From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 18:53:56 MDT
Rafal,
> gts wrote:
>
>
> Webster defines "immortal" as "exempt from death" (surely this is the
> common sense definition as well as the dictionary defintion). A person
> with a 1/32768 chance of dying is not "exempt from death." Thus the
> people in Eliezer's scheme are not immortal.
>
> ### No, because 32767 out of every 32768 of these organisms
> are exempt from death, in the infinite time series so considered.
> Your ignorance as to who exactly is the unlucky one doesn't make all
> others mortal.
Like the previous poster, you invoke the frequentist interpretation of
probability, not realizing that your interpretation is not written in
stone. The Bayesian interpretation of probability gives a different
conclusion.
You speak of "ignorance as to who exactly is the unlucky one". To speak
of such ignorance is to presume, wrongly, that knowledge of the unlucky
one is in theory obtainable in advance of the unlucky one's death,
presumably by those who would not be so ignorant. But in reality there
are no such facts about the future that exist in the present about which
one can be ignorant.
-gts
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