Saibal Mitra wrote:
>If you accept that you can experience having been unconscious, then you
>also
>have to accept that you can survive with memory loss in any branch.
Yes, you can survive with memory loss in any branch. Whether it is *you*
that survives is another question, a problem in the philosophy of personal
identity. The MWI implies that in the next moment, there will be conscious
entities with every variation on your current mental state; some of them
remember everything you now remember, some remember only part of what you
now remember, and some remember nothing of what you now remember. I think it
is a mistake to assume that there is some absolute, "real" version or
versions of you. Even if you arbitrarily define the "real" you as being a
particular animal, you are faced with grave problems, because over a long
enough period, every atom and every memory of that animal may change. I have
been forced to conclude that there is no true persistence of identity over
time, but only a series of individual observer moments which are related
only by degree of similarity to each other.
>This means that if you are faced with almost certain death, it is more
>likely that you will find yourself alive in a completely different sector
>of
>the multiverse than experiencing a miracle that saves your life.
I suppose this has to be true, if you are facing "almost certain death". I
might have missed something, if this is in dispute.
--Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Mon May 02 2005 - 21:37:41 PDT