Okay. I.. think my preference is a cached preference from seeing other people do it. On the other hand, my brain offers a signal-to-noise ratio response, that most discussion level posts should meet a certain standard (I am not aware of what the standard is).
I imagine that top level posts are well-worked through, with new ideas most people are very interested in here and can have a large and fruitful discussions about. Then discussion posts are like the former except can be less worked out and/or more specialised, like all the formal logic ones we're getting. Then open threads have actual discussion topics. I like this idea.
This topic isn't new and there isn't much new offered in the post. On the other hand, I would advise the author to read Tegmark's 'Our Mathematical Universe' to find an excellent discussion of what the MWI implies for immortality and number of yous.
No RSS, just preferences about where non-substantive posts show up.
The universe is running down - there are only so many sources of negentropy that can be used for the work of life and intelligence. But thermodynamics is a statistical process, an average of a great many small processes. The standard model of MWI makes a certain hash of statistics - in a vanishingly small number of Everett branches, those statistical averages go right out the window: all the air in a room flies to one side, or an egg unscrambles itself.
In those universes in which life continues to survive after all the stars burn out, and all other known sources of useful energy have been turned into waste heat... might it be possible for said life to continue to survive in at least some timelines, by feeding on thermodynamic miracles?
And, at least as important, which forms of thermodynamic miracles are the most common, and which are most potentially useful? (After all, in any given volume of space ,a few electrons appearing out of relative nothingness is much more likely than an entire Boltzmann Brain appearing, and depending on how stable the matter-energy substrate that life at the time is using to maintain itself between miracles, said substrate might decay before some kinds of miracles ever occur...)
Edit: Question posed in recent 'Open Thread' at http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jww/open_thread_1824_march_2014/api5