On 19 Mar 2012, at 17:40, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 7:22 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
> I didn't pretend there are two points of view in your symmetric
room thought experiment.
Great, then like me you believe that although there are 2 living
human bodies and 2 living human brains inside that symmetrical room
there is only one human consciousness.
Everyone agree with this.
<snip>
> I think Bruno also agreed that consciousness only split when
there was some difference in perception - which he equated with
opening the transporter door.
I think he did too and I'm glad of that, but he also thought that if
the body of the Helsinki man was annihilated the instant after the
information in it was read and the information used to make
identical living bodies in Moscow and Washington then the Helsinki
man is dead;
I have never said that. That would contradict blatantly the UDA step
one, which is that comp makes us survive classical teleportation. I
have just said that the guy in Helsinki has been annihilated, to
remind you the protocol of step 3.
and that is inconsistent, or at least it is if he also thinks (as
I'm sure he does) that the idea of the Bruno of yesterday or even
the Bruno of one nanosecond ago is dead is just silly.
Of course. You are just correcting your own misinterpretation of what
is being said. It is obvious that if the guy of Helsinki died, the
probability to have the future feeling of being in W or in M would be
zero and comp would be finished.
> Even if the brain is strictly classical and deterministic, the
world still has plenty of thermal randomness that would very quickly
cause the two brains to diverge into different conscious (and
subconscious) thoughts.
Maybe, but nobody knows. Even if it's true at the instant of
duplication the 2 are identical, and I certainly never denied that
thermal vibrations, or any other environmental factors, could cause
the two to differentiate and the situation become unsymmetrical.
> If you exchange two things that are identical except for position
*while no one is watching* then the change is unobservable.
Yes, and the faster the exchange the harder to observe.
> But big classical things have continuity in spacetime
You know that only because that's what you've always observed, but
there is a reason for that. Although there is no law of logic or
physics that forbids their existence you have never seen 2 big
things that are identical, current technology is just not up to the
job of making them, but that may not always be true.
> if someone is watching, they can tell that the bodies have been
exchanged.
It's interesting you should mention that because it relates to a
personal problem I have and you might be the right man to give me
some advice. About a year ago I started building a matter
duplicating machine. It could find the position and velocity of
every atom in a human being to the limit imposed by Heisenberg's
law. It then used this information to construct a copy and it does
it all in a fraction of a second and without harming the original in
any way. You may be surprised that I was able to build such a
complicated machine, but you wouldn't be if you knew how good I am
with my hands. The birdhouse I made is simply lovely and I have all
the latest tools from Sears.
I was a little nervous but I decided to test the machine by
duplicating myself. The day before yesterday I walked into the
chamber, it filled with smoke (damn those radio shack transformers)
there was a flash of light, and then 3 feet to my left was a man who
looked exactly like me. It was at that
instant that the full realization of the terrible thing I did hit
me. I yelled "This is monstrous, there can only be one of me", my
copy yelled exactly the same thing. I thought he was trying to mock
me, so I reached for my 44 magnum that I always carry with me (I
wonder why people think I'm strange) and pointed it at my double. I
noted with alarm that the double also had a gun and he was pointed
it at me. I shouted "you don't have the guts to pull the trigger,
but I do". Again he mimicked my words and did so in perfect
synchronization, this made me even more angry and I pulled the
trigger, he did too. My gun went off but his gun jammed. I buried
him in my back yard.
Now that my anger has cooled and I can think more clearly I've had
some pangs of conscious about killing a living creature, but that's
not what really torments me. How do I know I'm not the copy?
Good! That's the first person indeterminacy confirmation. You could
have been better prepared in advance for that ignorance!
I feel exactly the same as before, but would a copy feel different?
Actually there is a way to be certain, I have a video tape of the
entire experiment. My memory is that the copy first appeared 3 feet
to my LEFT, (if I had arranged things so he appeared 3 feet in front
of me face to face things would have been more symmetrical, like
looking in a mirror) if the tape shows the original walking into the
chamber and the copy materializing 3 feet to his RIGHT, then I would
know that I am the copy. I'm afraid to look at the tape, should I
be? If I found out I was the copy what should I do?
So you get that one bit of information, which confirms the p=1/2.
Bruno
I suppose I should morn the death of John Clark, but how can I, I'm
not dead. If I am the copy would that mean that I have no real past
and my life is meaningless? Is it important, or should I just burn
the tape and forget all about it?
John K Clark
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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