It's true that if every entity assumes it is common, more entities overall are going to be correct. However, what is the relevance of this to first person experience? The ASSA has been used on this list as an argument against quantum immortality, on the grounds that since the measure of versions of you under 100 in the multiverse will be much greater than the measure of versions over 1000, you are unlikely to make it to 1000. But this is simply looking at the situation from the third person perspective, and QTI explicitly aknowledges that you are unlikely to live forever from someone else's point of view. The point is, the ASSA has no effect on your first person experience. You can expect to experience your 33rd, 50th and 1000th year with absolute certainty as long as there is a single copy of you extant, and they will subjectively last exactly one year regardless of the number of copies. Stathis PapaioannouJason Resch writes:On 1/27/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
According to the RSSA, *nothing* happens from your POV when you turn 50. Given that you are already alive, you are going to experience the moments of your life in order and each one will last the same amount of time, however
many copies of you are extant. The significance of measure is that if in the next moment there will be n copies of you who will have experience x and 2n copies which will have experience y, then you will have twice as much chance of
experiencing y as of experiencing x. The value of n cannot make any difference; if it did, then an empirical test would be possible demonstrating your absolute measure at each stage of life.
I don't think ASSA (At least my understanding of it) predicts there would be any noticeable difference to the observer on their 50th birthday. It does not predict for example, that none of the prior or later years are experienced, in fact they certainly are experienced because they exist with a postive measure. What ASSA implies is that simply a statistical argument, which is this: The observer moment you currently experience is more likely a common one than an uncommon one. For example, at 33 this observer could think according to ASSA, I am experiencing this observer moment, therefore I am likely to be a common observer moment. At 33 this would be false, but then statistics are never 100% accurate. Now consider the observer holds on to ASSA and so when he is 50 he still assumes that his currently perceived observer moment is probable. At this time there are zillions of him, and zillions of him are correct. This large number of observer moments that are correct vastly outweigh the number of observer moments that were incorrect, and hence ASSA is a reasonable belief, as it leads to a true conclusion more often than not.
Jason
_________________________________________________________________
Get the new Windows Live Messenger!
http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sat Jan 27 2007 - 22:03:00 PST