Any hope for Higgo?

From: Jacques M Mallah <jqm1584.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 17:11:42 -0400

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Higgo James wrote:
> Jacques, nobody denies that our measure decreases with time. Do you deny
> that there is a billion-year Jacques somewhere out there in the infinite
> universe?

        Are you trying to pass the disagreement off as some kind of
semantics? It's not. Of course you know that I do believe there is a
billion year old Jacques, so why are you asking that?
        If you really didn't deny that measure decreases with time, you
would not believe in immortality. You do deny it in your own words, you
just don't know how to express it properly.

From: j.domain.name.hidden
Subject: QTI, SSI

>Russell, I must recant for I have erred!
>
>For anyone else, the sight of a billion-year-old man
>would not prove or disprove the Quantum Theory of Immortality.
>But for you, at age 1 billion, the probability that you
>would reach a billion, given QTI, is one. And the
>probability that you would reach a billion given not-QTI
>is very tiny. So it is not unreasonable to believe QTI.
>I'm not sure you can really quantify this.

        And there's the proof of my above statement.
        Wei Dai has previously argued that the 'quantum suicide' crowd
really just had a weird sense of morality regarding measure, rather than a
wrong view of the math. I think the above proves that not to be the case:
since Higgo now thinks that being old would be evidence of QTI, that
proves that he does believe that the predictions of QTI would not be the
standard predictions of QM as Wei and I understand it.
        I find it incredible that Higgo can state that being old would be
statistical evidence for QTI, since one would not expect that without
QTI, but still not realize that being young is statistical evidence
against it.

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Subject: RE: SSA

>Jacques wrote:
>"Nature must have a mathematical criterion for it, if it is going
>to figure in a theory of physics."
>
>Which implies he has a divine right to figure in a theory for physics.
>No, you don't, Jacques. Human identity does not figure in any physical
>theory; it is merely a useful social construct.

        I hope even you have realized by now that an argument against
immortality quoted above is that if immortality were true, identity would
have to figure in physics. So you are supporting my point above, not
opposing it.

                         - - - - - - -
              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 May 19 1999 - 14:13:59 PDT

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