On 3/26/2012 9:14 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
>> Give me a example of 2 conscious beings that are identical by what
you call
"3-view" but NOT identical by what you call "1-view", show they deserve
different names, do that and I might get a idea what you're talking
about; but
don't give me that diaries business, if the diaries are different a
third party
can see that just as well as the individuals who wrote them. Just one
clear non
mystical example where objectively 2 things are identical but
subjectively they
are not, that's all I ask and I don't think it's a unreasonable request
as your
proof depends on there being such a difference.
> You ask me something impossible
I agree it is impossible, so this distinction between "3-view" and "1-view" that is so
important in your proof turns out to be rather silly.
> They are different because one live in W and the other live in W.
I previously said that it is probably meaningless to talk about the position of a
consciousness and you agreed with me, so all the above means is that one consciousness
forms memories caused by images of Moscow the other forms memories caused by images of
Washington, the images are different so the memories are different, so the consciousness
of the two is different so they become different people. The thing that differentiates
the minds is not position but different memories, if Washington and Moscow were
identical cities then there would still be just one consciousness, but the cities are
very different so the two minds are two. Everybody agrees that if 2 minds are different
then there are 2 different minds, but I insist that if 2 minds are identical then there
is really only one mind (not to be confused with brains) while your proof is built on
the assumption that if 2 minds are identical they are still distinguishable at least to
themselves,
I don't see that Bruno has argued that. He has only argued that the two minds become
different when they have different experiences (in M and W) and they are both the same
person (in the usual sense) as the one in Helsinki.
and that is the reason I don't think its productive to study your proof after
that point.
> No 1-view can be duplicated.
Why the hell not?
Because a 1-view=mind; they can only be two if they are different (c.f. your own
explication above).
> Both people in the two cities feel one and entire.
Both people will feel IDENTICALLY until differences between Moscow and Washington cause
them to form different memories.
>>> There is a sense for the guy in W to say that he has been
annihilated in
Helsinki and reconstituted in W.
>> Then you get annihilated every time you get on a bus going from
point A to
point B. Do you really want to say that?
> That will be indeed a consequence of comp. It can be said that quantum
mechanics,
which I do not assume, *confirms* that aspect of comp. Good point.
So you have redefined the word "annihilated" so that it now means pretty much nothing at
all, and thus we will need to invent a new word if we wish to communicate the old
meaning of "annihilated".
You seem to recognize that things are different when SOMEONE IS DUPLICATED! So you should
recognize that words like "annihilated" may take a different meaning when you can
duplicate a person and destroy one copy.
> The 1-comp indeterminacy is not controversial
If this thing you call "1-comp indeterminacy" were untrue then we would always know what
the environment was going to throw at us next and we could always predict our actions,
very obviously this is untrue so of course "1-comp indeterminacy" is not controversial.
It's not new or deep either.
> The quantum indeterminacy is controversial,
The explanation for quantum indeterminacy is controversial but the fact that we observe
quantum indeterminacy is not.
Did you read Adrian Kent's paper?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0624v1.pdf
He raises some of the same problems you do, except he is pointing out they occur in
quantum mechanics and Everett's interpretation has the same problems as Bruno's
transporter thought experiment.
> Indeed in most textbooks that indeterminacy is still explained by the
collapse of
the wave, etc.
The Copenhagen theory does explain it. And the non-local hidden variable pilot wave
theory explains it. And the Many Worlds theory explains it. We have too many
explanations, and although they are very different at least so far they all predict the
same experimental results. I admit to having a personal preference for Many Worlds but
that's not how truth is determined, the Universe doesn't care if I approve of it or not.
>> "you" have been duplicated
> The "3-you" has been duplicated. Not the 1-you.
Right there is the key to our disagreement. In my symmetrical duplicating room thought
experiment even the "1-you" can not tell the difference between the "3-you" and the
"1-you"! The copy appears back to back with the original a equal distance from the
center of the room, both are watching a video display from a camera in the center of the
ceiling of the cylindrical room. You insist that you are the original but so does the
copy (or maybe he really is the original and you are the copy), you raise your right
hand and you see on the video monitor the both images do too, you jump up and down but
you see both images jump up and down. Not only can't you tell if you are the copy or the
original you can't even tell which image on that video screen is you and which is the
other fellow. If subjectively there is no difference and objectively there is no
difference then there is no difference between "3-you" and "1-you".
I don't know why you bring up this thought experiment. It is not the same as Bruno's and
it does not illustrate anything contrary to Bruno's. It is an example of why a 1-view
cannot be a duplicate - as Bruno said above and where you replied "Why the hell not?"
> you just show that you miss or avoid the difference between the 1-view
and the 3-view.
Between IDENTICAL beings you bet I can't see the difference between the 1-view and the
3-view! And you can't explain why there should be a difference either.
>>> It might be phenomenologically identical with other
indeterminacy, but
it has a simpler explanation
>> It can't explain why you can't know the momentum and position of a
particle
with arbitrary precision
> You don't know that. That's an open problem.
I know that you can not explain how "1-indeterminacy" brings that about, nor can it
explain why you can not know the amount of energy something has and the amount of time
it has it with arbitrary precision, so it is NOT a open question, we know for certain
that this thing you call "1- indeterminacy" cannot explain physical indeterminacy, and
in fact can explain nothing at all. There is only regular old indeterminacy.
> you remain quite vague if you accept the first person indeterminacy or
not.
Vague? I thought I was quite clear. This thing you call "first person indeterminacy"
just means a person doesn’t always know what they will see or what they will do next,
that's it; and people had discovered this fact of life many thousands of years before
Heisenberg or Godel or Turing or you were born.
But they had not discovered that the universe evolves deterministically and so, absent
wave function collapse, results in the linear superposition of different states. Some
people (e.g. Everett, Bruno) would like to explain indeterminancy while keeping the
deterministic evolution and avoiding the problems of explaining the wave function collapse.
> In the WM experience(s), what causes the first person difference is the
first
person differentiation, into living in W and living in M.
Yes, but then the 2 will have different experiences and have different memories and
their brain would be physically different.
> The 1-indeterminacy comes only from the fact that those identical brain
will be
running in different environment.
If they are in a different sensory environments then they have different memories and
are no longer identical, and all "1-indeterminacy" means is different things are
different. I already knew that.
> The point is that in Helsinki you are given all the 3-p description of the
experiment, and despite this, from all your possible future 1-points of
view, none
where specifically predictable, not even by a God.
I don't understand what you want me to predict. I can predict with 100% certainty that
if I see images of Moscow I will become the Moscow man and if I see images of Washington
I will become the Washington man. Why isn't the Moscow man the Washington man? Because
he saw Moscow not Washington. The indeterminacy comes entirely from the unpredictable
nature of their environment, you don't know if it will be more like Washington or more
like Moscow, just as you don't know if a electron will go through slot X or slot Y.
Read Kent. If you can understand his proposed solution in
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0708.3710v3.pdf
then maybe you'll understand the problem Bruno thinks he's addressing (even though Kent's
solution is almost the opposite).
Brent
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