On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:26, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/22/2012 12:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2012/10/22 Jason Resch <[email protected]>
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, John Clark <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[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?"
You are right. I have often said this: comp does not solve the mind-
body problem. But it does something: it shows the problem two times
more difficult, because it reduces the problem partially, but
obligatory, to a justification of the appearance of matter from only a
statistics on computations.
That is why I explain those things preferably to people who have a
good understanding of Everett. Comp give no choice other than
generalize Everett's embedding of the physicist in the QM wave into an
embedding of the thinker/dreamer in the arithmetical reality.
Comp solves 100% of the TOE problem. Arithmetic or combinators or
anything Turing universal is enough, ontologically. Then the logic of
self-reference and computer science solves 99% of the hard
consciousness problem, by showing that there is something verifying
the semi-axiomatic of consciousness for the machines which look at
themselves, and eventually this gives a theory close to Plotinus,
Plato, contradicting Aristotle.
The main point is that it gives also the physical laws, so that it is
testable.
All this shows also that if you want to keep a primitively material
universe, you have to never say yes to a digitalist surgeon.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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