On 3/23/2012 11:47 AM, John Mikes wrote:
Stephen, - especially to the 2nd part of your reply -
I do not speak about a 'certain' uncertainty (i.e. 'quantum') I speak
about the concept: "uncertainty" is inherent in whatever we think
about, because in our 'model' of the knowable world there is only part
of the total (see the historical additions and project such to the
future) and we THINK about yesterday's knowable as "all of them".
Accordingly EVERYTHING is uncertain. Logic, too.
Intercourse does not create babies: it gives a chance to a sperm and
egg to find each other in a way to start a genome. You can do it in a
test-tube. And - the babies are human beings, with (working?)
complexity including mental aspects, (even in mentally impaired
persons) which develops in the course of gestation - according to
Princeton's Singer even later, after birth. So please, do not fall for
the political haruspexs who cry 'murder' in case of an abortion, the
murder is saved for killing persons, i.e. full complexities developed
and evolved from the parasite-state (embryo - fetus) into a
substantial HUMAN being.
Now about identicity:
If you look for it... there are similarities in many unexpected
relations between off springs and ancestors, maybe not the total ones
as e.g. a clone, but the
identicity lives on in the genetic sequences.
BTW: what do you mean by "a mind" - to deem it "absolutely NEW"?
I agree with your rejecting 'randomness, or stochasticity' mainly on
the basis of the above mentioned ignorance about the wholeness, but
also on the basis that 'unatached' occurrences would make ANY ordered
description futile.
Russell replied to an earlier such remark of mine with the correction
into (as I recall) "conditional randomness". Which is not random in my
view.
John M
Dear John,
As to uncertainty, it seems to be a quisicrystal-coated beastie for
there are far to many models of it and probabilities in general. I long
for the day when a bright young mind figures of the path to unify the
best of these models and gives us a clear principle with which to reject
the nonsensical ones. The one that I like is Shun'ichi Amari
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shun%27ichi_Amari>'s "information geometry
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Geometry>" idea merely because
it appeals to my visual type thinking.
Fear not for I was only considering the unassisted version of
procreation as a default that is independent of the technologies of the
time and place... As I see it "personhood" is a function and not a
"thing" so I have a well reasoned (IMHO) aversion to the caterwaulings
of those that would merely appeal to emotion for as a justification of a
claim. Emotional revulsion is never proof to the contrary or impossibility.
Onward!
Stephen
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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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