On Jan 13, 6:21 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > ... > > The ASSA/RSSA distinction on this list came, as I understand it, from > > debate on the validity of the idea of "quantum immortality". This is > > the theory that in a multiverse you can never die, because at every > > juncture where you could die there is always a version of you that > > continues living. The ASSA proponents say that even though there are > > thousand year old versions of you in the multiverse they are of very > > low measure and you are therefore very unlikely to find yourself one > > of them, as unlikely as you are to end up living to a thousand through > > pure good luck in a single universe. This paper by Jacques Mallah > > outlines the position:http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0187. A point of > > disagreement when we discussed this paper on the list about a year ago > > is that Jacques thinks it would be a bad thing if there were many > > copies of a person in lockstep and some of the copies were destroyed, > > whereas if I were one of the copies it wouldn't worry me at all. > > > The problem with the ASSA is that it assumes that each OM is sampled > > randomly from the set of all OM's. In fact, this is not how life > > works. Today is Wednesday. I'm pretty sure that when I wake up > > tomorrow morning it will be Thursday, and not Friday, even though > > (absent some disaster) the measure of my Friday OM's in the multiverse > > is about the same as the measure of my Thursday OM's. Even if there > > were a billion copies of me on Friday and only one copy on Thursday, I > > can still expect to go through the Thursday copy before ending up a > > Friday copy. Once embedded in the multiverse, it puts constraints on > > my possible successor OM. > > > If I'm not already embedded in the multiverse then I could be anyone, > > and I am therefore more likely to be someone from a high probability > > group or era. So I am more likely to be a modern human than an early > > human, for example, because there are more modern humans. I think > > that's what Russell means by the ASSA being aplicable in birth order. > > This is a tricky concept to get your mind around and leads to > > semi-weirdness such as the Doomsday Argument. But that I'll experience > > Thursday before Friday even if there are lots of me on Friday is, I > > think, relatively straightforward. > > Is this different from your idea that "experiencing Friday" only comes > after "experinicing Thursday" because "Friday" contains some memory of > "Thursday"? You seem to be assuming an extrinsic order in the above. > > Brent-
I am thinking it must have something to do with this. The probability distribution I brought up in my answer to Stathis must have some sort of conditional status for OM's and so somehow each observer moment must have a kind of date/time stamp associated with it i.e. OM at time 1 is somehow contained in OM at time 2. However, in the past, I just ascribed this to be because of the need for a consistency with the laws of physics. What puzzles me is whether the probability distribution which accounts for these time (and space/matter) sequenced observer moments is prior to and therefore responsible for the laws of physics or whether it is the other way round because this would seem to be some way to help determine the distinction between a physicalist or an observationalist TOE. Best Nick Prince
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