Le 22-juin-05, à 15:05, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
Hal Finney writes:
I was trying to use Stathis' terminology when I wrote about the
probability of dying. Actually I am now trying to use the ASSA and I
don't have a very good idea about what it means to specify a
subjective
next moment. I think ultimately it is up to each OM as to what it
views
as its predecessor moments, and perhaps which ones it might like to
consider its successor moments.
Among the problems: substantial, short-term mental changes might be
so great that the past OM would not consider the future OM to be the
same person. This sometimes even happens with our biological bodies.
I can easily create thought experiments that bend the connections
beyond
the breaking poing. There appears to be no bright line between the
degree to which a past and future OM can be said to be the same
person,
even if we could query the OM's in question.
Another problem: increases in measure from a past OM to a future OM.
We can deal with decreases in measure by the traditional method of
expected probability. But increases in measure appear to require
probability > 1. That doesn't make sense, again causing me to
question
the whole idea of a subjective probability distribution over possible
next moments.
I agree that it's difficult to specify what counts as a subjective
"next moment". That has to do with the way our minds have evolved to
think, and we just have to leave it as unspecified or arrive at some
arbitrary definition when considering physical theories.
I think that the better option consists in leaving it as unspecified.
Now logic and algebra has been invented for reasoning with unspecified
propositions or objects. I am thinking again how to convince you (all)
how a minimal amount investing in (modal) logic could be most helpful
especially with respect to the question of what OMs are and what are
the possible relations between OMs, etc.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
