Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>>Stathis Papaioannou writes:
>> > QM or QTI do not imply
>> > that you can never lose consciousness. The idea is that you can never
>> > *experience* loss of consciousness. You can fall asleep, but when you
>>wake
>> > up, you don't remember being asleep. If you never wake up - i.e. if you
>>die
>> > in your sleep - then you never experience that particular branch of the
>>MW.
>> > In other words, you can only experience those worlds where the loss of
>> > consciousness is temporary.
>>
>>How about impairment of consciousness? Can you experience that? Can you
>>experience going crazy, or having a reduced level of consciousness where
>>you are drugged or barely alive? That's how death is for most people,
>>it's not like flicking off a light. Will Quantum Immortality protect you
>>from spending an eternity in a near-coma? Exactly how much consciousness
>>does it guarantee you?
>>
>>Hal Finney
>>
>Alas, you are right. Immortality is not all fun and games, and in some
>worlds you may experience a drawn out fizzling out, reduced to the
>consciousness of an infant, then a fish, then an amoeba. I believe Max
>Tegmark aknowledged this in a commentary on his original paper. If you're
>really unlucky, you will experience eternal torment in the flames of hell.
>And unlike the Christian Hell, you don't actually have to do something
>wrong to end up in QTI hell: it all depends on the fall of the cosmic dice.
>
>One question which comes up is, when do you stop being you? I suppose this
>is an answer to your "how much consciousness is guaranteed" question: when
>you lose enough consciousness that you forget who you are, that is the
>cutoff where you can really be said to have lost consciousness.
I think that's too handwavey--I think that to really have a satisfying
answer to this question, you need some kind of formal theory of
consciousness that answers questions like, "If I am currently experiencing
observer-moment A, what is the probability that my next experience will of
observer-moment B vs. observer-moment C"? I think the answer should depend
both on some sort of measure of the "similarity" of A and B vs. A and C (to
deal with the 'when do you stop being you' question), and also on some
notion of the absolute probability of B vs. C (for example, if B and C are
both equally 'similar' to your current experience A, but B is experiencing
some kind of thermodynamic miracle while C is experiencing business as
usual, then C would be more likely). I elaborated on these ideas in my posts
in the "Request for a glossary of acronyms" thread at
http://tinyurl.com/5265d
Jesse
Received on Thu Apr 14 2005 - 04:25:03 PDT