On 28 September 2013 14:27, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to >> > see. > > > And I have no objection to thought experiments of that sort, but Bruno is > not talking about assigning the probability you will see Moscow or > Washington, he's talking about the probability you will become the > Washington Man or the Moscow Man, and the two things are not the same. He > claims that if personal diaries were kept and predictions about the future > were made in them it would be concrete evidence on who is who and have a > bearing on the nature of personal identity, but that is nonsense. If > yesterday I wrote in my diary that there is a 100% chance I would make money > in the stock market tomorrow but today I lost my shirt my failed prediction > would not destroy my identity, I would not enter oblivion I'd just be broke. > Personal identity can only be traced from the past to the present, the > future is unknown.
We have evolved to believe at a gut level that we are a single entity travelling forward through time, and when faced with a situation where this is not the case, like duplication, our minds adjust by assigning probabilities. The objective truth is that there is a version of me in Washington, a version in Moscow, and the original version destroyed; but that is not what we are asking when we want to know what to expect when we step into the teleporter. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
