On 21 Oct 2013, at 18:16, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
>>> When John Clark asks "who is you?" Bruno responds that he could
no more answer that question than he could square a circle.
> The quote, please.
>>John Clark will be happy to: On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:25 PM,
Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
"So, asking me to not use pronouns, in what is in great part a
theory of pronouns, is like asking me to square the circle."
> I didn't say that "I could not answer that question". I said just
the contrary: I offer a theory of pronouns. I need the use of
pronouns in the thought experiment, because the goal is to clarify
their use,
So when Euclid explained what a line is he should have used the word
"line" in his explanation and said "a line is a line".
> Let me put it in this way: accepting that P(W) = P(M) =1/2, with W
and M describing the first person experiences of the respective
copies, do you accept that P(M) = P(W) = 1/2,
No I don't accept that, not if P(W) is the probability that the
Washington Man will see Washington; the probability of that would be
1 not 1/2.
You assumes that the W-man survives each instant of his body life in
washington, here. OK.
And if P(W) means the probability the Helsinki Man will see
Washington that would be 0 not 1/2 because the Helsinki Man would
have to be turned into something that is not the Helsinki Man before
the Helsinki Man can see a different city.
So P(W) = 0. And the same reasoning applies to P(M). We have P(W) =
P(M) = 0. As it is the only possibilities, (with this protocol), you
say that the Helsinki man dies in the process, but then it is easy to
show that he has to die in the simple (without duplication) case, and
comp is false.
That is ridiculous, given that we assume computationalism.
You have agreed that the W-man *is* the Helsinki man, as the M-man is
the Helsinki man too. The Helsinki man survives.
If P(W) means neither of those things then tell me what the hell it
does mean.
Take the iterated self-duplication, and read their diaries.
Let us do that experience with *you*. Your current prediction, it
seems, written in your diary in Helsinki is P(W) = P(M) = 0.
You push on the button, and face to be in front of a door. Well, you
open the door, indeed in both washington, and Moscow. Then in both
Washington and Moscow, you take the diary, which begun in Helsinki,
and read.
In both Moscow and Washington, you read "P(M) = P(W) = 0". So in both
Moscow and Washington, you write "my prediction was incorrect, I, the
Helsinki man,, did survive here". With here denoting Washington in
Washington, and denoting Moscow in Moscow.
Then the experience is done again, and again.
All copies will have a different experience, and in that protocol, all
finite sequences of length n, of W and M, will denote a personal
history, written in a personal diary/memory, and it is an combinatory
exercise in computer science to show that when n grows, the majority
of sequences becomes incompressible, and thus random in a strong sense.
Most WWMWMMMMMWMWWMMWMWWWMWMMMW-John Clark will write in their diaries
that they have no clue how to predict the first person result of the
self-duplication experience.
> where the copy in M is delayed for one year?
What point does the delay serve in this thought experiment?
Assuming comp, the delay introductions will not change the first
person experiences.
Then the next steps shows that the first person cannot immediately
detect by experience alone, the difference between a "real"
reconstitution, like those we were considering, and one done in a
virtual environment (emulated by some computer).
Step 7
We can write a program generating and executing all programs (the
universal dovetailer).
Then, if the physical universe run a universal dovetailer without
stopping, we are are virtually reconstituted an infinity of times,
which leads to the *global first person indeterminacy*
(Step 8 explains why assuming the universe is too small just put all
problems (matter, mind and their relation) under the rug, by ad hoc
use of the occam razor weakeness). Step 8 makes the "primary (= "have
to be assumed") physical universe notion into a God of the gap.
Then with Church's thesis, the universal dovetailing is emulated by
the true sigma_1 propositions, and this is used to translate UDA in
arithmetic constructively, in a way to derive (accepting some precise
definitions) the observable from arithmetic (interviewing some
universal numbers looking inward close enough). But you need to read
some good books in logic to follow. It makes comp (+ an idea by
Theatetus) testable, and hopefully improvable. The dialog with the
many universal machines will last.
> As always the prediction are [blah blah]
I don't give a damn about predictions, correct ones or incorrect
ones, because they have nothing to do with what we were talking
about, the sense of self.
That's another thread. A very interesting one, but for UDA you need
just admit your theory. All the copies have the right to be treated as
the "original" (Helsinki) person.
I only care if I remember being John Clark yesterday, if I do then
I'm still John Clark today.
Which is all what we need to conclude that the John Clark in Moscow
and the John Clark in Washington will realize their prediction "P(M) =
P(W) = 0", still written in their diaries (in Helsinki) was wrong, as
they "measure" W (for the one in Washington) or (exclusive or) measure
"M". They might have learn something, which is that the probability of
"seeing only *one* city" is 1 (assuming comp).
There is a first person indeterminacy, because both guy will remember
being the same John Clark who was in Helsinki, but both their person
diaries contradicts then the "P(W) = P(M) = 0" made in Helsinki.
Bruno
John K Clark
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