On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:00 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > The entire point of Bruno's "proof" and all of his bizarre thought >> experiments is to examine and get rid of that "semantic quibble", and yet >> from page 1 Bruno acts as if the concept of personal identity was already >> crystal clear even though in his thought experiments such things were >> stretched about as far as they could go. In such circumstances using person >> pronouns with abandon as Bruno does without giving them a second thought is >> just ridiculous. >> > > > If you say so. Maybe this is due to English not being his first > language. >
No and I am not a member of the grammar police because I often don't well speak English myself, I'm talking about a fundamental error in Bruno's thinking process covered up by the very sloppy use of personal pronouns. In everyday life it's not important to be super careful with pronouns and it's possible to be careless with them without causing ambiguities, but if matter duplicating machines are introduced into the mix extraordinary care must be used and Bruno didn't do so. > However it may be worth looking past how he says it to what he's trying > to say. > I can't because what he's saying is tightly bound up in the meanings of those personal pronouns and in a world with matter duplicating machines the meaning of those personal pronouns is ambiguous. > I seem to remember that HE (Hugh Everett :-) talks about the nature of > the observer in his paper > Yes, and when Everett talks about "the observer" there is never any ambiguity because the laws of physics allow us to see only one thing that fits that description, but that is NOT the case if you have matter duplicating machines as in Bruno's thought exparament. > If you look at Bruno's thought experiment it does in fact depend on the > past. His talk about prediction is to do with how things will appear to > have happened after they've happened > And that's yet another problem that I didn't mention in my last post, not that predictions have the slightest thing to do with personal identity but Bruno says that the Helsinki man's prediction that John Clark will see Washington AND Moscow has been proven wrong because afterwards the Washington Man said "I see only Washington". But what makes Bruno think that the information received by the Washington Man alone (or the Moscow man alone) is enough to evaluate the truth or falsehood of the Helsinki Man's prediction? I've asked Bruno this question nineteen dozen times but never received a coherent answer. > you do have to be more careful, because you are only incidentally linked > to one copy in Bruno's thought experiment, > NO! You're linked to BOTH copies with equal strength, and that's exactly the problem and is why when Bruno starts saying that after the duplication "you" will see this but "you" will not see that its ambiguous drivel. > rather than strictly linked to one by the laws of physics. > The matter duplicating machine works according to the laws of physics just like everything else. >> Obviously, but a person wouldn't need to believe in the MWI or even be a >> physicist to know that what is observed when a door is open a door is >> uncertain. > > > > ??? Sorry I don't understand that sentence. > When I open the door of the duplicating machine chamber not knowing if I am the original or the copy what will I see? I don't know. When I open the front door of my house what will I see? I don't know. > both comp and Everett allow for [...] > I don't care what "comp" allows. > >> If you say so, but I'm not a bit interested in "comp" and except for a >> few member of this list I don't think anybody on the planet is either. > > > > Then why did you answer my post? > Because that's the first time in it you used the silly word "comp", up until that point it made some sort of sense even if I didn't agree with it. > That seems like you're being deliberately obtuse. Anyone with a theory > needs to invent terms for the components, > Sometimes new jargon is needed but I'm talking about jargon for jargon's sake. For example, the word "subjective" has been around for centuries and is understood by everyone, nevertheless the acronym "FPI" was invented (and 1P) for the same reason government bureaucrats crank out acronyms by the gross; somebody couldn't invent a new idea but they could always invent a new word and they figure that will make them look smart. It doesn't. When too many people start to understand a word (like subjective) there is a tendency to change it to something less comprehensible, particularly if your ideas are confused, contradictory or just plain silly because then what you say sounds deep even when it's not. That's why psychology is so dense with Unnecessarily Pointless and Redundantly Repetitive jargon (UPRR) and Very Stupid Acronyms (VSA), while mathematicians prefers the simplest words they can get away with, like continuous, limit, open, closed, rational, irrational, compact and even simple and complex. > Do you refuse to accept the use of "top quark" because "top" has lots of > meanings? > Until 1961 nobody even knew that something like the top quark might exist so obviously a name for this new thing was needed and "top quark" worked as well as any; but the human race knew that subjectivity existed somewhat earlier than 1961 so a new word (and certainly not a new acronym!) was not needed. 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