Jason Resch writes: > From: jasonresch.domain.name.hidden> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden> Subject: Re: ASSA and Many-Worlds> Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 04:42:48 +0000> > > On Jan 27, 9:02 pm, Stathis Papaioannou > <stathispapaioan....domain.name.hidden.com> 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.Consciousness *seems* to be continuous even if at a fundamental level time or brain processes are discrete. Also, although I agree that there is no necessary connection between observer moments, there *seems* to be a connection, in that almost by definition I won't suddenly find myself turning Chinese in the next moment even though there are 50 times as many Chinese as Australians in the world. If the feeling that I remain the same person from moment to moment is an illusion, then I am interested in how that illusion can be maintained, regardless of the underlying mechanisms of consciousness, time, whether or not there exists a real world, and so on. > 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.Either I'm one of few or one of many. If everyone guesses that they are one of many, more are going to be right than if everyone guesses that they are one of few. Therefore, I should guess that I'm one of many. Is that what you are suggesting? The argument has some appeal assuming we have no other reason to favour guessing that we are one of many or one of few. However, lack of evidence against something does not necessarily mean that thing is likely or even possible. As it happens there is perhaps some evidence for MW from quantum mechanics, but were it not for this, we could easily class MW along with pink elephants as something very unlikely which cannot be rescued by the ASSA.Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sun Jan 28 2007 - 04:28:04 PST