On 3/6/2012 4:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 05 Mar 2012, at 19:23, meekerdb wrote:
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 point here is that with the statement above, you die with an artificial brain, which
refute the comp assumption.
I may 'die' but I have two progeny who are as identical to me as I am to who I
was yesterday.
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.
Why? Both the one in M and in W knows perfectly well that they were in Helsinki
before.
OK. But then what is it they 'knew in advance'?
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*".
Yes. When an 1-experience is well defined, then the 1-owner is well defined too. He is
the one having that experience.
You may say the owner is defined by the experience, but then who is the owner becomes
ill-defined under duplication. It spoils the continuity of 'he'.
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.
The 1-I is not inferred. It is experienced, or lived.
I thought you had already agreed that 'I', meaning the persistent being, is inferred from
experience. Do you think that you directly experience continuity in time? That may be,
but it is contrary to the idea of observer moments and digital states.
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 guy in Washington knows that he is the guy who was in Helsinki. He has the same
initial diary, plus "I am in W now".
But equally the guy in Moscow 'knows' he is the guy who was in Helsinki. So when you ask
the guy in Helsinki what he will experience, 'he' is ambiguous.
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.
I don't know why you say that. Incompressible infinite string are usually defined by an
infinite string whose finite initial fragment are incompressible. A finite string is
incompressible if it is about the same length to the shorter program generating it.
But that depends on the program and the coding, does it not? And given a fixed finite
string there is a coding that makes it trivial compressible.
The majority of finite strings are incompressible, although the incompressibility of
almost all individual string is undecidable for a fixed machine.
OK, so memory contains strings that are incompressible by that brain.
Brent
--
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.
