Stathis Papaioannou writes:
> On 20/09/2007, "Hal Finney" <hal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > The lifetime formulation also captures the intuition many people have
> > that consciousness should not "jump around" as observer moments are
> > created in the various simulations and scenarios we imagine in our
> > thought experiments. That was the conclusion I reached in the posting
> > referenced above, that teleportation might in some sense "not work"
> > even though someone walks out of the machine thousands of miles away
> > who remembers walking into it. The measure of such a lifetime would be
> > substantially less than that of a similar person who never teleports.
>
> I have great conceptual difficulty with this idea. It seems to allow
> that I could have died five minutes ago even though I still feel that
> I am alive now. (This is OK with me because I think the best way to
> look at ordinary life is as a series of transiently existing OM's
> which create an illusion of a self persisting through time, but I
> don't think this is what you were referring to.)
You will probably agree that there are some branches of the multiverse
where you did indeed die five minutes ago, and perhaps people are
standing around staring in shock at your dead body. And supposing that
you had just had a narrow escape from a perilous situation, you might
even consider that those branches where you died are of greater measure
than those where you survived. That's basically all my analysis says,
as far as normal life. The main novelty is what it has to say about
exotic thought experiments like teleportation and resurrection.
Hal Finney
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Received on Thu Sep 20 2007 - 12:20:01 PDT