X-Message-Number: 26644
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 19:50:32 -0700
Subject: The Other Side, to Mike: Part 2/2
From: <>

[Continued from Part 1.]

> I go now to a second point Richard raises, which he refers to 
> as "inevitable immortality within a toilet." The argument here 
> appears to be that any physical system of any size (a toilet 
> for instance) has very complex behavior occurring through 
> Brownian motion, if nothing else. So complex, in fact, that, 
> any other system in effect is simulated within the first, and 
> all we need is the right kind of "interpreter" to "see" this.

This is an inevitable conclusion of patternism. Actually, 
patternism does not by itself necessitate this, but when combined 
with the non-objectivity of interpretive schemes, Inevitable 
Immortality Within a Toilet (IIWT) follows necessarily.

Who knows, maybe you already died a long time ago and *are* being 
simulated in a toilet. If your beliefs are correct, it is a 
possibility.

The materialists among us just see IIWT as a reductio ad absurdum 
for patternism.

> The other is that, nevertheless, it still does not render 
> superfluous such a practice as cryonics or, as the case may 
> be, chemopreservation.

You see cryonics as beneficial because it increases the number of 
universes in which you 'survive'; essentially decreasing the 
proportion of universes in which you die. But this is only useful 
with my definition of survival, not yours. Somehow, in your mind, 
you are using my definition of survival anyway, and thinking that 
maybe, just maybe, the universes in which you find yourself in will 
have a happy ending if you can increase the number of 'you's' 
within the future multiverse. 

This is not coherent. If you stick with your definition of 
survival, increasing the number of future universes in which 'you' 
'survive' will not increase *your* probability of surviving since 
you are going out of existence with the next branch of the 
multiverse.

In any cases, I believe that since the multiverse is quantum in 
nature, the total number of universes is countably infinite. 
However, the number of interpretative schemes seems to be a (much) 
higher class of infinity. In which case, the 'ratio' of universes 
in the multiverse to interpretations of even a single universe is 
zero. So your actions in the multiverse have no effect at all 
(probabilistically speaking). The number and lives of you are 
instead dominated by the interpretations.

> In any case, I don't accept Richard's position whole-cloth. 
> Simulation at the quantum level (which I think might be 
> necessary) would be too complicated for it to happen under 
> just any conditions--there is just not enough complexity.

First, a comment: it is interesting you now believe that quantum 
simulations will be necessary for simulating a human brain. This of 
course implies that current computers, no matter how fast they 
become, will never be capable of simulating a brain; i.e. the brain 
is non-computable, in the Turing sense.

Now to return to the debate. IIWT will not be dismissed so easily. 
Why? Because you are assuming the complexity must reside entirely 
within the physical system. That's an arbitrary assumption you're 
making. In fact, to achieve a given simulation, there is a tradeoff 
between complexity of the physical system performing the 
simulation, and the interpretive scheme used to evaluate those 
results. By 'stuffing' more complexity into the interpretive 
scheme, you can achieve arbitrarily complex simulations (for 
example, the movement of one atom in a certain direction at a 
certain time might correspond to a whole host of quantum mechanical 
phenomena).

You have no grounds for disallowing such 'expansive' interpretive 
schemes. Until you can produce a law of physics that states such 
schemes are invalid, you have no choice but to accept IIWT, and all 
of its strange (absurd?) implications.

> Saying we must treat both possibilities on an equal footing 
> undercuts the position that there is a mind-independent reality. 

That is not true. Even in your worldview, a simulation of a thing 
is not that thing. Even though someone from the future can 
interpret the qubits in a future quantum computer to be a 'brain 
program' (in your vision of mind uploading), or some alien can 
interpret the fluctuations of a rock to be a simulation of a 
civilization (IIWT), for any two beings in the same universe (or 
simulation of a universe), they can agree on what 'reality' is. 
They just may not be able to agree on how to interpret everything 
in that reality.

> Unless we are to take the stance that reality is all in the mind 
> (extreme idealism) I think we have to be committed to the view 
> that all minds are not equally authoritative in what they 
perceive 
> as reality. Some interpreters we need to take more seriously 
> than others.

You have to take this stance to avoid IIWT. There is no other 
reason. If you have some evidence that some interpretive schemes 
are invalid, please share it with me. In particular, show me the 
principles I can use to determine whether some arbitrary 
interpretive scheme is valid, and how these principles were derived 
from the laws of physics (or other mutually accepted suppositions). 
Otherwise, your argument reduces to proof by assertion. 

> Or instead, why not consider the notion of annihilation--which 
> is more inclusive (usually) with Richard's idea of survival? 
> Should the burden of proof be on Richard, then, to show that 
> certain changes (loss of the QE-soul) amount to annihilation 
> where I would deny that they do?

You would not deny that they do. You would insist that we lose our 
QE with every branch of the multiverse, and you would maintain that 
this is somehow not 'important'. If I misunderstand your view, 
please correct me.

> This would seem to depend on the attitude one takes about the 
> prospect of one's death. If the fear or concern over your own 
> death predominates, then you'd want to be as sure as possible 
> that "you" will truly survive, so the burden of proof, you 
> could say, would fall on the broader rather than the more 
> restrictive notion of survival.

I agree this is true: the more concerned you are with your 
survival, the more careful you need to be (as Robert would say, 
preserve as much of everything as you can, to be as safe as 
possible).

But I would go a step further. Your theory requires the existence 
of the multiverse and supernatural entities such as patterns and 
information, and leads to such absurdities as IIWT (which implies, 
among other things, that all possible and impossible things 'exist' 
in the same way that a person simulated on an advanced computer 
exists).

This is an enormous amount of complexity, which you have come up 
with not to explain the facts, but to justify your desire for a 
universal afterlife. The facts are already well-explained by strict 
materialism. We are brains, and survival for a 'brain' is nothing 
more than continued existence, which is the same for a brain as it 
is for an apple or a light bulb. There is no need to spawn theories 
of monstrous size with numerous untestable assumptions, as you have 
done and continue to do, to explain what strict materialism can 
easily handle.

> If you have a different mindset, 
> You could then find yourself interested in the most general 
> conditions under which, arguably, individuals might reasonably 
> be said to survive or be resurrected.

Note 'said to survive'. I can say that an individual survives as 
long as at least one atom exists. By adopting this definition, I 
haven't done a thing to change reality. The only way I can comfort 
myself is by imbuing this definition of 'survival' with the 
properties of true survival (survival of identity). And that is 
precisely what you have done---if not for yourself, then for your 
followers.

Richard B. Riddick

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