[ExI] What should survive and why?

[Samantha Atkins]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> On 06/05/07, *Lee Corbin* <lcorbin at rawbw.com 
> <mailto:lcorbin at rawbw.com>> wrote:
>
>     In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain
>     astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce
>     infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how
>     to deal with all the troglotyte humans?  Well, maybe some of them
>     will agree to this:  Y'all will be down loaded into one grain of sand
>     on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will
>     subjectively
>     experience one second of your great life. During the next half second
>     you will experience you will experience the next second, during the
>     next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end,
>     objectively,
>     of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem
>     insofar as regards y'all.
>
>     Or do you want more?  Do you want *objectively* to be around
>     at all times and places in the future?
>
>
> Subjective immortality is acceptable. Your example raises another 
> interesting issue in that the computation method proposed will allow 
> all possible computations to be implemented in the two seconds. 


Sheesh.  Didn't this sort of thing go out with Zeno's paradox?  You 
can't cram infinite subjective time and and infinite number of 
experiences of infinite time into two seconds.   We don't do that kind 
of magic around here.   

Stathis wrote:
Not only will you be resurrected to live forever, so will every other 
possible variation on your mind, and every other possible mind.

samantha
Whatever for?  In this fantasy of infinitely fast and infinitely 
abundant computational resources for playing a googleplex of variations 
of every mundane humane life and every posiible extension of it is there 
any meaning, any substance?  Or has anything real become just one more 
possible permutation in the quantum foam?   Everything literally and 
literally nothing at all.  Bah.


Stathis:
 This obviates the problem of being certain that you are really you: the 
real you has to be in there somewhere, as well as versions of you 
arbitrarily close to the real you.

hehehehehe.  How very comforting.  Not.

Stathis:
Another consequence is that if you find yourself a conscious entity in 
this infinite computer, you can be sure that your past memories and 
future expectations will have corollaries in actual computations either 
in the past or in the future (not necessarily respectively). We could be 
living in such a world at the moment and not be awar! e of it.

Yes and I could be a bacteria on a boil on the butt of a rat in some 
other dimension.  Yawn.

- s