Eliezer, thanks for the detailed reply, that’s really cleared up a whole load of my confusion over the last few posts.
I certainly haven’t thought about this enough yet. I do recognise the fact that we need to put this aside to get any sense out of the world. But I still feel that trying to pin down a mind as a discrete entity, and trying to decide on when one mind becomes two, creates more problems than it solves.
The Ebboreans can dream up plenty of brain-splitting (!) scenarios that involve bigger and bigger numbers, and make less and less sense when you try to apply subjective probabilities. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to dream up scenarios where experience tends to infinity, which doesn’t bode well. Also, say an Ebborean is being tortured while his brain splits. Does the amount of disutility in the universe suddenly double? If so, my brain asplode.
Re: Boltzmann Brains: AFAICT, P(our current universe springing into existence) is miniscule. Certainly, P(just my brain springing up) is a lot bigger. But P(stochastic, messy Big Bang, followed by a period of inflation, followed by the coalescence of stars, then planets, then the inception of life, then the evolution of the brain, then me) is enormous by comparison to either. Hence my expectation of being in the world. For every spontaneous floaty brain in infinite space, surely there would be millions of Big Bang-based sub-universes similar to our own.
I’ve just ordered Consciousness Explained on Amazon, will see where that goes.
Eliezer, thanks for the detailed reply, that’s really cleared up a whole load of my confusion over the last few posts.
I certainly haven’t thought about this enough yet. I do recognise the fact that we need to put this aside to get any sense out of the world. But I still feel that trying to pin down a mind as a discrete entity, and trying to decide on when one mind becomes two, creates more problems than it solves.
The Ebboreans can dream up plenty of brain-splitting (!) scenarios that involve bigger and bigger numbers, and make less and less sense when you try to apply subjective probabilities. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to dream up scenarios where experience tends to infinity, which doesn’t bode well. Also, say an Ebborean is being tortured while his brain splits. Does the amount of disutility in the universe suddenly double? If so, my brain asplode.
Re: Boltzmann Brains: AFAICT, P(our current universe springing into existence) is miniscule. Certainly, P(just my brain springing up) is a lot bigger. But P(stochastic, messy Big Bang, followed by a period of inflation, followed by the coalescence of stars, then planets, then the inception of life, then the evolution of the brain, then me) is enormous by comparison to either. Hence my expectation of being in the world. For every spontaneous floaty brain in infinite space, surely there would be millions of Big Bang-based sub-universes similar to our own.
I’ve just ordered Consciousness Explained on Amazon, will see where that goes.