Re: Russell's book

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 17:37:01 -0700

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Periklis Akritidis writes:
>
>
>>Why would you care about the opinion of those observers left forever
>>behind...
>>
>>
>>>from the possibility that all this MWI stuff is just wrong, of course). Even in my scheme where
>>>there is just a possibility of death some calculations I have done suggest that if you could
>>>demonstrate that your success rate after many bets was better than chance to a statistically
>>>significant extent, your chance of dying would also have to be statistically significant. It's
>>>as if the multiverse is conspiring against us to prevent us from proving its existence!
>>
>>No, it should be easy to make yourself experience a universe in which
>>you have convinced others using the ability to solve any number of very
>>difficult problems in case the machine worked, or just by being 2000
>>years old. But after you do manage to convince everybody, you would
>>shortly find yourself in a very lonely universe, so I guess that even
>>if you could prove QTI it would be in your best interest to keep it a
>>secret.
>
>
> QTI predicts that you will survive from a 1st person POV only. If there is a 2000 y.o. man in the
> world discovered today that would therefore not be evidence for the theory: it is no more likely
> to happen if QTI is true than if it is false, from a 3rd person POV.
>
> There is one situation in which you could prove it to other people, by linking them to your own
> fate so that they see things from a similar 1st person POV. This is likely to happen practically if
> QTI is true even if you don't deliberately set it up that way. Your survival to extreme old ageis much
> more likely to happen because an anti-ageing technology mind uploading, for example, are discovered
> in your lifeltime than as a result of some biological fluke.

Isn't it even more likely to be due to their discovery in previous generations. Is
there an AP explanation for why we don't see very old people now.

>Perhaps you are already reaping the benefits
> of this effect, as life expectancies are greater now than they used to be in previous centuries.

Not really. Medicine, sanitation, and security have greatly increased life
expectancy at birth, but they haven't done very much for extending the maximum age.
In the meantime a lot of people have (apparently) died.

> Perhaps the entire history of the universe, with evolution of life on Earth, culminating in your birth, is
> just an incredibly unlikely coincidence selected out by your consciousness so that you can continue
> living. QTI can thus be seen as a restatement of the Anthropic Principle.

Brent Meeker
"What doesn't kill me only postpones the inevitable."
        --- Nietzsche's older brother

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sun Sep 17 2006 - 20:38:00 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:12 PST