Wei Dai wrote:
> I can think of several paradoxes and they all relate to the fact that
> averages taken over the universe are not guaranteed to converge if the
> universe is infinite. Expectations are a kind of average, and they do not
> necessarily converge either. Here is an example.
> The only way I can see to get around the paradox is to assume that you are
> a priori more likely to be near the center/beginning of the universe (or
> some other point), and that's what I meant by the preferred position. The
> exact choice of the preferred position, how "near" is defined, and how
> much more likely you are to be near it should all be part of the
> hypothesis that you are considering.
> I wasn't being very precise when I said the conventional model has a
> preferred position which is the Big Bang. What I meant is that the Big
> Bang is a natural choice for the preferred position. There are many ways
> to define "near" and thus to pick point number 2. The simplest would be to
> to pick the point that comes immediately after the Big Bang in the rest
> frame of the universe.
I think there is an infinity of such points, and because of quantum randomness, those points would (with prob 1) house an infinity of consciousness-instances.
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics