On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 09:48:27AM +1200, LizR wrote: > On 9 June 2014 00:30, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > The same with the MWI: we still have the ability to partially chose the > > type of future we want to belong. We can influence the statistics of the > > normal realities. This makes the end of the second paragraph correct with > > respect to comp: we cannot predict the futures notably due to the presence > > of persons, which can refute the predictions, or even just makes them wrong > > by sheer intrinsic complexity of the machines with introspective power. > > > > I knew someone - gosh, it was almost 25 years ago! - who believed that we > can choose our future from the ones made available by the MWI. He even had > a couple of anecdotes of occasions when he thought he'd done so. And he was > a very good writer, although I don't know if he every got published. He was > also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, just to round out the > thumbnail sketch ... a tall guy with frizzy hair (perhaps not so now). I am > trying to recall his name, not having thought about him much in the last > 1/4 century... anyway, he had this idea that space-time was like a vast > railway marshalling yard and we could choose which rains to run along. I > always wondered what happened to the other "mes" who didn't get to go on > those lines? > > Do you really think we can do this? I'd like to think so, but I can't see > how it would work in practice. >
I changed the thread topic, as this is a long way from "tronnies". I, for one, do not think it such a crazy idea. When I was a child, I used to chant silently 3 times the outcome I wanted before rolling a dice. Surprisingly, it seemed to work (although I could easily have been deluded by various sorts of selective memory effects). Of course it it worked to the point of changing objective outcomes, that truly would be miraculous. However, it always seemd that it might be possible to influence the subjective probabilities for future branches we occupy in the Multiverse. In a rather less controversial way we already do this by choosing which basis set to measure - if we choose to measure in the position basis, it is not surprising that the probability of ending up in a future with a well defined momentum result is therefore zero. It was pointed out on this list that this implies zombies exist. Well it would if the probability of a future branch truly goes to zero, but not if the effect is to say favour branch A by ten times branch B, where objectively branch A and B are equally probable. Whatever method is employed to do this, it must sometimes fail (otherwise zombies would indeed exist!). So perhaps it is possible to will changes in subjective probability, but knowledge of that phenomenon will never be scientifically communicable to other people. It would be another example from what Brun describes as G*\G, a noncommunicable truth. Anyway, just my two bits. I don't know why I didn't discuss this idea in my book. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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/d/optout.
