Re: quantum immortality

From: Russell Standish <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 09:48:26 +1000 (EST)

Saibal Mitra wrote:
>
> Yes, you can save the ``conventional´´ quantum immortality theorem by
> extending the definition of a person, but is a person with an astronomical
> amount of data stored in his brain plus all of my memory really me? I would
> say not.
>

If that person remembers being you at an earlier age then I would say
yes - it is the same person. It is following conventional usage. Why
shouldn't the $60million man still be the same person after his
prosthetics operations?

> I would go even further: The person I was when I was 3 years old is dead. He
> died because too much new information was added to his brain.
>

This view would align you with Jacques Mallah and James Higgo with
their "observer moment" view of reality. I have expressed my many
disagreements with this approach in the everything list - its not an
easy position to counter.

> A different version of quantum immortality is more reasonable (meaning that
> it has a much higher probability than the conventional version). The process
> of death necessarily involves the destruction of the brain. The dying person
> thus looses information. At a certain point the information that he is dying
> is lost to the person. At that time the information still present in the
> brain will be exactly identical to the information present in another
> person's brain somewhere else in the multiverse. Let's call him X. There
> will be an infinite number of X's
>
> There is then a high probability that X is not dying, that in fact he is
> almost identical to the original person at a younger age. The dying person
> thus walks away in X's body.
>
> Saibal
>
>

Interesting scenario - but I suspect you would be walking away in
worm's body. Hey perhaps the Bhuddists are right about reincarnation
after all!




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Received on Fri Jun 08 2001 - 16:57:51 PDT

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