X-Message-Number: 14200
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 06:51:10 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Repeated Experience

Mike Perry wrote in #14198

>It seems to me that one is stuck with each experience being
infinitely instantiated, if there is a multiverse such as David
Deutsch imagines in *The Fabric of Reality*, and which I echo
in my book too. It can't be avoided. But I wouldn't go so far
as to say that "one infinity is as good as another"-- a stance
of benevolence could and should at least be devoted to making
the bad times statistically infrequent.  So to your question
about neo-Nazis setting up exact conditions of torture again,
no, it would be proper to intervene and prevent this from
happening.  The intervention would, of course, introduce a new
element that was not present the first time--it would be a
different story with a happier ending.  That alone is of positive
value, though it would not erase the bad thing that also happened
and will happen over and over. But trying to do good, and make
the bad less frequent, should have advangages (I think very
substantial advantages) in terms of enlightened self-interest,
and that is really the basic reason to pursue such a course.
<

This is excellent, important, and I think completely true.
(Though I also have not yet learned how to satisfactorily
articulate this in language that employs concepts of the
multiverse.)

Okay, so you allow that repeated experience is bad if the 
original experience is bad.  Likewise repeated experience
is good if the original experience is good.  That is, just
as we cannot morally identify bad identical experiences among
themselves, so we cannot morally identify good identical
experiences among themselves, contrary to what you seemed
to say in your previous post.

So my hypotheical friend Tom, who has reached his Bekenstein
Bound and now just repeats experiences, still lives, and
rightly hopes that he'll continue to live, even indefinitely,
and thus be immortal.  (Most importantly, he derives benefit
from each additional passing day of his life, just as the
poor resurrected little girl, if tortured, would continue
to be harmed each additional passing day of her life.)

Lee Corbin

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