I think we agree on the observer moment. One should formulate questions in
terms of observer moments and then there are no problems (in principle).
Saibal
>
>
>
> ----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
> Van: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
> Aan: <smitra.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
> Verzonden: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 03:47 PM
> Onderwerp: Re: Many worlds theory of immortality
>
>
> > 2 weeks ago Saibal Mitra wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think that the MW immortality is correct at all! In a certain
> > >sense
> > >we are
> > > immortal, because the enseble of all possible worlds is a fixed
static
> > >entity. So,
> > > you ''always'' find yourselve alive in one state or another. However,
> you
> > >won't
> > > experience youself evolving in the infinite far future.
> > >
> > >
> > > If you encounter a ''branching'' in which one of the possibilities is
> > >death, that
> > > branch cannot be said to be nonexistent relative to you. Quantum
> > >mechanics
> > >doesn't
> > > imply that you can never become unconscious, otherwise you could
never
> > >fall
> > >asleep!
> > >
> > >
> > > Of course, you can never experience being unconscious. So, what to do
> > >with
> > >the branch
> > > leading to (almost) certain death? The more information your brain
> > >contains, the smaller the set of branches is in which you are alive
(and
> > >consistent with your experiences stored in your brain). The set of all
> > >branches in which you could be alive doesn't contain any information at
> > >all.
> > >Since death involves complete
> > > memory loss, the branch leading to death should be replaced by the
> > >complete
> > >set of all possibilities.
> >
> > ...and despite reading the last paragraph several times slowly, I'm
afraid
> I
> > don't understand it. Are you saying there may never be a "next moment"
at
> > the point where you are facing near-certain death? It seems to me that
all
> > that is required is an observer moment in which (a) you believe that you
> are
> > you, however this may be defined (it's problematic even in "normal" life
> > what constitutes continuity of identity), and (b) you remember facing
the
> > said episode of near-certain death (ncd), and it will seem to you that
you
> > have miraculously escaped, even if there is no actual physical
connection
> > between the pre-ncd and the post-ncd observer moment. Or, another way to
> > escape is as you have suggested in a more recent post, that there is an
> > observer moment somewhere in the multiverse in which the ncd episode has
> > been somehow deleted from your memory. Perhaps the latter is more
likely,
> in
> > which case you can look forward to never, or extremely rarely, facing
ncd
> in
> > your life.
> >
> > It all gets very muddled. If we try to ruthlessly dispense with every
> > derivative, ill-defined, superfluous concept and assumption in an effort
> to
> > simplify the discussion, the one thing we are left with is the
individual
> > observer-moments. We then try to sort these observer-moments into sets
> which
> > constitute lives, identities, birth, death, amnesia, mind duplication,
> mind
> > melding, multiple world branchings, and essentially every possible
> variation
> > on these and other themes. No wonder it's confusing! And who is to judge
> > where a particular individual's identity/life/body/memory begins and
ends
> > when even the most detailed, passed by committee of philosophers set of
> > rules fails, as it inevitably will?
> >
> > The radical solution is to accept that only the observer-moments are
real,
> > and how we sort them then is seen for what it is: essentially arbitrary,
a
> > matter of convention. You can dismiss the question of immortality,
quantum
> > or otherwise, by observing that the only non-problematic definition of
an
> > individual is identification with a single observer-moment, so that no
> > individual can ever "really" live for longer than a moment. Certainly,
> this
> > goes against intuition, because I feel that I was alive a few minutes
ago
> as
> > well as ten years ago, but *of course* I feel that; this is simply
> reporting
> > on my current thought processes, like saying I feel hungry or tired, and
> > beyond this cannot be taken as a falsifiable statement about the state
of
> > affairs in the real world unless recourse is taken to some arbitrary
> > definition of personal identity, such as would satisfy a court, for
> example.
> >
> > Let me put it a different way. Situation (a) life as usual: I die every
> > moment and a peson is reborn every moment complete with (most) memories
> and
> > other attributes of the individual who has just died. Situation (b) I am
> > killed instantly, painlessly, with an axe every moment, and a person is
> > reconstituted the next moment complete with (most) memories and other
> > attributes of the individual who has just died, such that he experiences
> no
> > discontinuity. Aside from the blood and mess in (b), is there a
> difference?
> > Should I worry more about (b) than (a)? This is of course a commonplace
> > thought experiment on this list, but I draw from it a slightly different
> > conclusion: we all die all the time; death doesn't really matter,
> otherwise
> > we should all be in a constant panic.
> >
> > --Stathis Papaioannou
> >
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>
Received on Thu May 05 2005 - 10:16:52 PDT