Johnathan Corgan wrote:
> David Nyman wrote:
>
> [re: QTI]
>
>>This has obvious
>>implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the
>>more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of
>>outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that
>>from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly
>>in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable
>>situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the
>>9/11 re-runs on TV last night.
>
>
> It's the cul-de-sac situations that interest me. Are there truly any?
> Are there moments of consciousness which have no logically possible
> continuation (while remaining conscious?)
>
> It seems the canonical example is surviving a nearby nuclear detonation.
> One logical possibility is that all your constituent particles
> quantum-tunnel away from the blast in time.
>
> This would be of extremely low measure in absolute terms, but what about
> the proportion of continuations that contain you as a conscious entity?
>
> This also touches on a recent thread about "how being of low measure
> feels." If QTI is true, and I'm subject to a nuclear detonation, does it
> matter if my possible continuations are of such a low relative measure?
> Once I'm "in" them, would I feel any different and should I care?
>
> These questions may reduce to something like, "Is there a lower limit to
> the amplitude of the SWE?"
>
> If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to
> its absolute value?
I think it is not and there is a lower limit below which cross terms in the density
matrix must be strictly (not just FAPP) zero. The Planck scale provides a lower
bound on fundamental physical values. So it makes sense to me that treating
probability measures as a continuum is no more than a convenient approximation. But
I have no idea how to make that precise and testable.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Tue Sep 12 2006 - 15:37:25 PDT