On 10/27/2012 1:58 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Oct 27, 2012, at 2:54 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 10/27/2012 11:00 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 12:27 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com <mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:



    On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be 
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>
    wrote:

        >> your eyes are sending signals to your brain of the White House and 
not of
        the Kremlin, and there is nothing more profound about it.
        > But the eyes of the copy get also the signals from Moscow.


    Yes, so the guy in Moscow feels like the guy in Moscow because he's the guy 
in
    Moscow. Big deal.

        > So your explanation does not help to predict what will happen if the
        experience is reitired.


    True, it can't predict what will happen because what will happen is a 
function of
    the external environment and how it stimulates the eyes and it has nothing 
to do
    with the original or either copy. Your entire philosophy is built on top of 
the
    question "Why is the guy in Washington the guy in Washington?" and the 
answer of
    course is "because he's the guy in Washington". With such a foundation its 
no
    wonder it can't do much.

        > The correct comp explanation, deep or not,  explains why we cannot 
make a
        better prediction


    Then I no longer know what "comp" means because the real reason we can't do 
better
    is the same reason we can't do better at predicting next weeks weather, its 
too
    complicated.

    Predicting is hard, especially the future.


John,

I am not sure if you are being consistent here. Earlier you said you said you identify yourself with a stream of thoughts (not a single thought). If you are identified with a stream of thoughts then you can't simply say one brain is in Moscow and one is in Washington and that is as deep as it goes, for you must consider the first person continuum of experience and what they can predict about where their consciousness will take them.

You agreed if you were instantly halted, taken apart and rebuilt again (even with different atoms) from your own perspective nothing would have skipped a beat, your stream of consciousness continues right where it left off. But when you are taken apart and two copies are created at two locations your stream diverges among two paths, which gives rise to true unpredictability in the first person perspective.

Physics makes it impossible that you could be instantly halted and restarted at a different location.

We could anestatize him then destroy him.

But anesthesia can't act instantaneously across the brain (speed of light and all that) and anesthesia doesn't stop all brain activity (or even very much of it) anyway.

Or we could simulate his neurons on a computer and halt that program.

You'd have to determine the state of all his neurons (assuming that's the right level) simultaneously - but in a spatially extended object "simultaneous" is ill-defined. And then you'd have to restart them simultaneously.

Brent

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