On 26 Sep 2013, at 04:34, chris peck wrote:
I'll have a pop at this because I have a problem too.
I get stuck on Bruno's 'proof' at the point where the comp
practitioner, about to be duplicated and sent to Washington and
Moscow, is asked to estimate his chances of arriving at Moscow.
Allegedly I should feel it to be 50/50 and this establishes 1st
person indeterminacy.
Trouble is, as far as I have been able, I can only arrive at the
50/50 result if I deny 'comp'. That is, if I feel that there is
something over and above the description of me at the required
substitution level, that is nevertheless a vital part of me, that
follows one or the other path.
OK. In fact with comp, we are directly immaterial. We can change our
body every morning, like if they were sort of clothes. Biology go in
that direction, as we change the body automatically (well by eating an
defecating, breathing, etc.) about every seven years (month for the
brain, but more slowly for the bones).
But that breaks the rules of the game. It contradicts comp.
? (it will contradict eventually comp + materialism, but I don't see
why comp is contradicted here).
If I follow the rules of the game , if I genuinely believe comp,
then I must also believe (and feel) that a later diary/memory
containing the entry 'I am in Moscow not Washington' and a diary
containing the entry 'I am in Washington not Moscow' both have equal
claim on being my diary now. If I believe comp then I have to say
that whilst there will be no diary with both entries, each one is
genuinely mine.
Before the duplication, yes.
After the duplication, it is a matter of convention to consider the
copy as being genuinely " a you", or not. If the copy is you, then a
reasoning can show that we are all the same person, but in different
contexts, as we all come from some original amoeba.
Given that, the chances of this diary now containing either entry
later is 1, not 50/50. No indeterminacy.
I've read some responses to similar quibbles alleging that the
quibblers have confused 1-p and 3-p perspectives. Alternatively, you
can argue that you can only buy into Bruno's conclusion if you
covertly smuggle in to the game an illicit concept of 'I' over and
above comp.
Why "over" comp?
On the contrary, we can use the comp "I" to formalise the whole
thought experience. the comp I is given by Kleene's diagoinalization
method (if Dx gives "xx", DD gives "DD"). It works well.
But it i simpler to define the (first person) by the memory it can
access directly, like what is written in the diary that the candidate
take with him in the teleportation boxes. In that case, the
indeterminacy follows easily.
Interestingly, Derek Parfit in 'Reasons and Persons' uses the very
same thought experiments to tease out of the reader that they do not
in fact believe anything like comp. He asks what you would feel if
the teleportation goes wrong and there is a minute delay in the
annihilation step.
That step 2 of UDA, and step 4.
Would you be comforted by someone explaining that the 'read' went
ahead well and that you will be reconstructed in Moscow, so not to
worry about the impending annihilation?
This will shock our instinct, but make not the reasoning invalid.
I think intuitively that would be of no comfort though if I really
believed comp it should be.
Yes. This is because we cannot confuse Bp & Bp & p, although we can
know that IF we are correct, they are the same extensionnally. We are
not programmed to know that (and we could not be).
I think this illicit intuition creeps into Bruno's step and gives
the impression one ought to feel indeterminacy, when by the rules of
the game one should not.
Take the case of the iteration of the self-duplication, the vst
majority of copies, will see white noise, and feel, in that sense the
indeterminacy. It is equivalent with sending many photon in a
polarization superposition state, and the people doing that experience
will feel and name the indeterminacy, despite the wave function is
deterministic.
OK?
Bruno
> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:59:01 +1000
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
>
> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 08:46:25AM +1000, Russell Standish wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 12:38:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> > > On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Russell Standish <[email protected]
>wrote:
> > >
> > > > I know not of these hundreds of posts that you speak.
> > > >
> > >
> > > You don't?? If you haven't read any of the hundreds of posts I
have
> > > written about Bruno's "proof" (far more than the silly thing
deserves) then
> > > there seems no point in writing yet another one because you
won't read that
> > > one either.
> >
> > You are deliberately changing the topic. I know you have written
> > hundreds of posts "about Bruno's 'proof'". I asked for one post
in which
> > you point out the flaws in the first 3 steps of the UDA. To
which you
> > responded you had written hundreds of posts in which you have
stated
> > these flaws. I have not seen any post by you pointing out these
> > flaws. I admit I may not have read all your posts, but I suspect I
> > have read most.
> >
>
> I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago
when
> you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when
> undergoing the duplicator experiment.
>
> I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
> places at once, which does violence to the notion of "survival after
> copying" assumption of COMP.
>
> But nothing more recent - just lots of IHA, and "***" is the
> meaningless sound made by certain philosopher's lips. (*** insert
your
> favourite term du jour here).
>
> --
>
>
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> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
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>
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