Re: Q Wars Episode 10^9: the Phantom Measure

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 14:05:59 EDT

In a message dated 99-06-02 06:52:55 EDT, Jacques Mallah wrote:
 
> [...] I want to establish a key point. Do you admit that
>if, in fact, your measure were to decrease (for example) exponentially
>with time, you would not be immortal in any meaningful sense?
>If you admit that, then we could have a discussion about whether
>measure does decrease or not. If you do not admit it, then we can't have
>much of a discussion since we apparently wouldn't be speaking the same
>language. >>

Even if the measure decreases arbitrarily fast, as long as the function is
continuous ( we cannot have a jump to zero) and all the derivatives are also
continuous and finite, the function will always have a non-zero value no
matter how far we go (or how long we wait).
In any case it is the "relative" value of measure which is important. As long
as we keep the continuity assumption, from one point to the next adjacent
point, we can never reach zero.

And by the way, if the measure was NOT continuous along some branches of the
MW, then we could simply ignore those branches since they are irrelevent to
immortality, and concern ourselves only with those branches which are
relevent where the measure is continuous. (Anthropic reasoning)

R. Standish wrote:
> Immortality depends on continuity of concious experience, not on measure.

and Bruno Marchal wrote:
>To sum up: the immortality question is not linked to the measure problem.

I agree with both Russel and Bruno.


George Levy
Received on Wed Jun 02 1999 - 11:11:03 PDT