been a
"dirty little secret", which has only really been considered
acceptable talk in polite scientific circles in the last 10 years or so.
--
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