On 9 September 2015 at 13:45, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 9/09/2015 1:29 pm, Jason Resch wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:44 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> 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. >> > > So if some aliens create a copy of you in Andromeda, then you cease to > exist as a person? > > > Since I might know if they gathered the requisite information, it is not > an issue. > > Note: according to current comological models, space is infinite and > uniform, which means infinite copies of you exist (though very far away). > > Such models make really quite strong assumptions about initial conditions. > You might well have an infinity of worlds with our present cosmology, but > they might all be copies of some bland, boring model with no intelligent > life. An infinite number of universes does not imply an indefinite number > of copies of every particular universe. There are sets of zero measure, > after all. So again, I don't think there is anything here to concern us. > Even if there are exact duplicates, they are in principle > non-communicating, so are operationally different persons. > If they are exact duplicates which are non-communicating, you cannot know which duplicate you are. This is why if one duplicate definitely sees heads and the other duplicate definitely sees tails, you have a 1/2 expectation of either outcome. -- 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.
