On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 4:20 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 24/09/2015 4:02 am, Jason Resch wrote: > > > On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 8:45 PM, 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. >> > > I don't see how this follows. Are you saying you would cease to exist as a > person if a duplicate of you arose far away in this universe, or that you > would not cease to exist as a person? > > > The closest continuer account of personal identity would have no > difficulty with this. > It might not, but closest continuer theory makes no sense and appears to be an ad hoc way to escape what otherwise clear conclusions from non-dualist theories of mind. If you run an identical computer program on a different computer, one on mars and one on the moon, why say the one on the moon the only one that is identical to the program last run on Earth? What if the two copies are an identical number of Plank lengths away? Or what if many are all run on a sphere whose center is where the last instance ran? Closest continuer theory has no theoretical justification. The only reason it even exists is that some find the idea that they are not unique to be too upsetting. Closet continuer theory purports to offer a way to guarantee uniqueness of the individual (at least until you consider ties by equally close continuations). > The remote "copy" is purely a matter of chance, which has no physical or > causal connection with you, so is not a continuer in the required sense. > > 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. >> > > This all follows from thw concordance model of cosmology, which is the > "standard model" in cosmology. See: > http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf > > > >> 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. >> > > I don't think you grasp the implications of infinity. If there are > infinite worlds, there is effectively 100% probability that an infinite > number of them will be identical to this entire Earth as you see it. > > > As I said, that assumes some regular distribution over initial conditions > -- condition for which we have no evidence whatsoever. > All current observations are consistent with the uniformity of the universe. At large scales the universe is very homogenous, and it is believed that early quantum fluctuations (which are effectively random) shaped the clumping of matter. > So our universe - and our particular personal existences - might be > unique, even in an infinite universe. There can be universes of zero > probability measure. > > Pi has infinite digits. Any sequence, however long, the encoding of any > documentary, can be found in the digits of Pi, and moreover, it recurs an > infinite number of times. > > > That, too, is an unproved assumption about uniformity --essentially the > assumption that pi is a normal number. And that has never been proven. > > It doesn't have to be normal, it just has to be irrational (no repeating pattern) which is proven. In any event, I was just using Pi to illustrate that when there is an infinite extension (without a trivial repetition) the same sequences will recur. You need to adopt non-standard cosmological theories to say this implication does not apply in the case for our universe. Jason > Bruce > > > I think you are trying to avoid answering my question. > > Jason > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
