Re: SSA

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu May 13 06:08:59 1999

>> Bruno Marchal:
>>Tell me if you agree at least with the weaker proposition:
>> COMP + HE ====> immortality
>>where HE is the (extravagant) hypothesis saying that a real concrete
>>universal dovetailer (generating and executing all programs) exists
>>in our "universe".

> Jacques M Mallah:
> Of course not. It's the same issue.

I really don't understand you, Jacques.
I am afraid you are inconsistent.
I am refering you to the thread "valuable errors" which begins at

http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/index.html?mID=535

More precisely,
in http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/index.html?mID=540,
you agree that you can survive with a digital body.
And in the course of that thread you agree with what
I call *mechanist or comp (first person) indeterminism* (because
you told us that "for all practical purposes, a person who
is copied should expect their future selves to be
effectively randomly chosen").
And you agree with the non-first-person-observability neither
of any delays of "reconstitution", nor
of the nature real/virtual of the reconstitutions. Etc.

But if you agree with all these points, it seems to me that
"COMP + HE ====> immortality-from-a-first-person-point-of-view"
follows quite easily.

Remember HE is the Extravagant Hypothesis that there IS a
non stopping, and never stopping, concrete program (UD) emulating
all possible programs (this makes sense with Church's Thesis)
in *the* uni-multi-verse. With HE, a universal computation is
actually implemented in our (branche) universe.

Even IF, by a kind of miracle, you would NOW be a sort
of concrete real "Jacques M Mallah" belonging to that concrete
universe, the next instant, you should expect yourself
belonging to a virtual history generate by the UD
working (by HE) in that concrete universe.
And this happens just because, as you say "for all
practical purposes, a person who
is copied should expect their future selves to be
effectively randomly chosen" among the virtual (at least)
reconstitutions, which are ALL implemented, one day or another (but the
delays are not first person detectable), and
executed in the UD.
Where is the error ?

>[...] since immortality is observationally false,

Come on Jacques, if you have experience death, tell us ! But in that case
it seems to me that you survive, isn't it ?
More seriously, I guess Russell Standish is correct
when he says that,
you confuse first and third person point of view.
QM and comp immortality are of course *immortality from a first
person perspective*.
You cannot expect some friend surviving a big crash thanks
some QM or comp tunneling effects.
But if comp (+HE) or QM is correct then, from your unique
point of view, you can expect (and fear) personnal surviving.
In *your* crash, you will survive
probably in the *most normal near world* (may be in
Stalnaker or Hardegree proximity sense) from the world you crash.
This also entails you can expect being seriously injured ...

Of course, with HE, the proof is rather easy (isn't it ?).
For an elimination of HE see the 4th chapter in my
thesis (in my URL below).


Bruno



 Bruno MARCHAL Phone : +32 (0)2 6502711
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Received on Thu May 13 1999 - 06:08:59 PDT

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