On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 05 Dec 2013, at 17:20, Jason Resch wrote: > > So if you were to spend a day in the box with Schrodinger's cat (each hour > having a 50% chance of poisoning you), what would you predict experience to > be at the end of that day? > > > > I like to answer this by this: At the end of the day I feel well and kiss > the cat, together with a total amnesia of having gazed, which begin by a > nausea, vomiting, cruel pain and agonizing death. I would put quantum > flowers on 'his' quantum tomb to have died for me. Respect for the little > kitty too. > Would you say there is a greater probability of ending up in a strange and different place on this day, compared to normal days when you don't face a 999,999 out of 1,000,000 chance of being killed? > > Are you OK for this? I pay you 10,000$ for accepting to sleep one night > in my sleep laboratory, I tell you in advance that you will live a quite > intense nightmare, but I promise you that you will be 100% amnesic of it > and you will unaffected by the experience, are you OK? > $10,000 is a lot of money, it's hard to think of a nightmare so bad (even without the amnesia) that would not make it worth taking the money. In the equivalent example of torture + amnesia, under which I would be willing to pay $10,000 to avoid to avoid the torture (with or without amnesia), then I think the logical decision is still to reject the torture and $10,000 even if it comes with amnesia. > > The slowing of the annihilation illustrates something weird. Before the > experience the probability are one halve that you will feel either just > passing a boring day with a cat in some chamber, or going through a slow > unpleasant (ending?) event. > Yet the probability that you survive, above one day, the experience seems > to be still one. It is part of a finite path elimination process, from > the 1p perspective. It is analogous to the backtracking. > I am not sure it is correct as I cannot be sure the agonizing near death > experience terminates, and for who? Nothing is simple here. > Indeed. > > I accept *total* annihilation experience only in thought experience! In > practice it might not exist. We don't know (and can't know) our > substitution level, and it depends on what you are willing to abandon, or > to what you identify with is. > 1-annihilation experiences are near death experiences. Is it clear that > they have endings in the arithmetical reality? Who knows? > > The same can be asked for some type of dreams, and altered states of > consciousness. > The way I have for a time looked at is, is there are X instances that explain your current experience. Some may be "ordinary" while others might be, say a "dream". If in your experience, you encounter something you are unlikely to survive ordinarily, like a Mushroom cloud on the horizon, then you will likely next find yourself waking from a dream. (Since all the non-dreaming ordinary explanations are dead). Is there something wrong with this reasoning? > > In my opinion, understanding a theorem in arithmetic already provides a > glimpse on a deep and atemporal experience, connected to the first person > in virtue of an argument. > > I will need to think more on this. Thanks. Jason -- 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.
