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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25331