On Sat, Aug 5, 2017 Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > > The prediction that not even the oracle could make is "which event will I > see after the duplication?". It is a valid question because I understand it, > >
Do you? Am I to understand you've had experience in this sort of situation? If people duplicating machines are involved you may think you understand the question but I am quite sure you do not because there is no question there and nothing to understand. > > > The question has a definite answer after the duplication: "I see A", or "I > see B", depending on which copy is speaking. > If it depends on which copy is speaking, and it certainly does, then there is NOT a definite answer or even a probabilistic answer to the question "which event *will I* see after the duplication?" because in this context the personal pronoun in the "question" is undefined, and so it is not a question at all. Without people duplicating machines "what will I see?" is a legitimate question and could be rephrased as "tomorrow what one and only one event will the one and only person in the world that remembers being me right now see?". That question is clear as a bell and it has an answer, but if tomorrow 2 people remember being you right then it's not a question, it's just a bunch of words strung together. For a similar reason "How long is a piece of string?" is not a question even though it has a question mark at the end. However both Mr. A and Mr. B can give definite answers to the question "What event *did I* see after the duplication?", and the answer they will give is very easy to predict: Mr. A will say "I see A" and Mr. B will say "I see B" and both will remember being Mr.Yesterday and a time before the duplication. What more is there say? What have I failed to predict? > > > It does not have a definite answer before the duplication because of the > irreducible randomness > . > I have nothing against irreducible randomness because after even a quantum mechanical random event I can say "after the photon passed the 2 slits it turned out it hit the photographic plate right exactly there at the spot I'm pointing at". But even after the duplication the question asked at the very beginning STILL has no answer, and that is the smoking gun evidence that it was not a question. John K Clark > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
