Re: Extra Terrestrials

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 23:08:07 -0700

Of course from the survivors perspective his observer moments continue to form
a time series and so in that sense his 'measure' appears constant. But this
seems to be a mere tautology - A survivor perceives himself as surviving. That
doesn't change the fact that his sequence of observer moments has an end or
that it has a measure which is constant over all space-time of his universe. I
guess I still don't see a problem here - unless it is the peculiarity that 'his
universe' is defined retrospectively from his death. I don't see that the
large number of other branches which have split from 'his universe' have any
bearing on anything.

Also, I see no reason to believe there are infinitely
many - though of course the number must be extremely large. If one postulates
a computational model of the multiverse, as is often done these discussions,
then the fact that only countably many numbers are computable would seem to
imply only a finite number of branches within a finite time.

Brent Meeker

On 12-Aug-00, GSLevy.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> In a message dated 08/12/2000 9:37:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> meekerdb.domain.name.hidden writes:
>
>> As to the question or whether measure increases or remains constant at
> death -
>>
>> I assume here one means the measure of a particular person (the one who
> died)
>> .
>> The idea of decrease already assumes a time order. From a 4-dimensional
>> space-time viewpoint the person's measure is constant. Along the
> world-line
>> of
>> the person (following any particular branch) there is the death of that
>> person;
>> so if you refer to measures on space-like hypersurfaces later than that
>> death,
>> the persons measure must be zero. This seems so straightforward that I
>> wonder
>> if I have mistaken your meaning?
>
> I think this is Jacques' approach. It is an absolutist point of view which
> assumes an external observer looking at the death of a person and observing
> the "trimming" of his branches.
>
> The following is the relativistic approach which requires a first person
> perspective: what would the person who "dies" sees along the "few" branches
> where he is still alive. Does he see a decrease in his own measure (as the
> independent observer sees) or does the universe appear to him to be more or
> less always the same? My contention is that branches are infinitally
> divisible, and no matter how many times he has died, there will still be an
> infinity of branches still available to him. FROM THE SURVIVOR'S PERSPECTIVE,
> the world appears the same. If he had an instrument to measure "measure" he
> would not detect any difference. In fact the infinity in the number of
> branches makes the design of such an instrument, a physical impossibility.
>
> BTW, in Astronomy, the constancy of the universe with position and
> orientation is called the Cosmological Principle. I am proposing to extend
> this principle to the MW.
>
> We have all in fact died many times already, except that we are not aware of
> it. So, dying a few more times should not change things much anyways.
>
> George Levy
>
Regards
Received on Sat Aug 12 2000 - 23:14:31 PDT