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Comment by devicerandom on Timeless Identity · 2008-06-03T09:38:58.000Z · LW · GW

I have two (unrelated) comments:

1) I very much enjoyed the concept of "timeless physics", and in a MWI framework it sounds particularly elegant and intuitive. How does relativity fit into the picture? What I mean is, the speed of light, c, somehow gives an intrinsic measure of time to us. In what does c translates in timeless terms?

2) About your argument for cryonics, what about irreversible processes? Is quantum physics giving you a chance to beat entropy? When you die, a lot of irreversible processes happen into your brain (e.g. proteins and membranes break down). It is true that probably there are less changes in a cryonized brain than in a sleeping one, but it's the nature of the changes that's fundamently different. Of course no information is really lost, but it's irreversibly dispersed in the environment well before you have a chance to get it back. Cryonics to me looks like an attempt to unscramble an egg -only with the egg being frozen when it starts to scramble, but already a bit scrambled. I admit it is better than rotting in a grave (and I'd like to sign up for it) but has anyone tried to measure the hopes?

Comment by devicerandom on Einstein's Superpowers · 2008-05-30T10:07:12.000Z · LW · GW

I don't get it. As far as I understand it, "being Einstein" is just a combination of 1)luck (being at the right time and right place) and 2)being born on tails of the distributions of a bunch of variables describing your neural processes. What do you want to mean with this post, Eliezer?