On 9/3/2013 6:14 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
Yes, that's also my favorite way of thinking about this, you are precisely that what you
experience at any one time, and that may well include memories of the past.
What was discussed earlier in this thread about decoherence, is only revelevant to
explaining why you don't get macroscopic manifestations of typical quantum phenomena
like interference phenomena or violations of certain Bell's inequalities if you take
serious that there are multiple histories instead of a single unique one.
What happens is that you get decoherent histories that effectively don't interfere with
each other. So, we can safely say that Obama winning the elections was not due to
macroscopically different histories leading to destructive interference in Romney's vote
count in Ohio.
What one cannot say is that decoherence somehow leads to a single history being selected
(unless you a priori asume a collapse theory). What you get is a set of macroscopically
distinct histories that are decoherent relative to each other, but with sufficient lack
of knowledge you can be in many of them simultaneously.
That's where this account gets muddled. Who lacks knowledge? There is no
"you".
This effect will not lead to probabilities behaving in a different way than what you
would get from classical probability theory assuming that the uncertainty is due to a
lack of knowledge and that in reality only ione history really exists.
The very concept of probabilities implies there is some "you" that experiences
them.
So, you then can't see the difference between all these histories copatible with your
knowledge really existing and that they don't exist. But that's not a good argument (by
itself) to say that they in fact don't exist.
But if there are "all these histories" then there is no "you".
Brent
Saibal
Citeren Dennis Ochei <do.infinit...@gmail.com>:
Given that we are elements that might belong to multiple sequences, there
is no fact of the matter as to which sequence we belong to.
On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 12:23 AM, Dennis Ochei <do.infinit...@gmail.com>wrote:
Yes, exactly.
> But then there are no "experiencers"...
I prefer to say that experiencers are their experiences than to say there
are no experiencers (I'm explaining my phrasing more than anything)
On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 11:50 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
You mean experiences are purely qualitative, so there cannot be two
identical experiences rather, if identical they must be one (by Leibniz's
identity of indiscernibles) and not two. But then there are no
"experiencers", only sequences of experiences which may have some unifying
property and which may share elements with other sequences.
Brent
On 9/2/2013 8:55 PM, Dennis Ochei wrote:
"Qualitatively identical experiencers are also numerically identical" is
how i sum this position up
On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 4:39:27 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 8/14/2013 7:48 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
> Citeren Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 05:26:41PM -0700, Pierz wrote:
>>> I need clarification of the significance of quantum theory to
determining
>>> the *past*. I remember having read or heard that the past itself is
subject
>>> to quantum uncertainty. Something like the idea that the past is
determined
>>> only to to the extent that it is forced to be so by the state of the
>>> present, if that makes sense. In other words, there may be more than
one
>>> history that could lead to the current state of the world. Let's say
it
>>> might have been one way or another and then we make a measurement
which
>>> resolves this question, we are 'forcing' the past to be one way or
another.
>>> In MWI, that would be saying my 'track' through the multiverse is
ambiguous
>>> in both directions, both into the future and 'behind me' so to
speak. I'm
>>> unclear on this and what it precisely means. I seem to recall that
it was
>>> critical in calculations Hawking made about the early universe - at
a
>>> certain point these uncertainties became critical and it meant that
it was
>>> no longer possible to say that the universe had definitely been one
way or
>>> another. Can someone clarify this for me?
>>>
>>
>> This idea of the past not being determinate until such a time as a
>> measurement in the present forces the issue is fundamental to my
>> interpretation of QM. It is also related to the Quantum Eraser.
Saibal
>> Mitra has written some stuff on this too - maybe he'd like to
comment?
>>
>> On the other hand, I don't think this view is particularly
>> mainstream. Even many worlds people tend to think that the multiverse
>> has decohered in the past, and that there is a matter of fact which
>> branch we are in, even if we're ignorant of that fact.
>>
>> I can't comment on Hawking's work, unfortunately, as I'm not aware of
that.
>>
>> Cheers
>> --
>
>
> Yes, I would agree with the view taken by Russell here. It has
interesting consequences
> for any future artificial intelligence who can reset its memory, as I
explain here:
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825
>
> So, if you reset your memory at random with some probability p and you
also do that in
> case of an impending disaster, then if you find yourself in a state
where you know that
> your memory has been reset and you need to reload your memory, the
reason why the memory
> has been reset (routine random memory reset or you were facing an
impending disaster),
> is no longer determined, you are identical in the different branches
until you find out
> the reason.
>
> So, while you are firmly in the classical regime and therefore you
won't see any changes
> in the probabilities of the outcomes of these sorts of experiments
relative to what you
> would expect classically, the interpretation of how these
probabilities arise is
> different; while it is worthwhile to do these memory resettings in a
"single classical
> world" it wouldn't be worthwhile.
>
> The article I wrote (it was just an essay for FQXI competition which
got the attention
> from New Scientist), is actually rather simple, it treats the problem
in a
> non-relativistic way, which is a bit unnatural (the times at which
things happen in the
> different different branches seems to matter). You can easily
generalize this, also you
> can consider thought experiments involving false memories that may be
correct memories
> in different branches etc. etc.
Hmm. It seems that "erasing your memory" would encompass a lot more
than what is commonly
referred to as memory. Quantum erasure requires erasing all the
information that is
diffused into the environment. So erasing one's memory would imply
quantum erasure of all
the information about your past - not just the infinitesimal bit that
you can consciously
recall.
Brent
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