A defense on QI
I dont know if this is the right place to post but i need help finding a debunking of this article https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0902/0902.0187.pdf I am sure many worlds DOES imply immortality but i cant seem to adress all the big words the article uses .if this is already done please just link the debunking.
For what it’s worth, I’m familiar with the philosophy surrounding the many worlds interpretation (MWI, and while I can’t vouch for all the argumentation in that paper, I think that (a) quantum immortality is not a consequence of the MWI, and (b) this paper offers a valid argument for (a).
On a more meta point, I think the strategy of “hear something I disagree with → look for a debunking” isn’t likely to lead you to truth—if you were wrong, how would this strategy help you find out? You could carefully check both the argument you disagree with and the debunking, seeing which is flawed or finding a valid synthesis of both, but from the tone of your post I imagine you finding something that counts as a ‘debunking’ and not pursuing the matter further. I think it would be more wise to think carefully about the claims in the article, look for counterarguments, think carefully about those, and come to your own conclusions (where perhaps the ‘thinking’ involves discussing the issues with a friend, or on LessWrong or a similar forum). If you can’t make heads or tails of the issue, but think you can identify experts who can, then one other option would be to defer to expert consensus. Sadly, in this case, I can’t find a poll of experts, but looking at the Wikipedia page on Quantum Suicide and Immortality only quotes two experts (Max Tegmark and David Deutsch), neither of whom agree that quantum immortality works. As such, I suspect that belief in quantum immortality is very uncommon among experts, since otherwise I’d expect to see an expert quoted in the Wikipedia article supporting the view that quantum immortality is real.
I don’t see a good reason to use abbreviations in the topic of this post. When writing a post, think about what makes it easy for people to now what it’s about.
I think its arguments are pretty bad. “If you get hurt, that’s bad. If you get hurt then die, that’s worse. If you die without getting hurt, that’s just as bad. Therefore it’s bad if one of your copies dies.” It equivocates and doesn’t address the actual immortality.
You could try studying quantum mechanics until you understand enough of the big words in the article. Then read the article again with an open mind. If you haven’t studied quantum mechanics that much, what makes you sure that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies quantum immortality?
I believe that conciousness is non local so it can travel between branches. I believe we experiencis civilization level QI each time the earth avoids being hit by meteors or cosmic rays Overall, im just concerned about people peddling oblvionism with solid looking arguments.
Why do you believe what you believe?
Did you see my recent article which tentatively support QI: “Forever and Again: Necessary Conditions for “Quantum Immortality” and its Practical Implications”?
His view on personal identity as necessary connected with physical body is arbitrary at least—he uses it as a counterargument against big-world immortality. (p.3 “Here, personal identity is tracked by following a physically distinct copy”.)
The main error in Mallah’s article is that he assumes that after QS (quantum suicide) the measure of copies who will survive will be only 50 per cent, and this is equal to dying in 50 per cent cases.
First, the surprising thing is that the measure is not necessary declining after QS, if we take into account other my copies: forgetting just one bit of information is equal to two fold increase of the measure of a mind in the multiverse, because two its copies—which were different on that bit—now become equal. So, I can manipulate my measure by forgetting random bits of information, and if I forget 100 bits, it will increase my measure 10power30 times. (I recently had a post about it “Quantum immortality: Is decline of measure compensated by merging timelines?”
In normal life, such forgetting is happening all the time, but implied jumps of measure don’t have much effect on us. Thus, decline of measure after QS could be ignored.