Re: FIN too

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat Sep 8 08:08:45 2001

Fred Chen wrote:

>Hal, Charles, I think this is an unavoidable part of the QTI or FIN debate.
>It seems that with QTI, you could only be entering white rabbit
>(magical-type) universes, not continue in probable ones.
>
>But in general I have a more fundamental objection (to quantum
> immortality).
>In QM, not all quantum states are possible for a given situation. For
>example, an electron orbiting a proton can only occupy certain energy
>states, not arbitrary ones. The energy states in between are forbidden; an
>electron cannot be measured and found to be in one of these forbidden
>states. So I do not see why immortality is allowed by QM from our universe
>if physical mechanisms generally ban it. Survival seems to me (and I guess
>most people) a forbidden state in the situations where death is certain.


But all the QTI problem (or the COMP I problem) is there. QM shows
that even by taking account the forbidden states, from the point of view
of the observer there are enough histories making hard to define a
situation where death is certain. It is plausible that comp immortality
makes that death entails a deviation from normality, but you always find
yourself in the most "near" possible world such that you survive.
Not really a happy thought *a priori*, but how to escape it?
Now comp is rich enough for allowing the consistency of jump between
type of normal world, amnesia bactracking, etc. The mortality question
is harder with comp than with QM, and with QM the solution would be
provided the SE applied to the agonising: just intractable.
All the problem comes from the fact that although it is easy to
imagine situation where 3-death is very probable, it is not easy
at all to define a situation where 1-death is certain. Comp entails
big ignorance here.

Bruno
Received on Sat Sep 08 2001 - 08:08:45 PDT