Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

From: russell standish <lists.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:19:38 +1100

On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 04:10:15PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Of course keyboard-dragon types of transformations are utterly NOT
> verifiable, even in the ironical first person way of quantum or comp
> suicide. If you decide to kill yourself until your keyboard transforms
> itself into a firing dragon, a "simple" evaluation of the
> probabilities will show that you have 99,9999... % of chance of
> surviving only with a brain making you believing that such a
> transformation has occurred, when it has not. It is the general
> practical weakness of comp or quantum suicide: if you ask for
> something *near-impossible", suicide will send you in dreamland (1
> person view), and probably in a asylum (3 person view).
>

Excellent point!

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Received on Thu Mar 05 2009 - 16:18:59 PST