Indeed. Another illuminating passage is that Everett *did*
compare the observer with an "amoeba with a good
memory", and thus did relate the QM subjective indeterminacy
with the comp first person indeterminacy, ... and then Wheeler
asked him to suppress that passage!!!
That makes it still a bigger mystery for me that Everett did not
see the simpler "comp immortality", and the necessity to derive
QM from number theory ..., and this despite Everett's interest in
computer science, as the paper also illustrates well.
Bruno
At 09:21 22/12/03 -0800, Hal Finney wrote:
>http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/everett/
>
>That is indeed a very thorough and interesting biography. I thought
>this passage was especially telling with regard to the philosophical
>implications of the MWI (from the page on Keith Lynch recollections):
>
> > ... Everett firmly believed that his
> > many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he
> > argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not
> > lead to death - and so on ad infinitum. (Sadly, Everett's daughter Liz,
> > in her later suicide note, said she was going to a parallel universe to
> > be with her father. [149a])
>
>(The footnote is an attribution to a personal letter to the biography's
>author from Glenn Fishbine.)
>
>On the everything-list we have had many discussions of this thesis, which
>we call Quantum Immortality, and the related idea of Quantum Suicide
>similar to that practiced by Lynch's daughter. It is indeed disturbing
>to see that someone has actually practiced Quantum Suicide, especially
>when the particular method used seems unlikely to be successful even
>with the assumption of Quantum Immortality.
>
>Hal Finney
Received on Tue Dec 23 2003 - 07:15:27 PST