Re: ASSA and Many-Worlds

From: Jason <jasonresch.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 04:42:48 -0000

On Jan 27, 9:02 pm, Stathis Papaioannou
<stathispapaioan....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 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 Papaioannou

I agree that regardless of the creation or destruction of other
copies, there is no reason for there ever to be any effect on first
person experience, that means no funny feelings, no loss of
consciousness, etc.

RSSA Proponents:
Many-worlds implies there are always branched histories where an
observer survives to experience another observer-moment.

ASSA Proponents:
Observer-moments that find themselves as extremely and abnormally long-
lived observers should be exceedingly rare.

I fail to see how the above descriptions are mutually exclusive. I
would say if one finds themself experiencing an observer moment of a
1,000 year old human they should consider such an experience to be
extremely rare. I believe he point of dispute is centered on the
nature of consciousness, I think some RSSA proponents are tied to the
idea that consciousness is continuous, or otherwise tied to each
observer. However, if consciousness can be simulated by a digital
machine, then there must be discrete time intervals representing each
state, and if time is discrete, how can consciousness be continuous?
Some ASSA proponents seem to believe that consciousness is like taking
random samples among all observer moments, with the exceedingly rare
observer moments never experiencing consciousness. This too is an
error in my opinion.

I see reality's first person as the set of all observer moments.
Every experience that can exist does, and by definition is
experienced. The fact that some of these experiences exist in greater
numbers than others has no consequence on any of the individual
subjective experiences, but it does mean that most observer-moments
can use their existance to make reasonable estimates regarding what
types of observer moments are likely to be most probable. ASSA might
be applicable in determing properties of universes that observers are
likely to find themselves in. The difficulty in this regard is
separating what properties of this universe are here due to necessary
anthropic reasons, and what properties of this universe are here only
because they increase the measure of its inhabitant observer moments.

The reason I started this thread was to discuss the possibility that
Many-Worlds is a property of this universe for purely ASSA reasons, I
see no reason for it to exist for any anthropic reasons, but due to
the exponential growth in observer moments defined by many-world
universes, it makes great sense.

Jason


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Received on Sat Jan 27 2007 - 23:43:01 PST

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