On 10/22/2012 12:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2012/10/22 Jason Resch <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new
type of
indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error,
so there
was no point in reading about things built on top of that
> From your "error" you have been obliged to say that in the WM
duplication,
you will live both at W and at W
Yes.
yet your agree that both copy will feel to live in only one place
Yes.
> so the error you have seen was dues to a confusion between first
person
and third person.
Somebody is certainly confused but it's not me. The fact is that if we
are
identical then my first person experience of looking at you is
identical to your
first person experience of looking at me, and both our actions are
identical for
a third person looking at both of us. As long as we're identical it's
meaningless to talk about 2 conscious beings regardless of how many
bodies or
brains have been duplicated.
Your confusion stems from saying "you have been duplicated" but then not
thinking about what that really means, you haven't realized that a noun
(like a
brain) has been duplicated but a adjective (like Bruno Marchal) has not
been as
long as they are identical; you are treating adjectives as if they were
nouns
and that's bound to cause confusion. You are also confused by the fact
that if 2
identical things change in nonidentical ways, such as by forming
different
memories, then they are no longer identical. And finally you are
confused by the
fact that although they are not each other any more after those changes
both
still have a equal right to call themselves Bruno Marchal. After
reading these
multiple confusions in one step of your proof I saw no point in reading
more,
and I still don't.
John,
I think you are missing something. It is a problem that I noticed after
watching
the movie "The Prestige" and it eventually led me to join this list.
Unless you consider yourself to be only a single momentary atom of thought,
you
probably believe there is some stream of thoughts/consciousness that you
identify
with. You further believe that these thoughts and consciousness are
produced by
some activity of your brain. Unlike Craig, you believe that whatever
horrible
injury you suffered, even if every atom in your body were separated from
every other
atom, in principle you could be put back together, and if the atoms are put
back
just right, you will be removed and alive and well, and conscious again.
Further, you probably believe it doesn't matter if we even re-use the same
atoms or
not, since atoms of the same elements and isotopes are functionally
equivalent. We
could take apart your current atoms, then put you back together with atoms
from a
different pile and your consciousness would continue right where it left
off (from
before you were obliterated). It would be as if a simulation of your brain
were
running on a VM, we paused the VM, moved it to a different physical
computer and
then resumed it. From your perspective inside, there was no interruption,
yet your
physical incarnation and location has changed.
Assuming you are with me so far, an interesting question emerges: what
happens to
your consciousness when duplicated? Either an atom for atom replica of
yourself is
created in two places or your VM image which contains your brain emulation
is copied
to two different computers while paused, and then both are resumed.
Initially, the
sensory input to the two duplicates could be the same, and in a sense they
are still
the same mind, just with two instances, but then something interesting
happens once
different input is fed to the two instances: they split. You could say
they split
in the same sense as when someone opens the steel box to see whether the
cat is
alive or dead. All the splitting in quantum mechanics may be the result of
our
infinite instances discovering/learning different things about our infinite
environments.
I would add that what's interresting in the duplication is the what happens next
probability (when the "two" copies diverge). If you're about to do an experience (for
exemple opening a door and looking what is behind) and that just before opening the
door, your are duplicated, the copy is put in the same position in front of an identical
door, the fact that you were originally (just before duplication) in front of a door
that opens on new york city, what is the probability that when you open it *it is* new
york city... in case of a single universe (limited) where not duplications of state
could appear the answer is straighforward, it is 100%, but in case of comp or MWI, the
probability is not 100%, you must take in account all duplications (now and then) and
there relative measure. That is the "measure" problem. The "before" divergence is not
interresting, that's the point where John stays stuck willingly.
Quentin
There is something puzzling here. Duplication at the lowest level, cloning the quantum
state, is impossible. And even duplicates at a relatively high state, e.g. nuerons, must
quickly diverge just because of interactions with the uncontrolled environment - and in
fact if QM is correct it is the interaction with the environment that permits the "higher"
classical level to exist. In this thought experiments, Bruno sweeps these problems aside
by considering conscious states. Conscious states are very crude things. We're not aware
of very much of the world. So Bruno notes that a given conscious state is consistent with
a lot of different worlds - different computational states in different computational
threads of a UD. Then he proposes that the physical world is just a kind of consistency
class within all the consciousness threads (intersujective agreement). But each thread of
computation that contributes to a given consciousness only does so in virtue of being
consistent with the other threads (one is never literally of two minds). So it seems that
consciousness, by this theory, is an epiphenomena on certain classes of computation (e.g.
those that 'hang together' enough to be conscious "of" something). Then we're back to the
same sort of question asked of materialism, but instead of "Why is this physical process
conscious and not that one?" the question is "Why is this bundle of computational states
conscious and not that one?"
Brent
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