I agree. They are both pointers to the same abstract computation. -------------------------- - Did you ever hear of "The Seattle Seven"? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys.
2009/2/10 Brent Meeker <[email protected]> > > Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > On 10 Feb 2009, at 18:44, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > >> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >>> 2009/2/10 Jack Mallah <[email protected]>: > >>> > >>> > >>>> This sort of talk about "random sampling" and "luck" is misleading > >>>> and is exactly why I broke down the roles of effective probability > >>>> into the four categories I did in the paper. > >>>> > >>>> If you are considering future versions of yourself, in the MWI > >>>> sense, there is no randomness involved. Depending on how you > >>>> define "you", "you" will either be all of them, or "you" are just > >>>> an observer-moment and can consider them to be "other people". > >>>> Regardless of definitions, this case calls for the use of Caring > >>>> Measure for decision making. > >>>> > >>> It seems that the disagreement may be one about personal identity. It > >>> is not clear to me from your paper whether you accept what Derek > >>> Parfit calls the "reductionist" theory of personal identity. Consider > >>> the following experiment: > >>> > >>> There are two consecutive periods of consciousness, A and B, in which > >>> you are an observer in a virtual reality program. A is your > >>> experiences between 5:00 PM and 5:01 PM while B is your experiences > >>> between 5:01 PM and 5:02 PM, subjective time. A is being implemented > >>> in parallel on two computers MA1 and MA2, so that there are actually > >>> two qualitatively identical streams of consciousness which we can > >>> call > >>> A1 and A2. At the end of the subjective minute, data is saved to disk > >>> and both MA1 and MA2 are switched off. An external operator picks > >>> up a > >>> copy of the saved data, walks over to a third computer MB, loads the > >>> data and starts up the program. After another subjective minute MB is > >>> switched off and the experiment ends. > >>> > >>> As the observer you know all this information, and you look at the > >>> clock and see that it is 5:00 PM. What can you conclude from this and > >>> what should you expect? To me, it seems that you must conclude that > >>> you are currently either A1 or A2, and that in one minute you will be > >>> B, with 100% certainty. Would you say something else? > >>> > >> I might say that while there are two computations, there is only one > >> "stream of consciousness". > > > > > > You are right, but I think that Stathis is right too. When Stathis > > talks about two identical stream of consciousness, he make perhaps > > just a little abuse of language, which seems to me quite justifiable. > > Just give a mirror to the observer so that A *can* (but does not) look > > in the mirror to see if he is implemented by MA1 or by MA2. Knowing > > the protocol the observer can predict that IF he look at the mirror > > the stream of consciousness will bifurcate into A1 and A2. > > I don't follow that. If A1 looks in the "mirror" and sees A2, then, ex > hypothesi, A2 looks in the "mirror" and sees A1 and the two streams of > consciousness remain identical. If consciousness is computation, > independent of > physical implementation, then computations that differ only in their > physical > realizations are identical and cannot be counted as more than one. > > Brent > > >Accepting > > the Y = II rule, that is bifurcation of "future" = differentiation of > > the whole story) makes the Stathis "abuse of language" an acceptable > > way to describe the picture. So Stathis get the correct expectation, > > despite the first person ambiguity in "two identical stream of > > consciousness". > > If two infinitely computations *never* differentiate, should we count > > them as one? I am not sure but I think we should still differentiate > > them. UD generates infinitely often such infinitely similar streams. > > That should play a role for the relative (to observer-moment) measure > > pertaining on the computations. OK? > > > > Bruno > > > > > > > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
