On 03 Oct 2013, at 23:18, LizR wrote:
On 4 October 2013 05:59, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 , LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
>> What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is
a 100% chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man
because the Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki
Man will turn into the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw
Washington, and a 100% chance that the first person view of the
Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY of Helsinki because otherwise the
first person view of the Helsinki Man would not be the first person
view of the Helsinki man.
> This is uncontraversially, one might say trivially correct,
I would have thought so too, but however trivial it may be for
reasons I don't understand most on this list are unable to grasp
this simple truth.
> but it doesn't refute anything about the first person indeterminacy,
I don't know what indeterminacy you're talking about. LizR may not
be able to predict what LizR sees next, but as far as personal
identity is concerned that is irrelevant because whatever LizR sees
LizR will still feel like LizR.
Sorry, I'm using "indeterminacy" because that's the term that was
first introduced into quantum mechanics when it was believed that's
what it was, and which I guess is still used even though if the MWI
is correct it isn't the right word (for the subject the comp
teleporter is directly parallel to MWI splitting, though it might in
practice operate at a different level). However you can't call it
"uncertainty" either - if you're being strictly accurate, you can
only call it something like "global determinism which gives the
false appearance of first person indeterminacy / uncertainty /
probability / whatever" !
Bruno calls it "first person indeterminacy" and I can see why he
uses that term. From the point of view of Moscow man, say, it
appears (retrospectively, at least) that he had a 50-50 chance of
going to either place. And for an experimenter it would appear that
a photon has a 50-50 chance of being transmitted or reflected,
especially after multiple measurements, and they might also still
call that "indeterminacy / uncertainty / probability / whatever"
even if they believe the MWI to be the correct interpretation of QM.
As I said, this is just a semantic quibble. All Bruno is showing in
step 3 is that if consciousness is a computation, then in principle
it could be treated as we already treat other digital processes -
"forking into two separate address spaces" is, I think, the
computational parallel for the teleporter. As I said earlier, if you
imagine consciousness instantiated in a computer (as according to
comp it could be) then it will perhap be clearer what's going on.
Personally I can't see any problem with step 3, given the
assumptions. I certainly can't see why you couldn't teleport HAL9000
via radio waves to two separate spaceships.
Yes, the all setting can be recasted in term of programs, trying to
predict where some backup will resume. In UDA the definition of first
person which is used (the personal diary which is teleported along
with the subject) is purely third person.
And indeed, that's a step to understand that the whole set up will be
recasted in terms, of purely arithmetical relations (most of them
being even non computable, non recursively enumerable, etc.).
Thanks for helping John Clark, but his tones makes me suspect that he
is not ready to be serious on this subject.
It is typical of pseudo-religious people, and this confirms my feeling
that atheism is quite a pseudo-religion, very close to christianism
with the "creation" being taken for granted, where mystics, poets, and
Platonist are less sure, as they think it could be part of a dream, or
the border of something else.
With comp that dream idea is very natural and economical, and thus
compelling, as a tiny, constructive (by the UD) part of arithmetic
already determine all possible dreams. Realities are "just" the dreams
conjuncted with truth (true dream).
For "truth", I use tarski definition of truth, which is not
problematic for arithmetic.
Note that the "inside" mathematics of arithmetic is much more complex
than arithmetic. This makes sense just with the FPI (our indeterminacy
domain is a complex structure), and the metamathematics (self-
reference logics).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
