George Levy writes:
Hi Quentin, Stathis, Bruno
It all depends how you see the plenitude, OMs and the branching. Is
consciousness like a traveller in a network of roads traversing the
plenitude, some roads branching some roads merging?
If yes then you could have several independent consciousness occupying the
same spot, or the same OM. Then their measure at that spot is their sum.
This approach is a third person point of view and it leads to the concept
of absolute measure.
If you see consiousness as the road itself, then measure is not increased
after a merge and does not decrease after a split. An OM is just a point on
the road. If the road turns unexpectedly to avoids an obstacle (like
quantum suicide or just plain death), then consiousness will just move on
into a direction which has a low 3-rd person probability but unity first
person probability. Viewing consciousness as a network of roads is a first
person point of view and it leads to the concept of relative measure:
Measure is always 1 where you are. From a given point you may reach many
points - Then measure increases with respect to that point. Or reversibly,
from many points you may reach only one point. Then measure decreases.
Bruno writes:
>neither elimination of information, nor duplication of
information.
The crux of the matter is the concept of indistinguishability: whether you
consider two identical persons (OMs) occupying two identical universes the
same person (point on the road). It is clear that if you consider the
problem from the information angle, then duplication of information does
not increase the measure of that information. This would support the
relative interpretation of measure.
In addition to the above arguments, consider the problem from the point of
view of the subject. If multiple copies of a person are created and run in
parallel for a period, what difference does this make to his experience? It
seems to me that there is no test or experiment the person could do which
would allow him to determine if he is living in a period of high measure or
low measure. If an OM is the smallest discernible unit of conscious
experience, it therefore seems reasonable to treat multiple instantiations
of the same OM as one OM.
Stathis Papaioannou
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