On 3/22/2012 4:47 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/22/2012 1:31 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> This illustrates the problem I have with your ideas, it's
not your mathematics it's the assumption you make right at
the start which is the foundation for everything else.
> Which assumption?
Your assumption that if a identical copy of you is made everything
may seen identical to a third party but to itself, to the copy and
the original, they would somehow have different viewpoints even if
everything they saw was the same and they remained identical. I think
that is just plain wrong. Lately you seem to be equivocating somewhat
on this point and everybody has a right to change their mind, but if
you do then you'll have to rewrite your proof from page 1 because
that assumption was important.
> Those admit precise and simple definition, related to the
duplication and multiplication thought experience.
First person = content of a diary bring in the duplication devices.
OK, but the original and the copy will both write in their diaries "I
walked into the duplicating chamber, the machine was turned on and a
copy of me appeared right in front of me face to face", the copy and
the original agree on what occurred, so according to you the first
person perspective, the one that both you and I believe is most
important, is identical; so there is only one perspective, one
consciousness.
I don't think Bruno disagreed with this. I know I didn't. The one
consciousness only becomes two when there is something different - in
the perception of the outside (Washington vs Moscow) or some random
internal change. Your thought experiment shows that comp implies that
persons bodies can be duplicated without duplicating their
consciousness (at least for a moment or two). But as I said I don't
see that this invalidates Bruno's argument which I take to be that
quantum uncertainty can be modeled by uncertainty in personal identity.
Hi Brent,
Could you offer some sketch of how quantum uncertainty can be
modeled by uncertainty in personal identity? The uncertainty of QM
follows from the mathematical properties of canonical conjugates
(roughly, there exists a Fourier transformation between them) and the
general non-commutativity of observables (roughly, as they have complex
number valued amplitudes). Quantum uncertainty is not "just randomness"
or stochasticity, the evolution of QM systems is the template of a
deterministic process. It is just that it is impossible to recover the
information required to make a local prediction that makes it seem
"classically random" (aka decoherence). I think that we are taking the
"branching tree" analogy used by many to explain the many worlds
interpretation way too literally here... We should disabuse ourselves of
that concept.
The uncertainty generated by the copy and paste operations of
computation follows from the fissioning of the first person sense of
self, so it is indeed generates a "branching tree graph" IFF we ignore
cul-de-sacs and other delete operations, cycles and non-monotic
relations. Additionally, we assume that conservation laws, which would
be "no new rules or data" restrictions for computations. Where is the
bridge connecting these concepts? What about the fact that intercourse
between humans create "babies", which would be entirely new minds? How
do they fix into these scheme?
Onward!
Stephen
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