RE: many worlds theory of immortality

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:14:49 -0400

Nick Prince wrote:

>My apologies to the group for bringing up questions which may have
>been covererd before but I cannot find an answer to the following
>query and I am new to the group.
>
>I have a question to put to anyone who has some ideas as follows:
>
>If the MW immortality is correct then would we not only be immortal but
>also very alone in the end. We know that we observe others die so
>since we always find ourselves in a branch of the multiverse where we
>live on - the conclusion seems inescapable
>
>Can anyone figure a way out of such inevitable eternal loneliness
>because I rather like to chat to my freinds!!

I'd say that if you look at the subset of all worlds where you live to some
very advanced age--say, 10,000--then in the vast majority of these worlds,
you lived this long because of some technological advance rather than due to
a ridiculously improbable-seeming string of luck. And in any world where
technological advances allow you to live so long, living this long will
probably be relatively common among the population in general. I think the
ultimate technological means for immortality would probably be "mind
uploading", where your physical brain is mapped out in detail and simulated
on a computer...uploads could make lots of backups/copies of themselves,
spread throughout the entire civilization's network of computing devices, in
which case the only type of disaster capable of destroying all copies of you
(or any of your uploaded friends) would probably be one that was large
enough to destroy civilization in general (and at some point the network of
computing devices constituting 'civilization' could end up being spread
throughout space instead of confined to one planet, or even one solar
system). Of course you would only experience being one copy at a time, but
in this case "quantum immortality" would say that you would always find
yourself being one of the copies whose "lineage" lasts into the arbitrarily
distant future (ie at any point in the future there are at least some copies
whose past include your present moment of experience). If Moore's Law
continues, it may not be too many more decades before the first uploads can
be created, although obviously computing power isn't the only barrier...if
not, there's always cryonics...

Jesse
Received on Wed Apr 13 2005 - 22:18:30 PDT