RE: why is death painful?

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 10:15:45 +0100

All good points, but if you look at the bigger picture, the universe is all
the same stuff, all numbers. The concept of 'my' is meaningless (or can you
show otherwise?), so caring about 'my measure' is foolish. Yes, our genes
would care, if they could care. So what?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wei Dai [SMTP:weidai.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Monday, June 07, 1999 9:59 AM
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: why is death painful?
>
> Should one make decisions based on objective or subjective consequences of
> his actions? By objective, I mean one should consider how one's actions
> affect the external world, and by subjective I mean one should only
> consider one's future subjective experiences. This is very much related to
> the quantum suicide debate, since the QS advocates argue (as I understand
> it) that a decrease in one's measure (which is definitely a feature of the
> objective universe) should be ignored as a part of decision making since
> it is not directly subjectively detectable.
>
> Evolution must have had two "choices" when it programmed our brains to
> make decisions as they relate to death. It could have made death or
> circumstances leading to death painful and made us avoid actions that lead
> to the subjective experience of pain, or it could have made us consider
> the effect of each of our potential actions on our measure and avoid
> actions that lead to a decrease in measure. Apparently it chose the
> former, presumably because it's easier for evolution to accomplish. But
> because of this our genes are now in trouble because we have found ways to
> kill ourselves painlessly.
>
> So what does this mean for us? Since subjective decision making is a
> legacy of our evolutionary past, and can be shown to be less general than
> objective decision making, it should no longer be used. Therefore, QS
> advocates will have to come up with a new justification for ignoring one's
> measure. I don't think there is one. That doesn't mean one should care
> about one's measure, just that there is no reason why one shouldn't.
Received on Mon Jun 07 1999 - 02:12:51 PDT