On 04/01/2006, at 12:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> But it isn't possible to "die young" if QTI is true!
But there exists nonetheless a death event, even though it does not
lead to a cessation of consciousness and presumably life. Death
represents the branching of the histories - it must count for at
least that. As Bruno says, you cannot have a 1^ point of view on it
so saying someone died is merely the statement that you have lost
them irrevocably
> Every time you come to a point where you might die, something will
> happen to save you. When you get really old, perhaps some anti-
> ageing treatment, or mind uploading is introduced just in time. Of
> course, there is no guarantee that you will continue living in full
> physical and mental vigour: you might just slowly deteriorate over
> time so that you end up spending centuries in a near-vegetative state.
Sounds like the most fun you can have ;) But people who have already
"died" (of natural causes) have *only* ever experienced near-
vegetative conditions - in this universe surely, since we have not
yet Nick Bostrom-ed ourselves into posthumans capable of mind-
uploading. Unless posthumans capable of time travel who *have*
invented Jupiter brains etc. can pluck us into their era
Maybe it happens all the time!
> The question then arises, how close to a vegetable do you have to
> be before you can be pronounced dead for the purposes of QTI?
How close to a vegetable would you want to be and still be alive???
If true, it might therefore be a curse, a Hell that we all suffer
eventually. Maybe the Church got it right after all in the middle
ages......only joking! Hell was cancelled by the church a while back.
Funny thing is - heaven's still there. I thought you couldn't have
the one without the other...but I digress
>
> The problem of gradually fading away can be illustrated by another
> example. Suppose your body is destructively scanned and then
> reconstituted in two separate locations, a1 and a2.
Happened to me on New Years Eve after several drinks
> At a1, the reconstitution goes as intended, but at a2 something
> goes wrong and you are reconstituted in a brain dead state. I think
> we can say in this case that you can expect to find yourself alive
> at a1 with 100% certainty a moment after you undergo the scanning.
"Yes Doctor" :)
> Next, suppose that after the destructive scanning your body is
> reconstituted in 10 different locations, b1 to b10. As before, at
> b1 the reconstitution is perfect and at b10 something goes wrong
> and you are reconstituted in a brain dead state. At locations b2 to
> b9, however, due to varying degrees of malfunction in the
> machinery, you are reconstituted with varying degrees of dementia:
> at b2 you are just a little bit more vague than usual, at b9 you
> are still alive but have lost all your memories and sense of
> identity, and in between are several variations with partial
> dementia. The question now is, when you undergo the scanning
> process, should you have an equal expectation of ending up at each
> of the locations b1 to b10? If you exclude b10 because you are dead
> there, should you not also exclude b9, where you are no longer a
> sentient being, let alone a particular sentient being? And does it
> follow from these considerations that you are are somehow more
> likely to find yourself at b2 than b8, for example?
>
OK - so transferring this set of increasingly demented versions of
me to a multiverse framework where they are all existing in parallel,
you are saying that - as I age - I can expect a gradual fadeout to a
near-vegetative twilight state due to the odds favoring my ending up
in the highest achievable state of normality each time? This to me
highlights my question then - wouldn't I be better off doing a James
Dean or an Elvis; living fast, "dying" young and keeping up my
probability measure of ending up in universes where I am similarly
constituted with all my faculties intact? Like this I would expect to
take advantage of the system and be a Cassanova or a Lothario for
eternity. That's what I call "continuity"!
Not entirely tongue-in-cheek I hope
Kim Jones
>
>> From: Kim Jones <kimjones.domain.name.hidden>
>> To: Everything List <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
>> Subject: Continuity Issue
>> Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 09:00:35 +1100
>>
>> In QTI is there any difference between death by normal process of
>> ageing and death by all other means? Assuming that consciousness
>> continues in a branch somewhere no matter what the manner of
>> death, what kind of (logical?) continuation could one expect
>> given that the body's usefulness in the current branch has been
>> used up in the case of death by normal age-related processes?
>>
>> Doesn't QTI suggest that we should all try to die young?
>>
>> Yours in life and death
>>
>> Kim Jones
>>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get FOXTEL this Summer – New low install price of only $29.95
> http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fadsfac%2Enet%2Flink%
> 2Easp%3Fcc%3DFXT018%2E19119%2E0%26clk%3D1%26creativeID%
> 3D28172&_t=752582449&_m=EXT
Received on Wed Jan 04 2006 - 09:04:17 PST