The reason for failure of Jacques' argument is no. 1) from Charles's
list below, which he obviously thought of independently of me. I
originally posted this at
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m583.html, on 10th May
1999. Unfortunately, I couldn't find where the orginal SSA argument
was posted - perhaps this was via some other papers.
The discussion that followed over the following year was quite
interesting at times, and boringly technical at other times. It
clarified a number of technical concepts, in particular what became
known as the ASSA - which seems exactly like point 3) of Charles's
post below: random hoppings of some "soul" between observer
moments. Despite your protestations to the contrary Jacques, which I
never found convincing.
By contrast, "soul hopping" does not happen in the usual formulation
of QTI, although I grant it is a feature of some computational
theories of immortality based on infinite sized universes.
I find it very droll that Jacques attempted to tar his opposition's
theories with the very same brush that tars his own ASSA theory.
The point of this is not to say that QTI is true (for which I retain my
usual degree of scepticism), but simply that the Jacques Mallah SSA
argument simply does not work as a counter argument.
Cheers
Charles Goodwin wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:jackmallah.domain.name.hidden]
> >
> > >From: Russell Standish <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
> > >I suspect you are trying to find ways of making QTI compatible with
> > >Jacques ASSA based argument, when it is clear his argument fails
> > >completely. Not that the argument is unimportant, as the reasons for
> > >the failure are also interesting.
> >
> > What the hell are you babbling about?
>
> I don't know whether he's thinking about my objections to the SSA argument, but mine certainly *appear* to undermine it (at least I
> haven't yet heard a good reason why they don't). Briefly, (1) the SSA argument neglects the fact that even with an infinitely long
> worldline, everyone must pass through every age from 0 upwards, which is precisely what we observe. It also (2) ignores a selection
> effect, namely that only in a thermodynamically low number of universes can a person who is not "QTI-old" expect to communicate with
> someone who *is* (and hence 99.999999999999...% of discussion groups will necessarily be composed of "QTI-young" people). The SSA
> argument also (3) gives the strong impression (though this could *perhaps* be argued away) that it relies on us treating our
> worldlines as though we've just been "dropped" into them at some random point, like Billy Pilgrim; which is, of course, not what
> happens in reality.
>
> Maybe there are some more technical objections to the SSA argument, but these are the simplest and most obvious.
>
> Charles
>
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Received on Tue Sep 11 2001 - 17:54:37 PDT