On 05 Oct 2013, at 17:05, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
>> the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than
Washington for no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no
law of logic that demands every event have a cause.
> The point is that in this case the randomness is know to be due to
the lack of precision in the data
Exactly, lack of precision in the data. In the Many Worlds
interpretation, and in all the duplicating chamber thought
experiments I have see on this list, probability is not a property
of the thing itself but just a measure of a lack of information.
> Not something like the self-duplication.
What randomness is there in that?
The randomness is well described in the diaries of those doing the
experience.
> we know in advance that each copies can only see one city,
Yes.
> and not both
Yes, Bruno Marchal the Washington Man will not see Moscow, and Bruno
Marchal the Moscow Man will not see Washington, and Bruno Marchal
the Helsinki Man will not see Moscow or Washington; and of course
Bruno Marchal will turn into things (PLURAL because Bruno Marchal
has been duplicated) that see all 3 cities.
But you have agreed that all "bruno marchal" are the original one (a
case where Leibniz identity rule fails, like in modal logics), so why
don't you listen to him, and indeed all of him.
If in Helsinki he predicted {W & M}, the "bruno marchal" in W will see
that his prediction failed, as he must admit that he is not seeing M.
If in Helsinki he predicted W, then the "bruno marchal" in M will see
that the prediction failed. And, with comp, we accept that both the
people in W and in M are equal in "bruno marchalness".
If in Helsinki he predicted (W or M), and that means he write "W or M"
in his diary (which will be destroyed and recreated in two copies,
then both "bruno marchal" will look at the diary, which assert "W v
M", and both will see that indeed one disjunct have been realized, and
so both prediction win.
In UDA, first and third person are entirely described in term of
annihilation and reconstitution.
The notion of first person plural is defined similarly in term of
duplication of entire population, and this can already provide a
definition of entanglement in classical computer science term (but
that is premature here).
> and so the immediate result of the self-localization cannot be
predicted by the guy in Helsinki.
Without using personal pronouns please tell John K Clark the precise
question to ask "the guy in Helsinki" that has a indeterminate
answer, and just as important please make clear exactly who Bruno
Marchal is asking the question to.
The question is "what do you expect to live or feel, as a comp
believer" when experiencing the step 3 protocol. More precisely, it
concerns the seeing of the cities involved: do you expect W, M, both,
etc.
The question is used in the traditional sense of "you", before the
duplication. I just ask you the question, about what experience you
can expect (as you will not die, and not feel to be in both cities at
once).
The guy reason in comp, and knows already many things: that he will
survive (you have agreed on that), that he will not feel the split,
that he will see only city among W and M, that the experience will be
smooth, etc.
He knows that from his first person perspective he will feel nothing,
and find itself in one city, and that he could not have been sure
about which one.
In the 2^<big n> movie experience, a simple calculus shows that "white
noise" is the most reasonable answer.
> You are playing with words
Words are the only way we have to communicate and I am not playing
and this is not a game. I have no doubt that if duplicating chambers
were in common use in Shakespeare's day by now the English language
would be very different, particularly in regard to personal
pronouns; but that didn't happen so we are left with a very
imperfect instrument to discuss these matters.
Thus when talking philosophically about duplicating chambers
personal pronouns must be used sparingly and with great care even if
that results in inelegant prose.
That is why I make it clear, and give precise definition, and notably
use the duplication experience to distinguish clearly the 1-I from the
3-I, and all this in a traditional third person discourse. The first
person discourse being here mainly the history of the experiences
described in the diaries.
I do the same later, in arithmetic, by showing that the oldest
definition of knowledge, when applied in arithmetic, introduce a
similar distinction between third and first person discourse.
You have usually mocked away all those precisions.
> I have no clue, and I think that nobody has any clue about what
you fail to understand.
I no longer think there is anything there to understand.
> You oscillate between "not new and trivial", and "wrong",
Yes, because your statements oscillate between not new, trivial,
hopelessly vague, and just wrong.
My statement does not oscillate except for pedagogical improvement.
Again, you assert depreciative facts without any quotes.
Those are grave affirmations, which can rise doubt in the mind of
other people.
Please, prove your statement.
Show one oscillation that I would have done.
I said a long time ago that no philosopher in the last 200 years has
said something that was clear, deep, non-obvious, and true that a
scientist or mathematician hadn't said long before, and you are
continuing in that grand tradition.
On the contrary, I illustrate that when we assume computationalism,
then, thanks to computer science and mathematical logic, and thanks to
our intuition of finiteness, we can reason mathematically in that
domain, without abandoning the scientific (doubting) attitude, by
making precise all our assumptions.
Are you aware that it is a thesis in computer science, and it has
intersection with philosophy, theology, physics, biology, arithmetic.
You stop at step 3, which has never been problematical, as it *is*
really obvious, but it changes also everything in the sense that it
brought quickly a model for another rational way to conceive reality.
In my mind UDA was only remind that science has NOT decided between
Aristotle and Plato. AUDA is the "real stuff", even if the hard work
has been done by Gödel, Löb, Solovay, Visser and many others. But it
leads to a transparent interpretations of all terms used.
So I recommend you to buy the book by Mendelson on Logic,
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Mathematical-Discrete-Mathematics-Applications/dp/1584888768
and the books by Boolos (1979, 1993) on "Bp", which contains a chapter
on "Bp & p",
and then study AUDA, and then come back to UDA.
You might eventually laugh at yourself, and that's the best I wish to
you.
From now on, I will answer only specific critics and precise
question, and skip the rhetorical prose.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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