Hal,
I believe that many "miraculous circumstances" have already occurred. This
comes about because of Tegmark's hypothesis that space is infinite and that
any universe that is mathematically describable must exist. (I particularly
love the part where he computes the distance to a universe identical to this
one.)
1) How did life originate if not through a miraculous circumstance? In
other branches of the multiverse, perhaps most of them, there is no life.
2) An article at
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/may28/humans-528.html
suggests that all of earth's present human inhabitants originated from about
2,000 breeders, about 70,000 years ago. Humans were then very close to
extinction. In many other branches of the multiverse extinction did, in
fact, occur.
3) Would humans have survived if the "cold war" had erupted into a nuclear
exchange? In other branches of the multiverse, humans did self-destruct
(and may do so in this one).
4) In my personal history, there are several "close calls" where I could
easily have been killed. In some branches of the multiverse I was, in fact,
killed. In this branch I survive.
Norman Samish
----- Original Message -----
From: ""Hal Finney"" <hal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: objections to QTI
Let me pose the puzzle like this, which is a form we have discussed
before:
Suppose you found yourself extremely old, due to a near-miraculous set
of circumstances that had kept you alive. Time after time when you were
about to die of old age or some other cause, something happened and you
were able to continue living. Now you are 1000 years old in a world
where no one else lives past 120. (We will ignore medical progress for
the purposes of this thought experiment.)
Now, one of the predictions of QTI is that in fact you will experience
much this state, eventually. But the question is this: given that you
find yourself in this circumstances, is this fact *evidence* for the
truth of the QTI? In other words, should people who find themselves
extremely old through miraculous circumstances take it as more likely
that the QTI is true?
Hal Finney
Received on Mon May 30 2005 - 16:20:36 PDT