On Wednesday, 23 September 2015, 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. 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.
You present "closest continuer theory" as if it is obviously correct,
and it is not. In any case, even granting the theory, why should the
causal or physical connection make a difference? I've sometimes
encountered this claim in these discussions but it is just ad hoc.
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 [3]
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. So
our universe - and our particular personal existences - might be
unique, even in an infinite universe. There can be universes of zero
probability measure.
The Copernican Principle in conjunction with the observation that the
universe is uniform in all directions is enough.
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.
Bruce
I think you are trying to avoid answering my question.
Jason
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