I generally resolve this issue with the observation that the awareness of misery takes quite a lot of coherent brainpower. By the time my perceptions are 200 years old, I suspect that they won’t be running on a substrate capable of very much computational power — that is, once I pass a certain (theoretically calculable) maximum decrepitude, any remaining personal awareness is more likely to live in a Boltzmann brain than in my current body.
You see, after the vast majority of possible worlds perceive that I am dead, how likely is it that I will still have enough working nerves to accept any new sensory input, including pain? How likely is it that I’ll be able to maintain enough memories to preserve a link to my 2011-era self? How likely is it that my awareness, running on a dying brain, will process thoughts at even a fraction of my current rate?
I suspect that after death, I’ll quickly drift into an awareness that’s so dreamlike, solipsistic, and time-lapsed that it’s a bit iffy calling me an awareness at all. I may last until the end of time, but I won’t see or do anything very interesting while I’m there. And no worries about the universe clotting with ghosts: as my entropy increases, I’ll quickly become mathematically indistinguishable from everyone else, just as one molecule of hydrogen is very like another.
Quantum immortality is pretty certainly real, but it also has to add up to normality.
I generally resolve this issue with the observation that the awareness of misery takes quite a lot of coherent brainpower. By the time my perceptions are 200 years old, I suspect that they won’t be running on a substrate capable of very much computational power — that is, once I pass a certain (theoretically calculable) maximum decrepitude, any remaining personal awareness is more likely to live in a Boltzmann brain than in my current body.
You see, after the vast majority of possible worlds perceive that I am dead, how likely is it that I will still have enough working nerves to accept any new sensory input, including pain? How likely is it that I’ll be able to maintain enough memories to preserve a link to my 2011-era self? How likely is it that my awareness, running on a dying brain, will process thoughts at even a fraction of my current rate?
I suspect that after death, I’ll quickly drift into an awareness that’s so dreamlike, solipsistic, and time-lapsed that it’s a bit iffy calling me an awareness at all. I may last until the end of time, but I won’t see or do anything very interesting while I’m there. And no worries about the universe clotting with ghosts: as my entropy increases, I’ll quickly become mathematically indistinguishable from everyone else, just as one molecule of hydrogen is very like another.
Quantum immortality is pretty certainly real, but it also has to add up to normality.
I’m glad to see this view expressed.