RE: Quantum tunneling and human immortality

From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 16:01:04 MDT


Eliezer wrote:

> Do you still not understand why it is not
> mathematically necessary to be "exempt from death"
> in order to experience an infinite lifespan?

I believe I understand your argument. I would paraphrase it this way: in
a world which there is a 99% probability of living forever, 99% of
people will live forever without having been anointed beforehand to be
"exempt from death." These 99% of people will have been "lucky" as
someone here put it.

However such observations can be made only in retrospect, after the data
has been collected. Looking to the future we cannot know who among us is
going to escape death, and so we each must accept as real the risk that
we will die. If we each have a real risk of dying then we are not
immortal.

This takes us back to the problem of interpreting probabilities
(frequentism vs Bayesianism).

-gts



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