On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Higgo James wrote:
> Does the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics
> imply immortality?
No, it sure doesn't. While in some worlds you survive, the total
measure associated with all copies of you is clearly reduced by a factor
equal to what your 'chance of survival' appears to be. For all practical
purposes, that is the same as if there were, for example, 100 copies of
you and I go out and kill 50. You are 50% likely to be killed.
The observational proof of that (assuming MWI is true) is that if
you were immortal, only a negligable fraction of the conscious
observations associated with you would be associated with less than, say,
1000 years of memories. Statistically, assuming the conscious observation
you have now is a typical one, that proves that you are not immortal.
By the way, I don't know about the particular Stapp paper you
cite, but in general Stapp is a known crackpot who tries to draw
connections between physics and psychics, and it is best to take anything
he says with a cup of salt.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Mon Nov 16 1998 - 11:13:03 PST