On 9 September 2015 at 13:40, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 9/09/2015 1:20 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > On 9 September 2015 at 12:44, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On 9/09/2015 12:26 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> >> On 9 September 2015 at 10:43, Bruce Kellett < <[email protected]> >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> Whether or not all possibilities are realized, they are not in evidence, >>> so their relevance to the question of probabilities is questionable. >>> >>> Your simple model case of a coin toss causing a world split is just a >>> made-up example to give the result you want, so again its relevance is >>> dubious. There is no sensible physical theory in which the world splits on >>> classical coin tosses. >>> >> >> If you can't imagine a world split, consider a virtual reality in which >> the program forks every time a coin is tossed, one fork seeing heads and >> the other tails. You are an observer in this world and you have this >> information, so you know for certain that "all possibilities are realised" >> when the coin is tossed. What would you say about your expectation of >> seeing heads? >> >> I presume you mean that the world is duplicated on each toss, with one >> branch showing each outcome. We are back to the dreaded "person >> duplication" problem. My opinion on this is that on such a duplication, two >> new persons are created, so the probability that the original person will >> see either heads or tails is precisely zero, because that person no longer >> exists after the duplication. >> > > After the coin has been tossed a few times, you (or one of the entities > identifying as you) will say that, despite the opinion he expressed on 9th > September on the Everything List, it does seem that he has survived the > duplication and that heads comes up about half the time. > > It is a question whether it is just the person who is duplicated, or > whether it is the whole world split into two non-communicating replicates. > In the former case, two new persons are created and they will experience > normal probabilistic outcomes of coin tosses. The second case (duplicate, > non-interacting worlds), is indistinguishable from a simple series of coin > tosses in this one world -- duplication has added nothing. > What if you are locked in a prison cell isolated from the world, and the prison cell is duplicated without your knowledge? What if in a year you are released and meet your duplicate? What if you are never released but are informed of the duplication? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
