Re: What about MWI of QM as regards dead loved ones?

From: Giu1i0 Pri5c0 (pgptag@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Dec 10 2004 - 22:59:19 MST


Good ideas Marc. A few months ago I send a note to some lists (don't
remember if I sent it also to sk4) with compatible considerations. Now
I found it in the everything list archives and posted to my blog for
further editing:
http://www.hitbang.net/2004/12/shadows-and-smeared-selves.php

Would love hearing your comments.
G.

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:57:02 +1300 (NZDT), Marc Geddes
<marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
> Hope no one here is annoyed by this, but I have to ask
> the question, since many here profess to believe in
> the 'Many Worlds' interpretation of qauntum mechanics,
> yet at the same time, several leading transhumanists
> (Eli and Klein) were recently lamenting the death of
> loved ones.
>
> Isn't it really the case that lost loved ones have
> *not* in fact been obliterated, *if* in fact, MWI is
> true? Their consciousness has simply concentrated in
> the QM branches where they survived has it not?
>
> I've really been thinking hard about the MWI of late.
> One major hypothesis I'm favoring is that the strength
> of consciousness in a given time track is *weighed*
> according the frequency of qauntum states
> corresponding to that particular time track. For
> instance this implies that low probability time tracks
> wouldn't have strongly conscious observers associated
> with them. Any thoughts on this?
>
> Another thought that has occurred to me is that MWI
> seems to create difficulties for the ethics of
> computer simulations. For instance, a major argument
> against ancestral simulations is that it would be
> unethical because of the suffering created. But if
> MWI is true, all these computations already exist with
> a certain frequency anyway, and if we run an ancestral
> simulation which matches the real universe then we
> will not have changed the frequency of time tracks
> where suffering is occuring, so why would it be
> unethical?
>
> Food for thought.



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