Hi John, On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 4:13 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> > John, you are the guy who explained Bell's inequality in a very >> > compelling way. You're obviously smart >> > > I’m blushing. > > >> >> > so why are you only engaging in personal attacks? > > > If I think somebody's ideas are gibberish I'm going to say their gibberish > without apology because there is nothing personal about it. And are you > prepared to make the case that my attacks were wrong? Do you really think > Bruno can continue to say that "you" will see only one city and also say > that ""you" concerns the guy(s) who will remember having been in Helsinki"? > Of course he can't! He'll just say "you confuse the 1P and the 3P" as if > that makes everything better. >> >> > Why don't you instead address the issues that have been pointed about >> > your position, namely: that it renders the probability of a coin toss to >> > either 0 or 1 - that if you refuse to accept the 1p/3p distinction, then >> > you >> > also have to refuse the MWI? > > > I confess this is getting really frustrating for me, again and again I point > out the difference and people neither agree nor disagree but just continue > making the same accusation that I'm being inconsistent. But OK I'll do it, > again. > > If a coin is flipped and a prediction is made about whether you will see > heads or tails it's easy to tell after the flip if the prediction was > correct or not because there is no ambiguity regarding the identity of > "you", the pronoun refers to the only guy we see and we just ask him what he > saw. Even if it's a quantum event and not a coin flip and the Many Worlds > Theory is used to calculate if you will see a electron spin up or spin down > we can still tell after the measurement if the prediction was correct or not > because it's still perfectly clear what the pronoun "you" refers to, namely > the only fellow we see.
Ok, let's assume that on spin up a light turns red, on spin down it turns green. Assuming the MWI, there is a set of worlds were the fellow will see red and another set were he will see green. There was already a multiplication of "hims". The only difference here is that the "hims" exist in separate worlds that we cannot travel between, so we will never be confronted with two of them. If you use the duplication machine, you can create two rooms that look exactly the same, one with a green light, one with a red light. The subject will not be able to tell if he's doing the electron spin experiment or the duplication experiment. The only difference here is from 3p, where you can actually look at some monitors and see two copies of the same person looking at lights. If you allow the copies to interact things get more surreal, but so what? > So the statistics that the Many Worlds > Interpretation of Quantum mechanics generates actually mean something > useful. > > But now consider Bruno's thought experiment. We predict that you will see X, > after the experiment is over can we say if the prediction was correct or > not? No we can not because we no longer know exactly what the pronoun "you" > refers to. You has been duplicated (and that means the first person point of > view has been duplicated too) and so you standing on my right insists that > you did see X, but you standing on my left, who has every bit as much reason > to call himself "you" as the other one, insists that you did NOT see X. So > was the prediction about you seeing X correct or incorrect? There is no way > to answer that because the meaning of the pronoun "you" is ambiguous in > these circumstances. The only distinction between the MWI and Bruno's thought experiment is that in the former the copies are all in separate worlds while in the latter they coexist in the same world. Of course the worlds are all part of reality, so the question boils down to the copies being able to interact with each other or not. There are still "yous" being copied in both cases. You still know which "you" you are from your perspective. So can you agree that your objection has to solely rest on the possibility of interaction between copies? How does this possibility of interaction change anything? > And please don't just repeat the mantra "you confuse the 1P and the 3P", That is a rhetorical trick. The valid question remains: if you claim that unique personal identity has lost meaning through the duplication, how can it not lose meaning through forks in the multiverse? How can you reject Bruno's experiment but accept the MWI? > I > am not at all confused by the difference between objective and subjective > nor do I think objective is the more important; in fact it is precisely > because I know the difference that I know Bruno's ideas regarding prediction > and probability mean nothing. > And there is a even more fundamental reason I'm frustrated, predictions, > both good and bad and meaningless, and probabilities, and statistics, have > NOTHING to do with the continuous feeling of identity or sense of self, it > only has to do with remembering being you yesterday. Can you point out where it is suggested otherwise? All you write above seems to agree with what is assumed in the thought experiment, and there doesn't seem to be anything blocking you to following it to its end. Telmo. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
