Re: [SL4] Late 21st Century wisdom, available now!
From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Aug 16 2000 - 01:17:38 MDT
Mark Plus wrote:
>
> My friend, long-time cryonicist and theorist of physical immortality Mike
> Perry, Ph.D., has managed to publish his groundbreaking book, _Forever For
> All_. Link to,
>
> http://www.upublish.com/books/perry.htm
>
Thanks for the reference. I have begun reading it. The author makes
two fundamentally questionable and untestable assumptions apparently
central to his work. The first is the assumption of "Unboundedness" by
which he apparently manys something closely akin to the Many Worlds
hypothesis but more personalized. As I understand it he believes that
all possible reality happenings do happen in some universe including
alternate versions of you and I. At the least this hypothesis is utterly
untestable without the ability to visit these alternate universes. It
does not follow that even given infinite time and infinite extent that
all possible permutations of all events will occur because the number of
events, much less their permutations is a higher order infinity (as I
see it anyway) than the infinity of universes and time.
The author's second fundamental premise is the premise of
Interchangeability is a premise that things that are similar enough
(expressed clumsily by me) are in all interesting aspects identical. In
particular the author seems to use this and the first hypothesis to say
that the individual resurrection/recreation of each of us is
inevitable. But surely this does not follow. For me to be fully
resurrected would require not only recreating this same DNA patterned
human being but also somehow keeping and reloading the same knowledge
and memories. Scientifically you may be able to create a perfect clone
of me ages hence but unless you have managed to capture and store my
memories and fundamental knowledge patterns that future being will in no
real sense be "me".
The author tries to distinquish his believe from what he labels
supernaturalism. Yet these beliefs are to me as incredible as any I've
seen in any mystical texts. If you are going to believe the above then
why not believe that the nano (or femto) - technology based superbeing
already has come to exist in some place/time/universe and having
transcended all time/universe barriers therefore already exists
everywhere including right here. If this was so perhaps some of those we
have called mystics actually manage to tie into a bit of this
super-being. Such a hypothesis is not much more incredible than the
above and is similarly difficult if not impossible to test (without the
cooperation of said being anyway).
More thoughts later...
- samantha
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: Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:35 MDT