I think I can rephrase Kim's suggestion as follows. Rewards usually
reflect risks, people performing death-defying acts tend to be paid
handsomely, young males performing risky acts earn the admiration of
females (the James Dean stereotype), suicide bombers getting to spend
time with heavenly virgins and so on. Therefore, given QTI gives us
some guarantee that we won't experience death, then doesn't this
encourage QTI followers to do risky things?
The trouble with the notion of QTI suggesting we should all do risky things
is much the same as the argument I give against quantum suicide as a
way of winning the lottery in my book. Most of the avenues of survival
from risky actions are in fact at considerable cost to health, social
standing etc. Only if these costs were outweighed by the benefits
accrued by the risky action is it worth doing. In fact the decision
procedure is not all that different to if QTI were not true - if
anything it make risky actions somewhat less favourable, since QTI
guarantees that you experience negative outcomes from some failed
action rather than having death as a way out.
Cheers
On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 11:27:07PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Kim Jones writes:
>
>
> > 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"!
>
--
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Received on Wed Jan 04 2006 - 21:05:52 PST