On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I came across this today, which you might find of interest: > http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9709032v1.pdf In particular section 3 goes > to great pains to describe the importance of the first person / third > person distinction. > > Of course it's important, but I didn't need Bruno's help to figure that out. And I especially agree when is says "To avoid linguistic confusion it is crucial that we distinguish between the outside view of the world [from ] the inside view". Yes, we must avoid linguistic confusion! It's true that in everyday usage there is no linguistic confusion and it would be silly to keep asking "what do you mean by the pronoun "you?", but this is very far from everyday usage. This is a thought experiment involving identity duplicating machines and is a vital part of a proof that is trying to find something new about the very thing that is being duplicated, identity. Under those very very exotic circumstances the meaning of the personal pronoun "you" is far from obvious. And if the meaning of "you" is vague then the difference between 1p and 3p is vague too, and that is not acceptable in a proof that claims to be mathematically precise. So when Bruno asks "will you in Helsinki survive the duplication?" or "what city will you see?" it depends entirely on what "you" means. To me, and to Bruno too before he panicked and backpedaled, "you" is the guy(s) who remembers being the Helsinki Man; thus I would answer that yes "you" will survive and "you" will see both Moscow and Washington. And if the ASCII sequence y-o-u means something different in another language then John Clark would answer the questions differently. John K Clark -- 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.
