Now, whether that distributed information is 'experiencing' anything is arguable,

As far as I know, the latter is what people are worrying about when they worry about ceasing to exist.

Ahhh... that never occurred to me. I was thinking entirely in terms of risk of data loss.

(Which is presumably a reason why your comment's been downvoted a bunch; most readers would see it as missing the point.)

I don't understand the voting rules or customs. Downvoting people who see things from a different perspective is... a custom designed to keep out the undesirables? I am sorry I missed the point but I learned nothing from the downvoting. I learned a great deal from your helpful comment - thank you.

I thought one of the points of the discussion was to promote learning among the readership.

Substitute "within almost any given branch" — I think my point still goes through.

Ah... see, that's where I think the 'lost' minds are likely hiding out, in branches of infinitesimal measure. Which might sound bad, unless you have read up on the anthropic principle and realize that /we/ seem to be residing on just such a branch. (Read up on the anthropic principle if our branch of the universal tree seems less than very improbable to you.)

I'm not worried that there won't be a future branch that what passes for my consciousness (I'm a P-zombie, I think, so I have to say "what passes for") will surivve on. I'm worried that some consciousnesses, equivalent in awareness to 'me' or better, might be trapped in very unpleasant branches. If "I " am permanently trapped in an unpleasant branch, I absolutely do want my consciousness shut down if it's not serving some wonderful purpose that I'm unaware of. If my suffering does serve such a purpose then I'm happy to think of myself as a utility mine, where external entities can come and mine for positive utilons as long as they get more positive utlions out of me than the negative utilons they leave me with.

My perceived utility function often goes negative. When that happens, I would be extremely tempted to kill my meat body if there were a guarantee it would extinguish my perceived consciousness permanently. That would be a huge reward to me in that frame of mind, not a loss. This may be why I don't see these questions the way most people here do.

P.S. Is there a place the rating system is explained? I have looked casually and not found it with a few minutes of effort; it seems like it should be explained prominently somewhere. Are downgradings intended as a punitive training measure ("don't post this! bad monkey!") or just a guide to readers (don't bother reading this, it's drivel, by our community standards). I was assuming the latter.