On 3/5/2012 9:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Mar 2012, at 19:29, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/4/2012 12:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Mar 2012, at 01:14, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/3/2012 12:43 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
comp can never be proved
Yes.
or disproved
False. By UDA.
so there is no point in worrying about it. I just assume it's true because I could
not function otherwise
Which is a nonsense. Nobody use the hypothesis that the brain is a machine in their
everyday life.
If tomorrow comp is refuted, you will not feel a difference. Just that both matter
and mind will be more mysterious.
In fact most people are unreflective dualists. They assume they have a magic soul so
that if their brain were replaced by a computer 'they' would become a philosophical
zombie while their 'real self' would be teletransported to heaven (or Platonia if
they happen to be mathematicians :-) ).
Yes. I agree. Many people are instinctively skeptical for comp, unless they are
molecular biologists.
Note that this is already explained in the modal logic of self-reference: machine
cannot know that they are machine, and they cannot believe it either. Comp is
necessarily (provably) counter-intuitive. There is a natural tension between the
hypostases S4Grz1 and G1, G1*, Z1*, X1*. The self-referentially correct machine cannot
avoid a conflict between any third person account of itsel (G1) f, and its 1p
"intuition" (S4Grz1).
On 3/3/2012 12:43 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I understand that seems possible. That is why I avoid in the thought experience,
both amnesia, death, or anything which would prevent the persons, before he opens
the reconstitution box, in W and M, to feel any different from the person in
Helsinki, apart from finding themselves in a box, and not knowing where they are. In
such case, to believe that you don't survive would prevent you to believe that you
can survive teleportation, and comp would be refuted.
But that seems to be equivocation on 'you'. 'I' have a certain continuity of thought
and more distant memories. The hypothetical teleportation would necessarily
(nomologically) produce a discontinuity in thought, so my identity would depend on my
memories.
The equivocation of "I" is well illustrated by the duplication, made possible by comp.
But the problem is avoided in the definition of comp by the quasi-operational "yes"
doctor. (It is not entirely operational because logically a zombie can also say "yes"
to the doctor, but of course we assume *you* are not a zombie).
Small changes in memory would still allow 'me' to identify myself with the Helsinki
person, but large ones, e.g. I remember living in Brussels not Helsinki, would make
'me' a different person.
Sure. But, by construction, there are no change at all in the memories. The personal
memories are annihilated and reconstituted integrally.
'I' am an inference, or a construct, from my memory (including unconscious
habit/memory).
Not only that. "you" are also a universal number/machine. It is more ""I"" which is an
inference than "I". The real first person, captured by Theatetus, is really where
""I"" and "I" intersect, so to speak.
So the question as to which probability I have finding myself in M or W is ill posed;
Here I strongly disagree. Despite what you say above, the question is well posed. The
candidate in Helsinki has all the information needed + his assumption that comp is
correct, which is part of the inference. He knows in advance that he
No 'he' won't. He knows or expects in advance that there will be two people who share
his memories and feel like him.
Keep in mind that he believes also that he survives that experience.
But it is just a confusion of our language that assumes the continuity of a single
thing that can be duplicated.
There is no continuity. Only a computation which bifurcates.
I don't see that it's any different than taking a 3p view and asking which body is
the Helsinki one, the one in Moscow or the one in Washington. Most people would say
"Neither" and that similarly one can say 'he' doesn't feel to be in either place, it is
some duplicates that feel they are in W or M. They are only identified with the guy in
Helsinki because they share many attributes with him - i.e. similar body and memories.
But that would be an argulent for saying "No" to the doctor.
That depends on what you care about. Would you rather have children or live
forever?
The new guy with the artificial brain, would be someone else, with a similar body and
memories, but still someone else.
But if you accept the idea that you survive teleportation, then you survive duplication.
It is just that you can't predict with certainty which future among W and M, you will
live, before the experience.
You might read my more detailed comment to John K Clark, and perhaps comment it.
will be reconstituted in both W and M. He knows with certainty (with respect to his
comp assumption) that in both W and M he will find himself to be in one place, and
that he cannot know which one in advance without adding a magic ability contradicting
comp. The question bears explicitly on its singular future personal experience, and in
this situation, the question is as mundane than any question about a well defined
random variable. The duplication will be, from its first person perspective,
equivalent with a Bernouilli experience, despite the equivocation of the "I". That's
why we do such experience, to avoid any problem due to the "I" equivocation. All we
need is to define the 3-I by the body described at the right level, and the 1-I, which
in UDA is nothing more than the personal memory, which is supposed by construction to
be not altered in the annihilation/reconstitution move.
it assumes that there is one 'I' and we can ask where this 'I' finds himself. But
there is no 'I' in this sense.
Of course there is such an "I". Once your body has been reconstituted in both place,
they both knows very well where that "I" feels to be, and this is known in advanced
(believed and true, given that we assume the candidate believe in comp and that comp
is true).
Known in advance by whom? Not by either of the I's in M or W. That's why I said there is
no "I" in the relevant sense of having been in Helsinki.
Such an "I" is well defined. It is the owner of the memory together with the fact that
those memory are known true, by us.
But that "I" is not well defined because it can be duplicated and hence the "owner of
the memory" is indefinite.
Of course, that "I", the 1-I, is not well defined. In AUDA it is even proved that it is
not definable (accepting the classical theory of knowledge).
But from his 1-I point of view, his *experience* is always well defined, comp just makes
it not predictable, like if he look at the comp-multiplication movie (in my comment to
JK Clark).
But you seem to infer from "experince is always well defined" to "the experience is
*his*". As Bertrand Russell remarked, Descartes stopped one step short in his exercise of
doubt. "I think therefore I am." is dubious. He should have taken one for step to find
"There is thinking" is indubitable. It's the "I" that is an inference. So while the
experience is well defined the meaning of "his" is ambiguous. The experience of the man
in Washington belongs to the man in Washington, but not to the man in Helsinki.
The "owner of the diary/memory" *is* the definition (not a complete one!) of the "1-I",
in the UDA. That's work well enough to get the first person indeterminacy, and the reversal.
In the iterated WM duplication, most resulting persons, which by comp are still
conscious rational people, will see that their memory contains incompressible random
strings.
I don't see how it is possible to remember an incompressible string - since it must be of
infinite length.
Brent
So most will have a first person experience of indeterminacy, and in the iterated
duplication, the compressible experience plays the role of the white rabbits. They are
excessively rare. That will be part of the mind-body problem in comp. The UD plays a non
trivial role, there, akin to the Everett universal wave.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
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