Re: Craziness of a quantum suicidal

From: <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 12:23:51 -0700

Jacques M Mallah, <jqm1584.domain.name.hidden>, writes:
> Chris Maloney - the latest, and worst, addition to our little
> group. It's not exactly a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I suspect
> I will unsubscribe from this newsgroup before long. I'm a scientist, not
> a suicide counselor.

Jacques, you silver tongued devil, you. Don't sugar coat things, tell
us how you really feel.

> But consider this: Is the branch in which you win the lottery not
> already occupied? How will it profit this lottery winner if you, finding
> yourself in another branch, kill yourself?

You seem to be using the model where state reduction is a process of
differentiation of pre-existing universes, rather than the actual forking
of a single universe into multiple daughter universes. But neither
approach is inherently superior to the other.

Even in your model, where all (future) "branches" are already occupied,
many branches are completely identical prior to differentiation. It is
reasonable to consider your "identity" or "consciousness" as being common
to all of these branches. You are not living in just one of them,
you span all of the identical ones.

> Your belief that you will magically leap into the body of this
> winner, at the same date and time as you die, is absurd. You guys take
> one true fact - that the effective probability of finding yourself to be
> that winning guy, given that you find the date and time to be such and
> such, and that your name is such and such, etc. - is nearly one. But you
> don't understand what it means and you sure as hell don't use it
> correctly, and the result is this monstrous quantum cult of death.

With the concept of identity I described, or the concept of a universe
which branches at the time of state function collapse, there is no leap
involved. It is a continuous process.

Hal
Received on Sat Jun 19 1999 - 12:27:08 PDT