RE: many worlds theory of immortality

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 12:13:12 -0000

>-----Original Message-----
>From: John Collins [mailto:johnhcollins.domain.name.hidden]
>Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 10:22 AM
>To: Quentin Anciaux; everything-list.domain.name.hidden
>Subject: Re: many worlds theory of immortality
>
>
>
>Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>"
>>Le Mardi 10 Mai 2005 19:13, "Hal Finney" a écrit :
>>> And in terms of your question, I would not act as though I expected to
>> >be guaranteed a very long life span, because the measure of that universe
>> >is so low compared to others where I don't survive.
>>>
>> >Hal Finney
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>but by definition of what being alive means (or being conscious), which is
>to
>>experience observer moments, even if the difference of the measure where
>you
>>have a long life compared to where you don't survive is enormous, you can
>>only experience world where you are alive... And to continue, I find it
>very
>>difficult to imagine what could mean being unconscious forever (what you
>>suggest to be likely).
>
>>Quentin Anciaux
>"
>..You are working from the assumtion that each person has some sort of
>transcendental identity that experiences these observer moments, but I would
>think it more likely that these would be included in the observer moment,
>with memories being distinguished from "instantaneous" thoughts just by
>their being repeated several (or even millions of) times. As an
>illustration, try and remember what you had for dinner on your fifth
>birthday. Whether you remember or not, tou only know if you remember when
>you try to recall it, so you can't really pretend the piece of information
>is continuously present.

I agree there is reason to postulate a transcedent observer; I'm content with a
physical observer. That's one of the things that bothers me about "observer
moments", but I think it's just English grammar that pushes us to have a
subject. If you're going to reconstruct physics from discrete subjective
experiences you need to be able to collect and order experiences according from
viewpoint - which corresponds to an "observer" - and according to
intersubjective agreement among observers - which corresponds to the physical
world.

But just because the subjective observer is a construct, doesn't justify the
pejorative "pretend". I think I have considerable evidence for information,
such as what I ate for breakfast, being persistently encoded in my brain. No
only the fact that I can recall such information, but also that my ability to
do so diminishes with time and may be lost due to disease or injury.

Brent Meeker
Received on Wed May 11 2005 - 05:13:12 PDT