On 03 Aug 2014, at 18:04, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Exactly what John Clark seems to miss, the first person after-
experiences.
Oh yes, that's because John Clark is a Zombie.
So don't act if the HM-john Clark, and the HW-John Clark, ... and the
HWWMWMMMW-John Clark were zombies. They all try to explain to you that
they are living an experience which confirms the indeterminacy, and
even, for most of them, the probability one halve. You are the one
treating them like if they were zombies.
> In both diaries, those who predicted 'no break of symmetry',
Who in hell predicted no break of symmetry?
You.
One will see Moscow and one will not, nobody thinks that is
symmetrical. If things were symmetrical there would only be one
person regardless of how many bodies there were; there needs to be a
break in symmetry for the concepts of "you" and "me" to be meaningful.
Good. You disagreed with this some time ago.
You and I are two different people because things are unsymmetrical,
we both have memories that the other does not; In the thought
experiment things are a little more complicated because the Helsinki
Man has no memories that the Moscow Man (or Washington Man) does
not, but the Moscow Man DOES have memories the Helsinki Man does
not, such as the memory of seeing Moscow.
Good.
> will write: "Why for God sake am I the one reconstituted in Moscow ?
To answer the question, "you" were reconstituted in Moscow because
"you" saw Moscow and the other fellow didn't, if you'd been
reconstituted in Washington you'd be a different "you". It's not as
if "you" became the Moscow Man and there is some great cosmic
mystery as to why "you" then ended up in Moscow, it's the other way
around, the very act of seeing Moscow turned "you" into the Moscow
Man. And there is no mystery in the Moscow Man seeing Moscow, what
the hell else is the Moscow Man supposed to see?
But who pretend there is any mystery here. On the contrary, we get
that first person indetermlinacy from logic and the working of a
computer, not from adding anything mysterious.
Now, as you agree that the guy in Moscow see moscow, and not
washington, you have to agree that his prediction "w & m" was wrong,
but that if he would have predicted "w v m", it would have been
correct. if you agree with the dissymetry of the first person
experiences, you can undersrtand that the HWWMWMMMW-John Clark
understand that he, the HWWMWMMMW-John Clark guy, has no mean to
predict if he will write W or if he will write M in his personal future.
If you want a more detailed answer as to why you saw Moscow I'd have
to start talking about why the Helsinki Man (and you are the
Helsinki Man even though the Helsinki Man is not you) agreed to walk
into the duplicating chamber in the first place. And I'd have to
start talking about the history of Moscow and why a city was built
where it was and why it took the shape it did. But I don't see how
getting into that will bring any philosophical enlightenment.
The point is just that in those duplication experience, you always
survived one and entire, in w, or in m, from the first person view,
and can never be sure what to expect among {w, m}. The numerical
identity of the copy invites to put the probability one halve, and
this is tautologicall confirmed by sample of population resulting from
iteration of that duplication.
There is nothing mysterious, just a very simple case of first person
indeterminacy.
Step 4 is the question: would that indeterminacy evaluation (P=1/2,
say) changes in case we add a delay of reconstitution on one branch
(in Moscow). So you are in Helsinki, and we ask you what do you
expect, as you will be duplicated and reconstituted in Washington with
the normal usual delays, and in Moscow, but after a delay of one year
(say)?
With Robert Nozick's naive closer continuer assumption, it seems that
in this case, P(W) = 1, and P(M) = 0. But is that possible when we
assume comp? What do you think?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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