ZeroSum wrote: > The Wiki article "Quantum suicide and immortality" (http:// > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality) states: > > "Also, the philosopher David Lewis, in "How Many Lives Has > Schrödinger's Cat?", remarked that in the vast majority of the worlds > in which an immortal observer might find himself (i.e. the subset of > quantum-possible worlds in which the observer does not die), he will > survive, but will be terribly maimed. This is because in each of the > scenarios typically given in thought experiments (nuclear bombing, > Russian roulette, etc.), for every world in which the observer > survives unscathed, there are likely to be far more worlds in which > the observer survives terribly disfigured, badly disabled, and so on.
I think this is just a misinterpretation of the physics. All those scenarios and their effects are essentially classical. In Julian Barbour's metaphor they are all strands in the same branch and are classically indistinguishable. Since the brain is a classical information processor, they all correspond to the same conscious stream. Since classically you are either killed or not, or maimed or not, there is are not huge numbers of worlds in which you are maimed to different degrees that are consciously distinct. Brent --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---