Re: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:07:01 -0400

Hal wrote:
>I actually think this is a philosphically defensible position. Why should
>one OM care about another, merely because they happen to be linked by
>a body? There's no a priori reason why an OM should sacrifice, it doesn't
>get any benefit by doing so.
>But I'll tell you why we don't work this way, and why our current OMs
>are willing to sacrifice for the future. It's because of evolution.

Then Staphis wrote:
> This is *exactly* the way it is! Each moment is ephemeral; once the next moment comes along, the previous one could not be any more thoroughly dead and gone from the universe if it had sat on top of a detonating nuclear bomb.... There is nothing logically inconsistent in a being who does just live for the present moment, as Hal suggests. The problem, of course, is that evolution has long ago weeded out these unfortunate beings, so they no longer live amongst us.
 



 
Again, I'll just ask a simple question to try to understand this, bit by bit.
What about the "OMs" in the past? I don't think we even have to appeal to evolution to explain why we think planning/working for the future is worth it. If it were not for the sacrificial planning and working of the OMs of the past, we would not be where we are today. It's simply a matter of what has worked in the past should work in the present and future. Or have you abandoned so much of the scientific method, and even simply explanation and prediction, that this is no longer logical to you? What happened to the impression of continuous consciousness? A nuclear bomb going off every second and continuous consciousness don't seem to go together, in my impression.
 
Tom Caylor
 
Received on Tue Jun 14 2005 - 12:11:34 PDT