On 04 Aug 2017, at 20:26, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 7:14 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> You seem to agree that it's obvious the duplicating machine
won't make a difference.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. With or without a
duplicating machine looking into the past you will always
know with 100% certainty what you did or did not see, and with or
without a duplicating machine looking into the future you can
never predict with 100% certainty what you will see next and the
best you can do is resort to probabilities. However without a
duplicating machine, although you still can't make a prediction
beforehand with 100% certainty, afterword you can know with 100%
certainty what the correct prediction would have been, but that's
not possible if duplicating machines are in the mix and it's not
possible because then the following 2 sentences are NOT
equivalent:
1) What will you end up seeing?
2) What did you end up seeing?
Although both have question marks at the end only one of
them is a question. The second one has a precise answer, the
first one doesn't have an answer, not even a approximate
answer, not even in retrospect. They are not equivalent because the
personal pronouns in them are not equivalent, and the personal
pronouns are not equivalent because people duplicating
machines are used and because the past and the future are not
equivalent. We can remember the past but not the future.
That is why we have to make the question more precise, and replace
"1)" by either 1') "What will 1-you end up seeing?" or by 1'') "What
will 3-you end up seeing?". In that case, given that we assume
computationalism (so we know that 1-we survive in one unique city),
the answer to 1') is "1-I expect to find myself in W or in M", and the
answer to 1") is I expect anybody to see 3-me in both W and M.
If not, you have to admit you die in Helsinki, and computationalism is
false. QED.
> This has been the whole point of the discussion
If duplicating machines make no difference why were
they introduced into the thought experiment? And where is this
indeterminacy I keep hearing about?
It is due to the fact that the person in Helsinki expect to survive,
and know in advance that whatever he will feel having survived, it can
only be in one city, (cf P(coffee) = 1 and P("one city") = 1, from his
two available accessible first person points of view).
BTW you did not answer my last messages where this has been explained.
I also asked you a question there. I copy the message below for your
ease(*). Take all your time, but please avoid the ad hominem stuff.
Bruno
(*)
On 01 Aug 2017, at 18:25, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 4:32 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
>> After the experience is done they STILL can't
give any more precise information.
> Correct. That is the incommunicability, or unprovability that
we can survive (any experience). But we are working in the
computationalist frame, where we accept that we surivive,
independently that it is unprovable.
A prediction means stating something now that will be known with
certainty in the future, if that something is not known now
Like "I got HEAD", or "I got FACE", in the coin experience. Before, I
predict "HEAD v FACE", even P(HEAD) = P(FACE) = 1/2.
Like "I see Washington", or "I see Moscow" in the WM-duplication. Same
prediction as above.
and is not known in the future
Not known by who?
The question is on the first person experience which will be lived. As
the first person is duplicated, (in the 3-1 view), and as the question
is on the experiences, we have to ask both copies, and both confirms
that "W v M" was correct, and P(W) = P(M) = 1/2 is reasonable for
reason of digital identity.
The result has been known in the future by the first person(s)
involved. All copies confirm that now, they know the outcome of the
experience, and also, that they could not have predicted it in advance.
They know that in the 2-iteration, the best prediction is, with 0 and
1 in place of W and M for reason of readability:
00 v 01 v 10 v 11.
In the n-iteration, it can be proved that the majority of copies will
have a non-compressible sequence in their personal diary, which shows
that digital mechanism entails a strong form of indeterminacy (in the
first person perspective, and that is why it is called first person
indeterminacy).
It is cool, because for an outsider, never entering in the box, and
looking at all this, there is no indeterminacy at all.
There is nothing paradoxical, as long as we distinguish the 1p and 3p
discourses.
either then the failure to know it now is not a failure of
prediction. There is simply nothing there to know.
There is nothing to know in the third person perspective, but the
question was on the unique first person experience that anyone can
live in a self-multiplication scenario (unless you think that you die
in such process, if not you will a unique personal experience, so that
you can evaluate expectations).
> I can predict that a coin will fall on HEAD or on TAIL with
certainty
In retrospect you can do much better than that, you can say "I
should have said the coin will fall on TAILS with 100% certainty";
but even in retrospect there is no correct answer to the question
"what one and only one city will I end up in?". And that fact
means it wasn't a question at all.
You eliminate the subjective experience of both copies. You persist in
never listening to what they say.
What should answer the John-Clark with the following WM-histories,
when trying what they will write next?
011001001000011101101101010100010001000010110100011000010
111011011011100001010100010110001010001010111011010010100
?
Bruno
> looking forward to a 30% probability of a certain outcome
without duplication is equivalent (subjectively and behaviourally)
to looking forward to being copied multiple times with 30% of the
copies experiencing that outcome, whether you are a rat or a human.
Without the duplicating machine after it's all over you can say
"Yesterday I shouldn't have said there is a 30% chance event B will
happen, yesterday I should have said there is a 100% chance event B
will happen", but if personal pronoun duplicating machines are used
then "you" couldn't say that. And that's not equivalent.
John K Clark
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