Re: why is death painful?

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 16:03:17 -0700

On Mon, Jun 07, 1999 at 11:24:49PM -0700, hal.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> If we're not going to ignore our measure, then we seem to have an
> obligation to increase it rather than just keep it from decreasing.
> Presently there is not much we can do about it (especially if the units
> are observer-moments); perhaps recording our thoughts in great detail so
> that future technology can resurrect and replay them would be partially
> effective. Alternatively, working to advance technologies for reading
> brain states and emulating them on computers might be our best bet to
> increase our measure.
>
> If we don't spend our time doing such things, isn't this almost as bad
> as accepting quantum suicide?

I wasn't arguing that quantum suicide is bad, but rather there is no QM
based justification either for or against it. My position is that suicide
(and self-measure in general) is just another choice that each person
should make based on whatever ethical system he accepts, no different
from any other choice. Of course his ethical system might not say
anything about measure, but that is a seperate problem.
Received on Tue Jun 08 1999 - 16:05:01 PDT