On 28 Oct 2012, at 18:23, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am not sure if you are being consistent here. Earlier you said
you said you identify yourself with a stream of thoughts
Obviously.
>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
Three things:
1) Saying that thoughts have a position (like Moscow or Washington)
is not a useful concept.
2) Talking about 2 identical streams of thought is not useful
because in that case there is only one stream of thought.
3) It is useful to say that one stream of thought diverged when one
started to form memories of Moscow and the other started to form
memories of Washington. At that point they were no longer the same
but they were both still Jason Resch. Odd certainly but not
paradoxical.
> you must consider the first person continuum of experience
Yes, and both the Washington and Moscow man have a continuum of
experience going back to Jason Resch's early childhood, that's why
they are both Jason Resch. However the Washington man does not have
a continuum of experience of being in Moscow and the Moscow man does
not have a continuum of experience of being in Washington, and
that's why they are not each other.
> and what they can predict about where their consciousness will
take them.
Nobody can ever do a very good job at predicting where there
consciousness will take them, not even in a predictable environment.
> 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.
Yes.
> But when you are taken apart and two copies are created at two
locations your stream diverges among two paths
Yes because the environments of Washington and Moscow were
different, and as weathermen will tell you it's difficult to predict
what the environment will be. To ask "but which one is really ME?"
presumes that there is only one correct answer but that is not true
because you have been duplicated and it was caused by differences in
the environment.
> which gives rise to true unpredictability in the first person
perspective.
As Godel and Turing proved 80 years ago even in a unchanging
environment there can be unpredictability in the first person
perspective.
Gödel and Turing have never touch on the first and third person issue.
The Turing indeterminacy is pure 3p.
The notion of indeterminacy closer to the comp first person
indeterminacy is the quantum indeterminacy when seen in the Everett
theory (QM without collapse). But it is not the same conceptual notion
as it assumes a universal quantum wave, instead of simply
computationalism.
Bruno
John K Clark
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