X-Message-Number: 25331
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:50:59 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Why Choose Cryonics
References: <>

Here I am responding to more of Richard's comments.

>Why do you experience in your body, and not the body of another?

Strictly speaking, that is not my position. "You" experience in whatever 
body has the right conditions present for the experience to occur. This 
body can be said to instantiate the experience in question. So in an 
infinite multiverse, there would be infinitely many different constructs or 
bodies in which the experience can be said to occur. I also think that 
experiences are supervenient on events in reality (this being a standard 
materialist/naturalist position). Events in turn proceed in discrete jumps 
according to now time-honored principles of quantum mechanics, so that 
finite collections of events or "happenings" must have finite descriptions. 
Each experience will thus also have a finite description, in effect, a 
Godel number, according to a constructible-in-principle formalism. (If one 
such formalism exists there will be many others too, all different, but the 
particular choice of a formalism is not important here. Any one should 
equally apply for purposes of argument.) Two experiences with the same GN 
must be the same experience. In principle you could have the exact same 
experience as someone else (or yourself) at another time/place, though for 
any usual experience of any significant length, this is, no doubt, highly 
unlikely; there is great complexity in even a few moments. But while you 
are having a given experience, you are unaware of which construct "you" may 
be said to reside in, beyond the confines of the experience itself 
(including your perceptions during this time), thus the door is open to the 
viewpoint that the experience itself is non-localized as I've suggested, 
and different people could share experiences. (If two people had *all* 
their experiences in common, though, they would be one and the same person, 
according to my patternist view--this therefore will not happen, by 
definition, with *different* individuals.)

>Surely you would agree that according to the multiverse
>interpretation, an exact copy of you just suddenly came into
>existence on the moon, and will quickly die a horrible death. Why
>wasn't that you?

For an instant, it might have been "me" (along with other, similar 
constructs), depending on its brief experience at that time. But fissioning 
soon occurred. Here is where probabilities (or probability-weights) come 
in. This scenario is possible--so it must be repeated infinitely often in 
parallel worlds of the multiverse. But it is also unlikely, so "I" don't 
have to fear suddenly finding myself on the moon with no oxygen--or not 
very much.

>Why are you tied to your body instead of all these
>alternate fates?

Again, you *are* tied to "all these alternate fates"--but only weakly; the 
probabilities are mercifully small.

>I still do not understand why you advocate cryonics. It seems like
>you are saying, 'Well, I am 100% sure I will be resurrected,

I'm not dogmatic, but this is my working hypothesis and I am at least 
confident of it.

>  just
>not that the resurrection will be "painless".' Of course, it would
>be painless and painful for different copies of you. I do not
>understand why you believe in the existence of a mechanism that
>would transport you to one of these copies and not the others (see
>preceding paragraph).

I hope I've made this clearer; in effect, the differing probabilities will 
see to it my continuers will most likely (not always) find themselves in 
one or another type of situation but not others. To help make it clearer 
still, I should add that I think a person could fission into more than one, 
each with a more-or-less equal claim to, not *being* the original, but 
*having been* the original. So in a certain sense you *are not* the person 
you were at some point in the past; changes will occur with time, including 
acquisition of new memories and the like. At best you are only a continuer 
of that past self, and there could (and will) be other continuers with an 
independent existence from yours--such is my view. This could resolve many 
paradoxes with duplicates.

Best to all,
Mike Perry

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