On 10 Mar 2014, at 01:17, chris peck wrote:
Hi Bruno
>> With respect to the UDA, graves and me are just using
different vocabulary.
Really?
the last time I quoted her:
"What ... should Alice expect to see? Here I invoke the
following premise: whatever she knows she will see, she should
expect (with certainty!) to see. So, she should (with certainty)
expect to see spin-up, and she should (with certainty) expect to see
spin-down."
But that can only be a 3-1 description. She handles the 1p by a
maximization of the interests of the copies, and that is equivalent
with the FPI, without naming it.
Funnily enough Bruno, if I was opportunistic I would just about
accept that. I mean personally, I would argue that the vocabulary
used is identical between you and Greaves and she explicitly denies
your probability distribution from the first person perspective.
I doubt this, as in the iterated self-duplication, her method get
equivalent as justifying the "probability talk", even the usual
boolean one.
The notion of first person, and first person sequences are well
defined, and it is a combinatorial exercise to show that the vast
majority of first person memories will feel white noise.
The existence of that white noise is proved in a third person way, and
the real question will concern the invariance of that indeterminacy
for 3p transformation.
But a bigger problem for you raises its head if I put that to one
side.
if, as you claim, there is no substantive difference between your
theory and Greaves' just because she has some other mechanism of
deriving the bare quantities you want, then you may as well say that
there is only a difference in terminology between your theory and
any other interpretation of QM. After all they all deliver 0.5 by
some now irrelevant metric too. You've just relugated your theory to
the purely metaphysical. You're tacitly admitting that all these
theories are just re-skins of the same underlying engine with bugger
all to choose between them.
In a way that is something that I have felt for a while. Everettian
QM does not improve upon QM + collapse in the way say relativity
improves on Newtonian physics. There is no concomitant improvement
in predictive capability on offer. Its a purely theoretical change
intended to smooth out conceptual difficulties but it can only do
that by delivering further difficulties of its own. All your
theories are scientifically irrelevant.
QM+collapse is not a theory, it is a collection of attempts to make
theories, with often weird role played by apparatus or humans.
Then with Everett, things just get understandable, except that by
using computationalism, I show that we have to extract the wave from
an uncertainty structure related to relative computational states.
The rest seems to me like using vocabulary to avoid a problem, which
is sad, as it is an interesting problem. A positive solution, that is
a match between Z1* and empirical quantum logic would suggest how the
laws of physics emerge in the mind of some stable collection of
universal numbers.
A negative solution would need either to abandon Theatetetus, or to
bet on normal higher level of simulation, like with Böstrom, or
abandon comp, that is abandon Church thesis, or "yes doctor".
Bruno
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2014 11:32:08 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3
On 3/9/2014 12:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Mar 2014, at 06:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/7/2014 8:26 PM, LizR wrote:
On 8 March 2014 08:14, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/7/2014 1:24 AM, LizR wrote:
On 7 March 2014 18:29, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/6/2014 9:15 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
A related question is, is there any such thing as true randomness at
all? Or is every case of true randomness an instance of FPI?
Or is FPI just a convoluted way to pretend there isn't true
randomness?
If one assumes QM and the MWI are correct then it isn't pretending,
True; but I don't assume that.
Since your original statement above only makes sense in some context
- which you haven't revealed, as far as I can tell - perhaps you
could tell us what you are assuming?
I'm not assuming anything, I'm just pointing out that one could
assume something different than QM and MWI. For instance, start
with MWI but then suppose that at each "branching" only one instance
of you continues. Doesn't that accord with all experience?
Like Ptolemeaus epicycles. The point is to accord with the simplest
theories we have for most if not all experiences, like QM, or
computationalism.
At each "branching" only one instance of you continue, you say, but
that does not accord well with the simplest explanation of the two
slits experience. You will have to explain why the superpositions
act in the micro and not the macro, and this needs big changes in QM
(= SWE), or even bigger to computationalism.
But you have to explain this anyway; except the question is
transformed into why do I only experience one reality. Presumably
the answer is in decoherence and the off-diagonal terms of the
density matrix becoming very small (or maybe even zero). Once you
have this answer then you can look at the density matrix, as Omnes
does, and say, "QM is a probabilistic theory, so it predicts
probabilities. What did you expect?"
My point is that these sharp questions are asked of QM because it is
a mature theory with lots of very accurate predictions, but "comp"
as a new speculative theory kind of gets a free ride on the very
same questions, e.g. why do we not experience superpositions? Why
isn't there a superposition of the M-guy and the W-guy according to
comp. How can consciousness be instantiated by physical processes?
Most people on this list just assume it can't and dismiss the very
idea as mere physicalism. But they don't ask how can consciousness
be instantiated by infinite threads of computation - that's
mysterious and consciousness is mysterious, so it's OK.
If not, you can always consistently assume everything is done by a
God to fit your favorite philosophical expectations. You can do
that, *logically*, but this is no more truth research, but wishful
thinking.
But you know that is not what is done. QM predicts probability
distributions that are confirmed to many decimal places. QFT
predicts some measured values to 11 decimal places. And you rely on
QM to explain the world in in you theory of comp. Your approach is
to explain QM and then let QM do the rest of the work - which is
fine. But my point is that QM can still do the work even if it's a
probabilistic theory. So unless comp can make some better
predictions than comp it's just an interpretation and it's trading
off a distaste for randomness (a very restricted and well defined
randomness) for a love of everythingism. Which is why I hope comp
can predict something about consciousness; where it may offer
something beyond just interpretation.
Brent
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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