Hi guys,
Here's a brief comment on the issue of
whether the MWI implies subjective immortality.
This has bothered me for a long time, and a number of people have
emailed me about it after the Guardian and New Scientist articles came out.
I agree that if the argument were flawless, I should
expect to be the oldest guy on the planet,
severely discrediting the Everett hypothesis.
However, I think there's a flaw.
After all, dying isn't a binary thing where you're either dead or
alive - rather, there's a whole continuum of states of progressively
decreasing self-awareness. What makes the quantum suicide work is
that you force an abrupt transition.
I suspect that when I get old, my brain cells will gradually give out
(indeed, that's already started happening...)
so that I keep feeling self-aware, but less and less so, the final
"death" being quite anti-climactic, sort of like when
an amoeba croaks. Do you buy this?
By the way, since Jacques asked, I unfortunately haven't been able to
devote much time to "everything" issues recently - it's
largely been absorbed by my day job, astrophysics. One day I hope to
sit down and read all the interesting postings to this great list!
For the next few months, however, I'll remain a very erratic
poster/correspondent at best.
;-)
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( O O )
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| Max Tegmark |
| Institute for Advanced Study |
| Princeton, NJ 08540 |
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http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/ |
|_______________________________|
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.oooO ( )
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Received on Sat Nov 28 1998 - 10:21:57 PST