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Statistical Immortality

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8 points3pt141598 comments

Seems like an attempt to reinvent the _Permutation City_ argument. In any event, as formulated, I don't think it quite works:

> Since there are an infinite number of universes, an infinite number of dimensions, or an infinite number of non-identical universe “cycles”, there are an infinite number of particles and particle arrangements.

The last claim does not follow without additional assumptions about the nature of universes.

why doesn't the claim that there are infinitely many particle arrangements follow from there being infinite non-identical universe pairs?

Particle arrangements aren't the only property of a universe. Imagine a universe with 1 particle in it. Imagine a second universe with the same particle but +1 volume bigger. Not identical. Now imagine a third universe with the same particle arrangement with +3 volume bigger... And so on for all natural numbers. An infinite number of universes, each distinct, with the same particle arrangement. We can do this same trick for all sorts of universe properties (laws, energies, geometries).

If we define universes as the particle arrangements, then it would then logically follow that infinitely many unique universes implies infinitely many particle arrangements (a ≡ b; a; ∴ b).

(This is common to many Eternal Recurrence theories as well; need some assumption which prevents repeating patterns from 'running out the clock' and not exploring the full range of possibilities.)

all these "infinite" have different meanings, in particular cardinality, and using just "infinite" makes it into a senseless babble that can have any meaning one would ascribe to it

Your point about the universes is true. Thanks for the feedback, I'll update the blog post. As an aside, I've never heard of Permutation City, seems interesting.

Alternately:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/lazy-immortality....

Wouldn't it be nice to wake up and find that we were all immortal? That would save a whole lot of work, uncertainty, and existential angst - and we humans are nothing if not motivated to do less work. The best of us toil endlessly in search of saving a few minutes here and a few minutes there. So it happens that there exist a range of metaphysical lines of thought - outside the bounds of theology - that suggest we humans are immortal. We should cast a suspicious eye upon any line of philosophy that would be extraordinarily convenient if true, human nature being what it is.

He doesn't actually believe it:

> I personally reject the proof because I don’t believe all the premises, but if the premises are revealed to be true, then I would accept that death is unattainable.

Most take the _Permutation City_ argument as a _reductio_ about computational theories of identity, and a challenge to figure out what computations really are since simple theories lead to such odd consequences. (This is how Boltzmann brains were received as well.)

Interesting. I did some heavy searching for "statistical immortality" before writing the piece, but I failed to find someone who had written about it before. Thanks for the link.

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