Re: Immortality
Hello, jamikes wrote: As much as I enjoyed last years's discussions in worldview speculations, I get frustrated by the lately emerged word-playing about concepts used in just different contents from the conventional. May I submit a (trivial) proof for immortality in this sense: Death (of others, meaning not only persons) is a 3rd person (fantasy?), either true or imagined. NOBODY ever experienced his/her own death and the time after such, so immortality is the only thing in consciousness. Eh? If I understood this statement then I must object. I have quite clear memories of before-death, during-death, and after-death. I realize that within the context of the narrow communication style prevailant here that this claim means nothing. But your statement would seem to attempt rewrite my experiences as false by default. I resent that. The world (experienceable worldview) does not include otherwise. To the forgotten things existing in another (branch of?) world: If I 'forgot' something: that dose not necessarily build another world of those things I forgot. Alzheimer patients are not the most efficient Creators. And please do not 'rationalize' about 'near death' and similar fantasies in this respect. These statements *ignore* alternate forms of consciousness. It (in my opinion) arogantly assumes that the consciousness emphasized for sequential thinking and logic is the only perspective worth analyzying and building understanding upon. Excuse my out-of-topic remark to the topic. John Mikes - Original Message - From: Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 6:30 AM Subject: Re: Conventional QTI = False Hal Finney wrote: Saibal writes: According to the conventional QTI, not only do you live forever, you can also never forget anything. I don't believe this because I know for a fact that I have forgotten quite a lot of things that have happened a long time ago. The consciousness you are aware of cannot access the information. It does not mean it's gone. This is a wreckless assumption. Right, but to make the same argument against QTI you'd have to say, you don't believe this because you have died. But this is not possible. So the analogy is not as good as it looks. You do exist in branches where you have forgotten things, as well as in branches where you remember them. Sounds more like the spiritual model for consciousness. One simply assumes a vehicle for conscious expression and can express (remember etc) based on the capabilites of the vehicle while traveling along the landscape of conscious-all if you will. That is true, but I want to make the point that branches where I survive with memory loss have to be taken into account. In the case of a person suffering from a terminal disease, it is much more likely that he will survive in a branch where he was not diagnosed with the disease, than in a branch where the disease is magically cured. The latter possibility (conventional qti) can't be favoured above the first just because the surviving person is more similar to the original person. You could object that in the first case your consciousness is somehow transferred to a different person (you ``jump´´ to a different branch that separated from the dying branch before you were diagnosed), but I would say that the surviving person has the same consciousness the original person would have if you cured his disease and erased all memory of having the disease. Or you could stop assuming consciousness is sequential and limited to simplistic concepts of identity like: My name is joe and I'm the only expression of awareness of me there is since I'm not aware of anything else Another blatently wreckless assumption. Saibal Robert W. _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: Conventional QTI = False
Never heard of this reasoning before. Can you expand please? This doesn't appear to be related to the problem of being required to forget how old you if you are immortal in a physical human sense. Cheers Saibal Mitra wrote: According to the conventional QTI, not only do you live forever, you can = also never forget anything. I don't believe this because I know for a = fact that I have forgotten quite a lot of things that have happened a = long time ago. Saibal Dr. Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: Immortality
Saibal Mitra wrote: You could object that in the first case your consciousness is somehow transferred to a different person (you ``jump´´ to a different branch that separated from the dying branch before you were diagnosed), but I would say that the surviving person has the same consciousness the original person would have if you cured his disease and erased all memory of having the disease. Perhaps. But if you do that move, everyone is resurrected in everyone, and there is only one person in the multiverse. I don't know. James Higgo was more radical on this, he defended the idea of zero person. With just comp this issue is probably undecidable. I guess comp (perhaps QM too) can lead to a vast variety of incompatible but consistent point of view on those matter. Comp is compatible whith a lot of personal possible interpretations of what is identity. What is possible to prove with comp is the non normative principle according to which personal identity is *in part* necessarily a matter of personal opinion. What remains to do is to compute the real probabilities to backtrack with amnesia compare to the probability to quantum/comp-survive big injuries. I doubt we have currently the tools to do those computations. Bruno
RE: Immortality
-Original Message- From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Perhaps. But if you do that move, everyone is resurrected in everyone, and there is only one person in the multiverse. I don't know. James Higgo was more radical on this, he defended the idea of zero person. With just comp this issue is probably undecidable. I guess comp (perhaps QM too) can lead to a vast variety of incompatible but consistent point of view on those matter. Comp is compatible whith a lot of personal possible interpretations of what is identity. What is possible to prove with comp is the non normative principle according to which personal identity is *in part* necessarily a matter of personal opinion. What remains to do is to compute the real probabilities to backtrack with amnesia compare to the probability to quantum/comp-survive big injuries. I doubt we have currently the tools to do those computations. I will be interested to know the results when you do! Of course the doctrine of reincarnation (it always seemed to me) only requires one soul - a bit like Feynman's one-electron universe, it just zip-zags back and forth... Charles
RE: Conditional probability continuity of consciousness
Jesse Mazer has written If we abandon the idea of an absolute probability distribution, we have no hope of explaining why I am this particular type of observer-moment experiencing this particular type of universe, and we can only explain why my future experience will have a certain amount in common with my current experience (assuming that's what the conditional probability distribution actually predicts). And I have answered: But that is what each observer-moment can ask an explanation for. The duplication WM experience illustrates that such question are senseless. It is like why am I in W or Why am I in M. With comp we can predict that those questions will be asked, but there are no answers. We get sort of necessary contingent propositions. No? I realise such a sentence can be misunderstood. It is only *those* questions (that is question of self-localisation in differentiating space-time-history) which admit no answers with comp. But a lot of questions admit answers. In particular I believe that it is possible to explain why at any observer-moment we have that feeling of belonging to a space-time history including the qualia feeling and the measure of quanta. With the comp. hyp. we can define an observer-moment as a modal situations with a neighborhood of similar situations. Each situation defines the set of possible consistent neighborhood, and in each situation the machine can anticipate those possible consistent extensions. The machine can even distinguish communicable and uncommunicable quality of those extensions (cf G, G*). I mean the feeling of being spotted could perhaps be explained, and certainly is in need for an explanation. Bruno
Re: Conventional QTI = False
I just argue that to compute the probability distribution for your next experience, given your previous ones, you must also consider continuations were you suffer memory loss. QTI fails to do so and it is precisely this that leads to the the prediction that you should find yourself being infinitely old, or that you should live for arbitrary long. If you are severly injured in an accident and dying, then the probability that you will survive in a branch where the accident never happened is much larger than living on in a branch where the accident did happen. That continuations with memory loss are important can be verified ``experimentally´´ (I don't remember everything that has happened to me). There are also continuations of me that never forget anything. I am not one of them. Saibal Russell Standish wrote: Never heard of this reasoning before. Can you expand please? This doesn't appear to be related to the problem of being required to forget how old you if you are immortal in a physical human sense. Cheers Saibal Mitra wrote: According to the conventional QTI, not only do you live forever, you can = also never forget anything. I don't believe this because I know for a = fact that I have forgotten quite a lot of things that have happened a = long time ago. Saibal -- -- Dr. Russell StandishDirector High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 -- --
Re: Conventional QTI = False
QTI, as formulated by some on this list (I call this conventional QTI), is supposed to imply that you should experience becoming arbitrarily old with probability one. It is this prediction that I am attacking. I have no problems with the fact that according to quantum mechanics there is a finite probability that bullets fired from a machine gun toward you will all tunnel through your body. Or, that if you are thrown into a black hole (Russell Standish's example), you might be emitted from the black hole as Hawking radiation. The mistake is that QTI ONLY considers certain branches were you survive without memory loss, other branches are not considered. This leads to the paradox that you should experience yourself being infinitely old etc.. Saibal Charles Goodwin wrote: -Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] In the case of a person suffering from a terminal disease, it is much more likely that he will survive in a branch where he was not diagnosed with the disease, than in a branch where the disease is magically cured. The latter possibility (conventional qti) can't be favoured above the first just because the surviving person is more similar to the original person. I don't understand this argument. The person survives (according to QTI) in both branches. In fact QTI postulates that an infinite number of copies of a person survives (although the *proportion* of the multiverse in which he survives tends to zero - but that is because the multivese is growing far faster than the branches in which a person survives). QTI postulates that ALL observer moments are part of a series (of a vast number of series') which survive to timelike infinity. You could object that in the first case your consciousness is somehow transferred to a different person (you ``jump´´ to a different branch that separated from the dying branch before you were diagnosed), but I would say that the surviving person has the same consciousness the original person would have if you cured his disease and erased all memory of having the disease. That isn't necessary (according to QTI). The multiverse is large enough to accomodate an uncountable infinity of branches in which a given person survives from ANY starting state, as well as a (larger) uncountable infinity in which he doesn't. Charles
Re: Conventional QTI = False
As I said, this is a completely new interpretation of QTI, one never stated before. QTI does _not_ assume that memory is conserved. The prediction that one may end up being so old as to not know how old you are is based on the assumption that you total memory capacity remains constant - it need not do so. On the other hand, I have no problem with the fact that dementia might set in. I suspect you are trying to find ways of making QTI compatible with Jacques ASSA based argument, when it is clear his argument fails completely. Not that the argument is unimportant, as the reasons for the failure are also interesting. Cheers Saibal Mitra wrote: I just argue that to compute the probability distribution for your next experience, given your previous ones, you must also consider continuations were you suffer memory loss. QTI fails to do so and it is precisely this that leads to the the prediction that you should find yourself being infinitely old, or that you should live for arbitrary long. If you are severly injured in an accident and dying, then the probability that you will survive in a branch where the accident never happened is much larger than living on in a branch where the accident did happen. That continuations with memory loss are important can be verified ``experimentally´´ (I don't remember everything that has happened to me). There are also continuations of me that never forget anything. I am not one of them. Saibal Russell Standish wrote: Never heard of this reasoning before. Can you expand please? This doesn't appear to be related to the problem of being required to forget how old you if you are immortal in a physical human sense. Cheers Saibal Mitra wrote: According to the conventional QTI, not only do you live forever, you can = also never forget anything. I don't believe this because I know for a = fact that I have forgotten quite a lot of things that have happened a = long time ago. Saibal -- -- Dr. Russell StandishDirector High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 -- -- Dr. Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centrehttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
