On 11/11/2013 7:35 PM, LizR wrote:
On 12 November 2013 16:03, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
On 11/11/2013 6:38 PM, LizR wrote:
Benjamin Button lived his life in reverse.
Oh, right, like the guy in Martin Amis' "Time's Arrow" (itself a rip off from
"An
Age" by Brian Aldiss). Presumably according to QTI he's at the end of an
infinite
future lifetime, or whatever? But since he's unphysical I guess we can say
what we
like about him.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922).
Oh well, he gets precedence, then. But in any case I don't see any particular relevance,
probably that's my fault...
So I'll ask you the same thing I asked Quentin, what's you inference
from the
fact you, and every body you've ever heard of died before reaching age
150?
My normal inference is that everyone dies. Apparently the QTI throws doubt
on this
by pointing out that we have only sampled an infinitesimal proportion of the
available branches of the multiverse, and that in another infinitesimal
portion
there might be people who live forever (somehow).
But doesn't QTI imply that everybody is immortal, as Jason infers. Did you
read
"Divided by Inifinity" yet?
Yes it does, but only in infinitesimal slivers of the multiverse, which is what I was
trying to say in my roundabout way.
No I skimmed it, but I hope / think I get the point. Is there anything else I should be
taking from it apart from "this is what quantum immortality might look like, assuming a
nearby gamma ray burst and so on" ?
What is your inference from the fact that everywhere you've ever travelled
has been
on or near the surface of a congenial planet supplied with air, water and
all the
necessities of life?
That I'm the product of evolution on this planet.
Right, you're here in an extremely unlikely situation if you take random samples from
the universe. I was trying to draw a parallel here, if I can just remember what it was...
That you can't infer much from "I'm X" except that it's possible to be X. To make
probabilistic inferences you either need a lot of samples (other people) or you need
somebody to hand you a likelihood function.
I think the problem with QTI is that QM doesn't guarantee another experience of any
quality. It may guarantee that something happens, but the experience may the experience
of being a bunch of loosely related molecules. Craig likes to talk about 'sense' which
when pressed it attributes to everything. Experience may be like that; everything has
'experience', it's just not human experience and when you stop having human experience
you're dead.
Brent
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