In a Big World, though, there is no one person who generated those memories. If you can accurately approximate the objective distribution of those people, and draw someone at random from it, that seems as good as resurrection to me. (Assuming quantum immortality/no Death events, and strictly patternist personal identity/causal continuity is unimportant; I see no reason not to assume these, but apparently some disagree.)
If you can accurately approximate the objective distribution of those people, and draw someone at random from it, that seems as good as resurrection to me.
How might we go about doing this? One method I can see is to make a large number of measurements on physical objects/systems correlated with the deceased persons (in the information theoretic sense), then do a full quantum simulation of the universe starting from initial low-entropy conditions, and look for branches that contain systems that match those measurements, then backtrack the simulation a bit to where those persons are still alive.
I can’t parse your assumptions—are they separate assumptions, or are you implying that they’re equivalent? Quantum immortality, in particular, seems irrelevant to the argument. I don’t see what the disagreement is in the link, except to QI.
In a Big World, though, there is no one person who generated those memories
If we define a “Big World” to be, say Tegmark Level I infinite universe, then it is still the case that one particular space/time localized stable pattern realized in organic molecules did create the memories. There are other “copies” of that same pattern 10^118 meters away, but they are not here. I am unconvinced of your somewhat radical statement here.
In a Big World, though, there is no one person who generated those memories. If you can accurately approximate the objective distribution of those people, and draw someone at random from it, that seems as good as resurrection to me. (Assuming quantum immortality/no Death events, and strictly patternist personal identity/causal continuity is unimportant; I see no reason not to assume these, but apparently some disagree.)
How might we go about doing this? One method I can see is to make a large number of measurements on physical objects/systems correlated with the deceased persons (in the information theoretic sense), then do a full quantum simulation of the universe starting from initial low-entropy conditions, and look for branches that contain systems that match those measurements, then backtrack the simulation a bit to where those persons are still alive.
Is that what you had in mind?
I can’t parse your assumptions—are they separate assumptions, or are you implying that they’re equivalent? Quantum immortality, in particular, seems irrelevant to the argument. I don’t see what the disagreement is in the link, except to QI.
If we define a “Big World” to be, say Tegmark Level I infinite universe, then it is still the case that one particular space/time localized stable pattern realized in organic molecules did create the memories. There are other “copies” of that same pattern 10^118 meters away, but they are not here. I am unconvinced of your somewhat radical statement here.