RE: many worlds theory of immortality

From: Hal Finney <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 18:42:30 -0700 (PDT)

>The usual approach is that a system which is algorithmically
>compressible is defined as random. A rule-based universe has
>a short program that determines its evolution, or creates its
>state. A random universe has no program much smaller than
>itself which can encode its information.
>
>Hal Finney

Jonathan Colvin replies:
> I think you meant "algorithmically *in*compressible".

Yes, I did.

> The relevance was, I was thinking that those universes where we become
> immortal under MWI are not the conventional rule-based universes such as we
> appear to live in, but a different class of stochastic random ones (which
> require very unlikely strings of random coincidences to instantiate). The
> majority of such universes, being essentially random, are probably not very
> pleasant places to live.

You could look at it from the point of view of observer-moments. Among
all observer-moments which remember your present situation and which also
remember very long lifetimes, which ones have the greatest measure?
It should be those which have the simplest explanations possible.
As time goes on, the explanations will presumably have to be more and more
complex, but it doesn't necessarily have to be extreme. It could just be,
"great scientist invents immortality in the year 2006". Then, next year,
it will be "great scientist invents immortality in the year 2007", etc.

Once you're lying on your death bed and each breath could be your last,
it starts to get a little more difficult. Maybe it will be like those
movies where the condemned man is in the death chamber and they are about
to throw the switch, as the lawyer rushes to the prison with news from
the governor of a last-minute pardon. You'll be taking your last breath,
and someone will rush in with a miraculous cure that was just discovered,
or some such.

Hal Finney
Received on Mon May 09 2005 - 21:44:53 PDT