Brent Meeker writes:> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:00:11 -0800> From: [EMAIL
PROTECTED]> To: [email protected]> Subject: Re: ASSA and
Many-Worlds> > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:> > > > Johnathan Corgan writes:> >
> >> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:> >>> >>> If some multiverse theory happens to
be true then by your way of argument we > >>> should all be extremely anxious
all the time, because every moment terrible things > >>> are definitely
happening to some copy of us. For example, we should be constantly > >>> be
worrying that we will be struck by lightning, because we *will* be struck by
lightning. > >> If MWI is true, *and* there isn't a lowest quantum of> >>
probability/measure as Brent Meeker speculates, there is an interesting> >>
corollary to the quantum theory of immortality.> >>> >> While one branch always
exists which continues our consciousness> >> forward, indeed we are constantly
"shedding" branches where the most> >> brutal and horrific things happen to us
and result in our death. Their> >> measure is extremely small, so from a
subjectively probability> >> perspective, we don't worry about them.> >>> >>
I'd speculate that there are far more logically possible ways to> >> experience
an agonizing, lingering death than to live. Some have a> >> relatively high
measure, like getting hit by a car, or getting lung> >> cancer (if you're a
smoker), so we take steps to avoid these (though> >> they still happen in some
branch.) Others, like having all our> >> particles spontaneously quantum
tunnel into the heart of a burning> >> furnace, are so low in measure, we can
blissfully ignore the> >> possibility. Yet if MWI is true, there is some
branch where this has> >> just happened to us. (modulo Brent's probability
quantum.)> >>> >> If there are many more ways to die than to live, even of low
individual> >> measure, I wonder how the "integral of the measure" across all
of them> >> comes out.> > > > It's not death that is the problem (you always
get out of that), it's suffering. Final death > > would be better than a living
hell, but QTI denies you final death. I take comfort in the > > speculation
that if I'm still alive in a few hundred years, most likely this will be as a
result > > of some advanced medical or cybernetic intervention, and if science
understands the brain > > well enough to do that, it would be a relatively
simple matter by comparison to ensure that I > > am content. I think the
hellish routes to immortality would occur mostly by chance and would > > be of
much lower total measure than the deliberate, happy routes. > > I think Bruno
already remarked that it may well be more probable that a continuation of your
consciousness arises in some other branch of the multiverse "by chance", rather
than as a state of "your" erstwhile body. This would seem particularly more
probable as your consciousness simplifies due to deterioration of your brain -
how hard can it be to find a continuation of a near coma. Perhaps this
continuation is the consciousness of a fish - and it's the Hindus rather than
the Bhuddists who are right.Then we come up against the question of what we can
expect to experience in the case of duplication with partial memory loss. For
example, if you are duplicated 101 times such that one copy has 100% of your
memories while the other 100 copies each have 1% of your memories, does this
mean that you have an even chance of ending up as either the 100% or the 1%
version of yourself? We need not invoke duplication experiments or the MWI to
ask this question either. Suppose there are a billion people in the world each
with 1/billion of my memories: does this mean I will find myself becoming one
of these people either now or after I have died? Stathis Papaioannou
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