What do you think about the argument that the Universe might well be infinite, and if so, your view means that nothing we do matters, since every brainstate is already instantiated somewhere? (Taken from Bostrom’s paper on the subject.)
That’s a good question, and a good example of how decompartmentalizing can lead one astray. I warmly recommend the rest of the section 2 in the above paper. Scott points out in “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” that the argument can be made without any physics involved as every brain state has a finite description, and those descriptions can be enumerated, and every number can already be found in the decimal expansion of Pi, so what’s the point of anything? One objection is “but it’s not real unless it happens somewhere”, also addressed there.
What do you think about the argument that the Universe might well be infinite, and if so, your view means that nothing we do matters, since every brainstate is already instantiated somewhere? (Taken from Bostrom’s paper on the subject.)
That’s a good question, and a good example of how decompartmentalizing can lead one astray. I warmly recommend the rest of the section 2 in the above paper. Scott points out in “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” that the argument can be made without any physics involved as every brain state has a finite description, and those descriptions can be enumerated, and every number can already be found in the decimal expansion of Pi, so what’s the point of anything? One objection is “but it’s not real unless it happens somewhere”, also addressed there.