I like this post! Two comments barely related to the post:
I would be interested in those calculations about how big the universe would have to be to have repeating Earths if anyone recalls where they saw them.
A meta-LessWrongian comment: A great part of the value I get out of LessWrong is that there’s always someone out there writing a post or comment tying together various thoughts and musings I’ve had into coherent essays in a way I don’t have the mental discipline to do. So this is a big thanks to all of you writing interesting stuff!
And a comment more directly related to the post:
I can only assume that some other type of intelligence would be bemused by our confusion surrounding these issues in much the same way I’m often bemused by people making hopelessly confused arguments about religion or evolution or whatever.
Other Intelligence: “Of course continuity isn’t important! There’s no difference between waking up after a coma, being unfrozen, or your clone in a Big World! Sheesh, you humans are messed up in the head!”
(Or maybe OI would argue that there is a difference.)
I would be interested in those calculations about how big the universe would have to be to have repeating Earths if anyone recalls where they saw them.
If the universe is spatially infinite, then, on average, we should expect that no more than 10^10^29 meters away is an exact duplicate of you. If you’re looking for an exact duplicate of a Hubble volume—an object the size of our observable universe—then you should still on average only need to look 10^10^115 lightyears. (These are numbers based on a highly conservative counting of “physically possible” states, e.g. packing the whole Hubble volume with potential protons at maximum density given by the Pauli Exclusion principle, and then allowing each proton to be present or absent.)
Google search query: “duplicate earth lightyears away site:lesswrong.com″. Estimated time to search and go through first page: 30 seconds.
This is simply the distance where the information content of the position is on same order that the information content of the brain for which the second instance is being ‘found’. Essentially, infinite universe allows to encode brains into spatial positions.
“All of those, including changing your preferences in icecream, constitute enough change to be considered death. It is theoretically possible to keep a human alive in a controlled environment but this has never been the case in the history of your species.”
I wouldn’t say a change in ice cream preference constitutes a death. People’s taste buds change as they get older.
Or if you do say getting older is a younger person’s death, then it probably isn’t that strict definition of death that you’re concerned about, as you don’t mourn people getting older.
I like this post! Two comments barely related to the post:
I would be interested in those calculations about how big the universe would have to be to have repeating Earths if anyone recalls where they saw them.
A meta-LessWrongian comment: A great part of the value I get out of LessWrong is that there’s always someone out there writing a post or comment tying together various thoughts and musings I’ve had into coherent essays in a way I don’t have the mental discipline to do. So this is a big thanks to all of you writing interesting stuff!
And a comment more directly related to the post:
I can only assume that some other type of intelligence would be bemused by our confusion surrounding these issues in much the same way I’m often bemused by people making hopelessly confused arguments about religion or evolution or whatever.
Other Intelligence: “Of course continuity isn’t important! There’s no difference between waking up after a coma, being unfrozen, or your clone in a Big World! Sheesh, you humans are messed up in the head!”
(Or maybe OI would argue that there is a difference.)
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ws/for_the_people_who_are_still_alive/
Google search query: “duplicate earth lightyears away site:lesswrong.com″. Estimated time to search and go through first page: 30 seconds.
This is simply the distance where the information content of the position is on same order that the information content of the brain for which the second instance is being ‘found’. Essentially, infinite universe allows to encode brains into spatial positions.
Dangit! Pointing to a Google search is normally my modus operandi.
Or maybe:
“All of those, including changing your preferences in icecream, constitute enough change to be considered death. It is theoretically possible to keep a human alive in a controlled environment but this has never been the case in the history of your species.”
I wouldn’t say a change in ice cream preference constitutes a death. People’s taste buds change as they get older.
Or if you do say getting older is a younger person’s death, then it probably isn’t that strict definition of death that you’re concerned about, as you don’t mourn people getting older.