fudgefactorfive
New Member
so - forgive me for a harsh summary - like most other toddlers, you were a solipsist, and you're still grasping at whatever speculatively theoretical straws that come your way to support your death-avoidance wish fulfilments decades later?
the wiki asks the killer questions - can you prove that the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, and if so, how it applies to the macroscopic world of brains? Why does "not dying a finite number of times" constitute immortality - so what if "some other you" is alive out there in the infinite multiverse, how is that you not dying, what is the physical connection or medium between you and these other people?
just because a parallel you survives this incident, why does it mean they are immortal? They might dodge the nuclear blast and then choke to death on a pretzel the next day. There does not have to be a subset of universes in which immortals exist, if immortality is itself a flawed concept.
imagine if someone invented a black box, a supercomputer, that can scan your brain and simulate it virtually. would the simulation effectively "be" you, or not? my answer to that question is no. but then, i'm not the me i was five seconds ago anyhow. that me is already dead and gone forever, from the point of view of something that thinks it is moving through time.
people have objected to the idea of a "star trek" style matter transporter on these grounds - they do not literally "transport" people, they kill them and then build a near-perfect copy somewhere else.
the wiki asks the killer questions - can you prove that the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, and if so, how it applies to the macroscopic world of brains? Why does "not dying a finite number of times" constitute immortality - so what if "some other you" is alive out there in the infinite multiverse, how is that you not dying, what is the physical connection or medium between you and these other people?
just because a parallel you survives this incident, why does it mean they are immortal? They might dodge the nuclear blast and then choke to death on a pretzel the next day. There does not have to be a subset of universes in which immortals exist, if immortality is itself a flawed concept.
imagine if someone invented a black box, a supercomputer, that can scan your brain and simulate it virtually. would the simulation effectively "be" you, or not? my answer to that question is no. but then, i'm not the me i was five seconds ago anyhow. that me is already dead and gone forever, from the point of view of something that thinks it is moving through time.
people have objected to the idea of a "star trek" style matter transporter on these grounds - they do not literally "transport" people, they kill them and then build a near-perfect copy somewhere else.
tho i'll grant you the presence bit 
