Jason Resch-2 wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Nick Prince > <nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com>wrote: > >> QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation >> >> I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of >> differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a >> standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a >> dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be >> wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if >> there are any flaws. >> > > Nick, > > I think such cul de sacs exist only from third person perspectives. E.g., > the experimenter's view of what happens to the cat. When considering the > perspective from the first person (cat) perspective, there are no cul de > sacs for a much simpler reason: The cat might be mistaken, dreaming, or > even > an altogether different being choosing to temporarily experience a cat's > point of view. > > No matter how foolproof a setup an experimenter designs, it is impossible > to > capture and terminate the cat's continued consciousness as seen from the > perspective of the cat. > > The lower the chance the cat has of surviving through some malfunction of > the device, the more likely it becomes that the cat survives via > improbable > extensions. For the same reasons, I think it is more probable that you > will > wake up as some trans- or post-human playing a realistic "sim ancestor" > game > than for you to live to 200 by some QTI accident (not counting medical > advances). Eventually, those alternatives just become more probable. > > Jason > > One thing I wonder about: Do the extensions necessarily become improbable? Why is it not possible that the cat just forgets that it is that particular cat, and wakes up as new born cat, or dog, or other animal (maybe human?). It even seems more plausible that as long as the cat is alive, relatively improbable extensions/narrow are required (since there are less futures where the cat is alive, than where it is not).
It seems to me it is one step to far to assume that after its death the cat has to continue in a unlikely future in a form very similiar to its current form. That is taking egocentric notions of survival for granted. Maybe it is not required that much of memory or personality or physical form survives for the experience of survival. For example, during dream states, meditation or drug experiences, (almost) all memory and sense of personhood may be lost and still consciousness experiences surviving. This would be an argument in favor of a modern form of reincarnation. When the form is destroyed, consciousness just backtracks (maybe through some dream like experience) and is born anew. We don't even need much assumptions in terms of QTI or non-physical plane for that. All individual memory is lost, and thus consciousness can continue in very many probable futures, namely all newborn individuals that share a similar collective consciousness (which may just be the environment - or "world" - of the dead one, which obviously does not die). For the person, this is not really immortality, but this isn't required. Only consciousness has to survive in order for basic subjective immortality. It is a quite natural notion of immortality, with natural consequences with regard to immortality experiments (the subject just dies, and consciousness continues from memory loss). This would also explain positive near death experiences: As the person dies, consciousness feels itself opening up, as more consistent future experiences become available. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32730568.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
