Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow

From: Saibal Mitra <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 03:04:23 +0100

----- Original Message -----
From: "Johnathan Corgan" <jcorgan.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow


> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> > In the multiverse, only other people end up in dead ends.
>
> Kind of makes you wonder what Tookie is doing right now. To us, he died
> as a result of lethal injection.
>
> What sort of successor observer-moments can follow a thing like that?
>
> Better question--what is the most likely type of 1st-person
> observer-moment that would follow experiencing lethal injection?
>
> Sure, there is an infinitesimal probability that all his constituent
> particles quantum-tunneled to a Pacific island paradise and right now
> somewhere in the multiverse he's enjoying a drink with an umbrella in
> it, thanking the fine State of California for his new life.
>
> More likely, but still infinitesimally small, is the probability that
> only the molecules of toxin in the injection syringe quantum-tunneled
> away and right now there are execution officials puzzling over whether
> to pardon him after this "act-of-God" miraculous reprieve from death.
>
> But seriously, when the overwhelmingly vast majority of successor
> moments to an instant in time are all 3rd-person dead-ends, what would
> would be an example of a high-expectation 1st-person successor
> observer-moment from the tiny sliver of physically possible (but
> extremely unlikely) ones left?
>
> Is there in fact always one left, no matter how unlikely?
>
>

To me it seems that the notion of ''successor'' has to break down at cases
where the observer can die. The Tookies that are the most similar to the
Tookie who got executed are the ones who got clemency. There is no objective
reason why these Tookies should be excluded as ''successors''. They miss the
part of their memories about things that happened after clemency was denied.
Instead of those memories they have other memories. We forget things all the
time. Sometimes we remember things that didn't really happen. So, we allow
for information loss anyway. My point is then that we should forget about
all of the information contained in the OM and just sample from the entire
set of OMs.

The notion of a ''successor'' is not a fundamental notion at all. You can
define it any way you like. It will not lead to any conflict with any
experiments you can think of.
Received on Wed Dec 14 2005 - 21:06:29 PST