On 9/13/2019 10:59 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 6:38 PM Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 2:55 AM Jason Resch <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Tuesday, September 10, 2019, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 10:18 AM 'Brent Meeker' via
Everything List <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 9/10/2019 4:30 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> Another argument that has been given here before is
that if quantum
> immortality is true, then we should expect to see a
number of people
> who are considerably older than the normal life
expectancy -- and we
> do not see people who are two or three hundred years
old. Even if the
> probabilities are very low, there have been an awful
lot of people
> born within the last 500 or so years -- some must
have survived on our
> branch if this scenario is true.
My argument was that each of us should find ourselves
to be much older
than even the oldest people we know.
That is probably the best single argument against quantum
immortality: if QI is true, then the measure of our
lifetime after one reaches a normal lifetime is infinitely
greater than the measure before age , say, 120 yr. So if
one finds oneself younger than 120 years, QI is false, and
if MWI is still considered to be true, there must be
another argument why MWI does not imply QI.
Why do you think that measure only increases with age? On an
objective level it only decreases.
As Bruno would say, "you confuse the 1p with the 1pp." I am
talking about my personal measure of the number of years I have
lived. As I get older, the number of years I have lived increases.
If I live to 1000, I have lived more years between 100 and 1000
than between 1 and 100. This is arithmetic, after all.
I see. This reasoning works only under the assumption that finding
yourself in any particular year across your infinite lifespan is
equiprobable (i.e. you can ignore the effects of the number or measure
of the various yous in other branches). This is what I thought you
mean by measure, in terms of how to calculate probabilities / weights
of the various branches.
But this discussion has gone off the rails. It started as a
discussion of quantum immortality, and the arguments against this
notion, even in MWI. The arguments against QI that have been
advanced are that life-threatening events tend not to be binary or
quantum, but rather we enter a period of slow decline, due to
illness or other factors. Consequently, there is no reason for us
to expect to be immortal, even in MWI.
I don't see how that last sentence follows. It is true MWI doesn't
guarantee we should expect to always survive in the same condition,
but it does guarantee we should survive in some form.
But what does "we" refer to. Are you saying Jason, with the memories he
has at this moment, will always have a successor in the future. Or are
you saying there'll always be a Jason that shares my childhood memories
or my memories of last year when that lightning bolt just missed me.
The other argument is that if QI is true, then you would expect to
be very old.
We only know we are very old if our memories accumulate without limit,
but MWI does not guarantee persistence of memory. It also follows
from this that to know one is immortal (has lived an infinite number
of years) requires an infinitely large brain and memory capacity.
I don't have to remember everything that happened over 80yrs to know I'm
80yrs old. In fact I only need to remember my birthday.
Brent
This argument was advanced by Mallah (arXiv: 0905.0187) and has
not been satisfactorily rebutted.
Mallah used to contribute to this list. You can review some of his
past discussions in the archives which debate this very point:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/everything-list/Mallah%7Csort:date (some
now 20 years old)
Jason
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