FW: FIN insanity

From: Charles Goodwin <cgoodwin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 09:37:28 +1200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:smitra.domain.name.hidden]
>
> There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). The most
> reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility
> that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any
> memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility
> that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My
> version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be
> infinite.
>
> Death involves the destruction of your brain. But there are many brains in
> the universe which are almost identical to yours. Jacques says that you
> can't become one of them.
>
> I say:
>
> 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery
> and you recover fully, then you are the same person.
>
> 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours.
>
> 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy.
>
> 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist.
>
> 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents.
>
> Saibal

Ok, that's a similar argument to the one Frank Tipler used in 'The physics of immortality' (except that he allowed a simulation of a
brain to have continuous consciousness with the original physical brain). Your version is more reasonable that Tiplers, imo, because
it only assumes that 2 objects in the same quantum state *are* the same object (rather than an object and its simulation). There
will almost certainly be objects in the same quantum state if the universe is infinite OR the MWI is correct, AND space-time really
is quantised, AND quantum-identical objects really *are* the same object.

This seems like a reasonable theory on the face of it. Hard to prove, though, unless you've had personal experience of living a
*very* long time....

Charles
Received on Mon Sep 03 2001 - 14:34:55 PDT