There are many ways to escape from this scenario. If you are Tookie, you
will find yourself shunted into increasingly less likely situations: not
being caught in the first place; being caught but not being found guilty;
being sentenced to death but getting off on appeal; being pardoned by the
Governer at the last moment; finding that you are one of the 1/billion
people who have a natural resistance to the lethal agent. If that all falls
through, you might find that your arrest and execution was all part of a
dream, or that you were actually executed but your head was preserved and
you were resurrected as a computer upload in the future, or you were
resurrected as a result of brute force emulation of every possible human
mind in the very far future. These latter possibilities may be more likely
than quantum tunneling to a tropical island, but in the final analysis,
however unlikely the escape route may be, if its probability is non-zero,
then it *has* to happen, doesn't it?
Stathis Papaioannou
Jonathan Corgan wrote:
>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?
>
>-Johnathan
>
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Received on Fri Dec 16 2005 - 00:47:12 PST