Saladin
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If You force the outcome to be soly on Your decision alone and if Your decision is clear, free and consistent with a specific philosophy, then You must be judge acc. to this philosophy.
Which philosophy is valid in a Least Convenient Possible World?
If everything I do to "humanely" help the patients without commiting murder to the strange ris futile AND and if none of the patients would be willing to do a self-sacrifice to save the others AND if the sole and only decision to this situation would lie on me, then (my clearly idealized) I would teach the donor all the neccesary skills to kill and harvest me to save the others.
If... (read more)
As hard as I try I cannot fathom the: "If it's untestable, anything is possible - if anything is possible, nothing is possible - nothing is the simplest and therefore best explanation" argument.
Everything requires a reason (the Existence of a reason or cause - if its comprehensible and testable is a separate question) The fundamental question always go back to "why and how Existence at all". Of course we cannot make direct measurements regarding the origin of Existence - but we can certanly base our hypothesis and theories on our acumulated knowledge and daily, testable physics. The corect logic would therefore be to extend all the known and proven constants into the unknown... (read 695 more words →)
If I go back to the original situation: 1 healty stranger-donor to save a dozen transplant patiens and what to to: It always surprizes me why no one suggest to simply talk with the stranger, explain him the situation and ask him, if he would willingly sacrifice his life to save the other dozen. Is it so hard to imagine that such altruism (or an exchange for a small token of appreciation: commemorative plaque, nameds street/building, etc.) could be realistically expected?
If alien means "not comprehensible" (not even through our best magination), then it's folly to talk about such a thing. If we cannot even imagine something to be realistically possible - then for all practical purposes (until objectively shown otherwise) it isnt. Or using modal logic - Possiblly possible = not realistically possible. Physically/logically possible = realistically possible. The later always has bigger weight and by Occam = higher possibility (higher chance to be correct/be closert to truth)
If we imagine the designer is not acting irrationaly or random - then all potential motives go into survival/reproduction and max. p/p. The notion of max. p/p is directly related to the stage of inteligence and self-awareness of the organism - but survival/reproduction is hardwired in all the evolutionary types of life we know.
Wouldn't it be rational to assume, that what/whoever designed the simulation, would do so for for the same reason that we know all inteligent life complies to: Survival/reproduction and maximizing its pleasure / minimizing pain?
A priori assumptions arent the best ones, but it seems to me that would be a valid starting point that leads to 2 conclusions:
a) the designer is drastically handicapped with its resources and our very limited simulation is the only one running (therefore the question - why is it exactly like it is - why this design at all if we're talking in several "episodes")
b) the designer is can run all the simulations he wants simultaneusly and ours... (read 457 more words →)
My problem with MWI is not the massive amounts of worlds - but how they are created.
How do You reconcile MVI with the 1st Law of thermodynamics?
I thought that in closed quantum system there are only probabilities of a true indeterminisitc nature - and the only deterministic part is at the collapse of the wave function (where the positions, speed,... are truly determined - but impossible to measure correctly).
Still the fact remains that one universe is holding observers and even there is only one sollution to past eternity - that of a cyclic universe of the same kind and same parameters of the big bang - the futures of the universe would be determined by the acts of those observers. Different acts of observing - different universes in series (but strictly with the same physical constants).
All the consequences of observing in those universes would so have to be realized.
I always say "physical/logical" to note the known laws of physics of our universe and the logic that describes it.
If you say only "physical" - then you limit yourselve only to that which is directly observable, testable and foreseeable. And that hinders a more relaxed approach of discussing such "far-out" possibilities as required in such cases.
Point being: IMO the only valid physical/logical speculations are those that relate to the physics and logic we know of (or a variation of it in an indeterministic universe),
Only Past Eternity stays completely (or mostly) in such a physical/logical frame. Creatio Ex Nihilo is on the other hands, completely out of it with no hypothetical and... (read more)
Doesn't quantum indeterminism (edit: quantum uncertanty) prevent that?
Any kind of quantum fluctuation, which "could" have had a makroscopic, relativistic effect must have had such an effect (f.e, in an early universe).
Either you except indeterminism or a nonlocal hidden variable - my guess is indeterminism is far more exceptable.
Can I ask a related question? Is there a physical model available that allows for immortality (eternally stable structure) in a cyclic model of the universe only (limited space with finite time between cycles)?
MWI and other parallel universe models seem to allow for suitable ways of replication and escape - but I never found anything related for a cyclic model. There is talk of surviving the Heat death (superconductor based computers) and Big Crunch/Big bang (using suitable black holes, etc..) - but there is one specific problem I haven't seen addressed: Particle decay.
If everything else works as planned and a future stable structure is created - in a cyclic model - Is there any way to prevent it from catastrophically desintegrating through particle decay (which is bound to happen in enough finite time)?