I think you may be treating your continuation as a binary affair (you either exist or don’t exist, you either experience or don’t experience) as if “you” (your mind) were an ontologically simple entity.
Let’s say that in the vast majority of universes you “die” from an external perspective. This means that from an internal perspective, in the vast majority of universe you’ll experience the degradation of your mental circuitry—whether said degradation lasts ten years or one millisecond, you will experience said degradation up to the point you will no longer be able to experience anything.
So let’s say that at some point your mind is at a state where you’re still sensing experiences, but don’t form new memories, nor hold any old memories; and because you don’t even have much of a short-term memory, your thinking doesn’t get more complicated than “Fuzzy warmth. Nice” or perhaps “Pain. Hurts!”.
At this point, this experience is all you effectively are—it’s not as if this circuitry will be metaphysically connected to a single specific set of memories, or a single specific personality.
Perhaps at this point you can argue, that you totally expect this mental pattern to be reattached to some set of memories or some personality outside the Matrix. And therefore it will experience an afterlife—in a sense. But not necessarilly an afterlife with memories or personality that have anything to do with your present memories or personality, right?
Quantum Immortality doesn’t exist. At best one can hope for Quantum Reincarnation—and even that requires certain unverified assumptions...
Perhaps at this point you can argue, that you totally expect this mental pattern to be reattached to some set of memories or some personality outside the Matrix.
There should be some universes in which the simulators will perform a controlled procedure specifically designed for saving me. This includes going to all the trouble of reattaching what’s left of me to all my best parts and memories retrieved from an adequate backup.
Of course, it is possible that the simulators will attach some completely arbitrary memories to my poor degraded personality. This nonsensical act will surely happen in some universes, but I do not expect to perceive myself as existing in these cases.
It seems you are right that gradual degradation is a serious problem with QI-based survival in non-simulated universes (unless we move to a more reliable substrate, with backups and all).
I think you may be treating your continuation as a binary affair (you either exist or don’t exist, you either experience or don’t experience) as if “you” (your mind) were an ontologically simple entity.
Let’s say that in the vast majority of universes you “die” from an external perspective. This means that from an internal perspective, in the vast majority of universe you’ll experience the degradation of your mental circuitry—whether said degradation lasts ten years or one millisecond, you will experience said degradation up to the point you will no longer be able to experience anything.
So let’s say that at some point your mind is at a state where you’re still sensing experiences, but don’t form new memories, nor hold any old memories; and because you don’t even have much of a short-term memory, your thinking doesn’t get more complicated than “Fuzzy warmth. Nice” or perhaps “Pain. Hurts!”.
At this point, this experience is all you effectively are—it’s not as if this circuitry will be metaphysically connected to a single specific set of memories, or a single specific personality.
Perhaps at this point you can argue, that you totally expect this mental pattern to be reattached to some set of memories or some personality outside the Matrix. And therefore it will experience an afterlife—in a sense. But not necessarilly an afterlife with memories or personality that have anything to do with your present memories or personality, right?
Quantum Immortality doesn’t exist. At best one can hope for Quantum Reincarnation—and even that requires certain unverified assumptions...
There should be some universes in which the simulators will perform a controlled procedure specifically designed for saving me. This includes going to all the trouble of reattaching what’s left of me to all my best parts and memories retrieved from an adequate backup.
Of course, it is possible that the simulators will attach some completely arbitrary memories to my poor degraded personality. This nonsensical act will surely happen in some universes, but I do not expect to perceive myself as existing in these cases.
It seems you are right that gradual degradation is a serious problem with QI-based survival in non-simulated universes (unless we move to a more reliable substrate, with backups and all).