On 9/25/2012 8:46 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hi Roger,
My idea about this is that the Moon and that we landed on it exists in parallel with the
Moon not existing or existing but we not landing on it, or we already having a base on
the oon etc. etc. etc. Then which of these possibilities is "real" depends on the
knowledge you happen to have, which undermines the concept of "real".
I don't think this is an entirely academic matter, e.g. if you could forget everything
about the Moon, all these alternative possibilities become open to you again, as I point
out here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825
The reality of alternative possibilities may actually be the very thing that makes us
conscious. If you accept machine consciousness, you have the problem that in a classical
picture the machine evolves deterministically from one state to another, and you can map
such a system to a trivial system (say a clock). To see that a computer is performing a
non-trivial computation requires knowledge of counterfactuals, but then counterfactuals
by definition haven't happened. At any one moment you are in some state which doesn't
contain the information that a computation is carried out.
A way out of this problem is to look more precisely at what the MWI really implies for a
realistic computer capable of simulating the human brain. One has to accept here that
given what a conscious person is aware of is only an astronomically small fraction of
the information present in the brain. So, the MWI implies that the so-called branches
that are supposed to be sectors of the multiverse where a peson has observed some
dfinite result, actually consists of an astronomically large number of unresolved
micro-branches, each containing diferent information. The rest of the universe is, of
course, entangled with the observer in these micro-branches.
But brains, and certainly computers, are almost entirely classical, deterministic systems
(and wouldn't be useful otherwise). That seems inconsistent with the picture of
astronomically many micro-branches, except that the micro-branches are all close
approximations of the classical.
Brent
In this article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4472
I point out that this structure defines at least partially the algorithm that is running
at any moment. So, the fact that things don't exist if we don't look may be the very
reason why we can exist at all.
Saibal
Citeren Roger Clough <[email protected]>:
Hi smitra
If the moon doesn't exist, how were we able to land men on it ?
Roger Clough, [email protected]
9/25/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: smitra
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 23:04:51
Subject: Re: Nonsense!
Citeren "Stephen P. King" :
On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote:
Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it.
Hi John,
I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that
"you" are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that
there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the
observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the
presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon
becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by
the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement!
--
Onward!
Stephen
http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
Thing is, the Moon doesn't exist, even if you do look at it.
Saibal
--
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.
--
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.
--
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.
