On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 1:04 AM, chris peck <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi jason > > > *>>I think in that last sentence you misuse the term subjective. * > > In what way? > You said: "She would know that each outcome would occur and she would know that she would become each observer. And she would know that there was nothing else to know. That being the case it would be impossible for subjective uncertainty to arise." Subject refers to the I, the indexical first-person. This page offers some examples of the distinction ( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/#PurIndTruDem ). Knowing that she becomes all does not allow her (prior to the splitting, or prior to the duplication) to know where the photon will be observed (or what city she finds herself in). This is the subjective uncertainty. Certainty only exists when talking about the experiences of others from the standpoint of some external impartial observer. Perhaps the only thing we are disagreeing on is language usage.. > > Also, in what way could uncertainty be anything other than subjective? > Have you ever seen an rock quivering in doubt? Certainty/uncertainty are > properties of 1-p experiences and can't be anything but. > I mean subjective in a stronger sense than just that it is experienced by someone, rather that it is experienced by the "I". The person before the duplication, and as it evolves into the experience of one of he continuations following the duplication. > > > *>>I refer you to the Everett quote above where he says the usual QM > probabilities arise in the subjective views, not expectations of 100%.* > > Are you going to show an error of reasoning or are you going to point to a > dead physicist? > I pointed to him in particular because John Clark respects the MWI and the uncertainty that arises in it due to the superpositions of states in the wavefunction. The particular error that I am pointing out is that the branching in MWI and the duplication in the UDA are in a certain sense equivalent and result in similar consequences from the viewpoint of those being multiplied. > > I see your reference and raise you a reference back to section 4.1 of > > http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312136 > >From the paper: "What of the crucial question: should Alice1 feel uncertain? Why, Alice1 is a good PI-reductionist Everettian, and she has followed what we’ve said so far. So she1 knows that she1 will see spin-up, and that she1 will see spin-down. There is nothing left for her to be uncertain about. What (to address Saunders’ question) should Alice1 expect to see? Here I invoke the following premise: whatever she1 knows she1 will see, she1 should expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she1 should (with certainty) expect to see spin-up, and she1 should (with certainty) expect to see spin-down. (Not that she1 should expect to see both: she1 should expect to see each.)" I have no issue with Alice expecting and believing that other branched copies of her experience all the other possibilities, but I think it is incorrect for her to say she her next experience will be of all possibilities. All the experiencers you might say she becomes only have access to one outcome, and if she had bet on having (access to) all the possible experiences, then she would find herself to be wrong (all of her copies would conclude, oh I was wrong, I thought I would experience this outcome with 100% probability but instead I am experiencing this one). She could repeat it many times, e.g. sending various photons through a polarizer film. Over time and after taking many measurements she comes to conclude the chance of her experiencing the photon making it through is 50%, not 100%. > > > *>> There are multiple experiencers, each having possibly different > experiences. For some class of those experiencers you can attach the label > "chris peck". This allows you to say: "chris peck experiences all outcomes" > but that does not imply each experiencer experiences all experiences, each > experiencer has only one experience. The subjective first person view, of > what any experiencer can claim to experience, is a single outcome. The > experiences are fractured and distinct because there is no communication > between the decohered worlds. * > > ISTM that you're missing the point of my argument. You don't seem to get > that it is very well understood that there is only one stream of experience > per 'I'. The trouble is that in step 3 these 'I's get duplicated from one > 'I' to two 'I's AND I am obliged axiomatically to assume my 'I'ness > survives in both duplicates. > This same assumption exists (implicitly) in the MWI. In the UDA it is stated explicitly as an assumption (the computational theory of mind). > So, when asked what will I experience ... and remember, there is only one > 'I' at this point ... how can I answer 'either or' without violating this > axiom I am obliged to accept? > Because you are asked to picture how the experiment unfolds from your personal view as the one stepping into the duplication chamber, not the bird's eye view who seeing the duplication occur. Consider this: you have no way of distinguishing whether the transporter is sending you to either Washington or Moscow with 50% probability or if it is sending you to both cities every time you step into it. It therefore makes sense to maintain that there is a subjective probability of 50% that one will find oneself in a particular city (e.g. Washington) after stepping into the transporter and pushing the button. After many repeated trials, you could not conclude that you have a 100% chance of feeling as though you teleport to Washington every time, because from the memory of those who have undergone these trials, they remember often ending up in Moscow. > Alternatively, perhaps neither of the future 'I's are this earlier 'I'. In > which case, I am forced to predict I will experience nothing and again that > violates the axiom. The only choice I can make here is to predict this > single 'I' will experience each outcome once duplicated. This is the only > prediction I can make which doesn't violate the survival axiom I am bound > to. > You can say "Chris peck" will experience both outcomes, but you cannot say "I" will experience both outcomes, as I is indexical to one of the experiencers, and all of the experiencers experience only one outcome. > > *>> In any event, you have at least seen how the appearance of subjective > randomness can appear through duplication of continuation paths, which is > enough to continue to step 4 in the UDA.* > > On the contrary, Jason, I find the concept of subjective uncertainty > extremely unlikely in both MWI and COMP and find the 50/50 prediction > particularly a little bit silly. > So do you think you could tell whether a transporter was sending you to one of two locations with a 50% probability, or sending you to both locations? (assuming of course that you never run into one of your alternate copies). If subjectively these cases are indistinguishable, (even after many repeated trials), then this is enough to explain the appearance of uncertainty/unpredictability/randomness from the viewpoint of the subject. > > Nevertheless, I am not Clark, and have already raced ahead. I find myself > tracking dropped pens through UD*, wallowing in a morass of an unseemly > dream argument and furrowing my brow over strange interpretations of modal > logic. Im not sure what to make of any of it but Im certain Bruno is happy > to have you on board. > Could you be more specific regarding what you consider the problems to be? Jason > > regards. > > > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:36:06 +1300 > > Subject: Re: For John Clark > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > > On 17 October 2013 09:49, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:48 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > And I don't understand the difference between "first person uncertainty" > and plain old fashioned uncertainty. > > The difference arises when you are the system which is behaving > probablistically. Presumably a sentient dice (or die*) would feel the same > way. > > * "Take the dice or die!" as my son once said while playing Monopoly. He > was just being pedantic but it got my attention. > > -- > 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. > > -- > 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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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