> On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 09:51:53AM -0000, Higgo James wrote:
> > Jacques, Darwin has a lot of work to do before I become a slave to my genes,
> > which is what you advocate. I don't say consciousness jumps magically.
> > Our consciousness, like anything, exists in the same form in very many sets
> > of universes. It doesn't make sense to say 'I am that one' or 'no, I'm that
> > one'. You are all of them, and as many sets you could call 'you' get 'shut
> > down' because of a vacuum collapse or supernova or quantum suicide
> > experiemnt, they become no longer you, and irrelevant to you.
If the number of copies did not affect the measure, which is what
you just said, then all possible observations would have the same measure,
since at least one copy would exist somewhere. In that case there would
be nothing to favor, say, observing consistent laws of physics. Our
observations would be quite atypical.
So we can dismiss that possibility right away. The only
alternative is that the number of copies is relevant and does determine
the measure.
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Wei Dai wrote:
> Seriously, why can't we agree that there is no single right answer here,
> just like there is no single right answer for the Coke vs Pepsi
> question. Whether or not QS is rational depends on one's subjective
> values.
That's never been the issue. We all agree it depends on one's
values. But if the QS advocates understood the facts, the values they
have expressed clearly indicate that they would not want to commit
suicide. They don't understand that it would reduce their measure, and
while some may say they do but don't care about measure, it is obvious
that they still don't understand measure.
If they really didn't care about measure, they wouldn't care about
immortality for instance; they would be content to have a short but good
time, then die (really die). They would have a small amount of
measure, but all of it 'good times'. But they don't want that; they want
more life, more measure.
p.s. I just got a Li & Vitanyi and it looks like just what my toolkit
can use.
- - - - - - -
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 Wed Jan 27 1999 - 14:59:18 PST