On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 Terren Suydam <[email protected]> wrote: > You can't dismiss what happens inside the room. >
I can and will dismiss things that happen inside that room that are not important, and only things that make a subjective difference are important. Or at least that's what I think. >> If that were true then exchanging their position would cause a >> difference, but it doesn't, not objectively and not subjectively either. >> Even the universe doesn't know or care if the exchange really happened or >> not, so why should you? >> > > > Yes it would cause a difference. > How on earth could exchanging the position of two identical things make a difference either objectively or subjectively, how could you even know that such a exchange had even been made? In fact I can't think of a better definition of "two identical things": Two things are identical if and only if exchanging their position makes no difference to anybody or anything. > > There is only one room. The duplicator is inside the room. The room is > not duplicated. > Irrelevant. > I know you've seen The Prestige. Spoiler alert for everyone else... > Anyway, it's like the scene where Hugh Jackman's character duplicates > himself for the first time, and he shoots his duplicate as soon as he > realizes what's happened. > In that scene the two diverge very very quickly because one is pointing a gun at the other and one expects to die in a few seconds and one does not. That's about as big a difference in environmental conditions as you can get. >> And consciousness doesn't even have a position. Does your consciousness >> really exist inside a bone box sitting on your shoulders when you're in >> Berlin looking at a picture of Dayton Ohio while thinking about the Great >> Wall of China? It sure doesn't feel that way and the way things feel is >> what consciousness is all about. >> > > > So you're abandoning physical supervenience? > I don't follow. How is that abandoning the idea that lower level properties determine the higher level ones? > > If you flood your bloodstream with alcohol do you not feel drunk? > Yes. >> Because if the room were not symmetrical then the two would immediately >> start to form different memories. >> > > > Right. That's part of the experiment. The experiment is not trying to > create duplicates that don't diverge. > Then what in the world do you expect to learn from such a ill designed experiment? Experiments should be as simple as possible and avoid redundant unimportant nonessential needless excess redundancies. > >> Obviously you can arrange things so that the two immediately start to >> form different memories, but my point is that it doesn't have to be that >> way and is not inherent in the body duplication process itself. >> > > >There is a point to this thought experiment that does not depend on the > copies remaining identical. > If they don't remain identical identical then they are no longer copies, they're just two people in a room, and the thought experiment no longer has a point. > > for the purposes of this thought experiment, trying to preserve > identical copies is not important. > WHAT! Then what do you need that elaborate matter copying machine for? Just stick any two people you happen to find into a room, although I can't imagine what you'd hope to learn by doing so. > Two copies of John Clark, > No, not two copies of John Clark, two collection of atoms arranged in a Johnclarkian way. John Clark is an adjective not a noun. > separated by space, have to work out which of them will open the door so > the other will survive. > As long as that door is opened quickly enough there is a 100% chance that John Clark will survive and a 0% chance that anybody will die, so both collections of atoms arranged in a Johnclarkian way will do everything they can to get that door opened very quickly before divergence happens and things become much more complicated. John K Clark > > -- 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.
