I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think that the two situations are equivalent. I’m not going by the many worlds interpretation, but the Copenhagen one. In a finite universe, I understand that one is not guaranteed immortality, and even in the many worlds interpretation, immortality is iffy as Tegrmark has explained. Though I do see the point of your second objection, I think that it is not illogical to go either way on this point. I act under a coherence theory of Truth, so my attempt at grasping Truth may lead me down a different path to your attempt, but we will eventually meet up somewhere, given enough time.
Thanks for taking a time to reply! By the way, why do you think I got down voted? Was it the tone, my saying something obvious or something else entirely? I’d be much obliged if you could critique my post a little more.
My guess is the mostly the tone and the overly strong conclusion.
The topic is certainly one that is close to home for a lot of LWers and it seems to me we’ve heard almost all the variations. Then the tone, of a kind of artistic revelatory piece introducing lots of ideas only to dismiss them soon after, seems much more appropriate for a journalistic piece than the kind of deep logical thinking strived for here. Putting arguments in the reader’s mouth and talking very patronizingly (“you’re a picky one… my friend… this probably isn’t going where you expect it to...Algon’s recipe for immortality”) also doesn’t work great in my opinion.
The conclusion is also a point of contention, as people here tend to like calibration and it seems a little too overconfident. Reductionists don’t necessarily believe that another copy of you springing into existence later will be the same consciousness, and many readers have commented that they don’t. For one example, Scott Aaronson proposes an interesting possibility. Similarly, issues about the universe being infinitely long and infinitely recurring, etc., are very much debatable, with most evidence coming out against you. Then to not treat any of these other possibilities, but whisk through each as if one narrow interpretation did it, seems to me not to be a helpful discussion of the topic so much as a narrow attempt at showing wit.
On the plus side, it’s cool that you asked for constructive help and were willing to engage, and I think more research into and consideration of these ideas could lead somewhere good.
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think that the two situations are equivalent. I’m not going by the many worlds interpretation, but the Copenhagen one. In a finite universe, I understand that one is not guaranteed immortality, and even in the many worlds interpretation, immortality is iffy as Tegrmark has explained. Though I do see the point of your second objection, I think that it is not illogical to go either way on this point. I act under a coherence theory of Truth, so my attempt at grasping Truth may lead me down a different path to your attempt, but we will eventually meet up somewhere, given enough time.
Thanks for taking a time to reply! By the way, why do you think I got down voted? Was it the tone, my saying something obvious or something else entirely? I’d be much obliged if you could critique my post a little more.
My guess is the mostly the tone and the overly strong conclusion.
The topic is certainly one that is close to home for a lot of LWers and it seems to me we’ve heard almost all the variations. Then the tone, of a kind of artistic revelatory piece introducing lots of ideas only to dismiss them soon after, seems much more appropriate for a journalistic piece than the kind of deep logical thinking strived for here. Putting arguments in the reader’s mouth and talking very patronizingly (“you’re a picky one… my friend… this probably isn’t going where you expect it to...Algon’s recipe for immortality”) also doesn’t work great in my opinion.
The conclusion is also a point of contention, as people here tend to like calibration and it seems a little too overconfident. Reductionists don’t necessarily believe that another copy of you springing into existence later will be the same consciousness, and many readers have commented that they don’t. For one example, Scott Aaronson proposes an interesting possibility. Similarly, issues about the universe being infinitely long and infinitely recurring, etc., are very much debatable, with most evidence coming out against you. Then to not treat any of these other possibilities, but whisk through each as if one narrow interpretation did it, seems to me not to be a helpful discussion of the topic so much as a narrow attempt at showing wit.
On the plus side, it’s cool that you asked for constructive help and were willing to engage, and I think more research into and consideration of these ideas could lead somewhere good.