On 30 Sep 2017 6:03 p.m., "John Clark" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 7:08 AM, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Actually there have been some quite interesting discussions outside the JC > echo chamber, I think, Quentin. I don't bother with the troll, > So you believe Quentin's ideas are so brilliant that nobody could sincerely disagree with them and I have written hundreds of posts over the years defending a position I did not believe had any value. Hmm... I bet you voted for Trump. > > although I occasionally read your contributions because the degree of, no > doubt understandable, vitriol you have accumulated towards his attitude to > the discussion is quite entertaining. Entertaining in the way intestinal worms are entertaining perhaps. > > Personally I've never been able to understand all the fuss. In a world > with duplication machines we'd just have to accept that other people might > have a legitimate claim to be the successors of the same predecessor as > ourselves. > If you know there will be more than one successor then asking the predecessor what one and only one thing will happen to that predecessor would be a brain dead dumb thing to do. > > > But that couldn't possibly have any bearing on the necessity of finding > ourselves to be one single individual at any given moment. > No bearing? You just said "finding ourselves" and that's plural, so when you ask "what one and only one thing" what the hell are you asking and who are you asking it of? I'd reread what you said before you even think about calling other people stupid. I'm sure you're capable of substituting 'oneself' if that's what's bothering you. We find ourselves to be only one person at a time. In fact, that is the entire point that you seem forever intent on preserving the pretence of failing to understand. In any case I didn't in point of fact ask you anything since asking you anything is manifestly futile. Some very stupid people, such as those that think Quentin is clever, believe it's like a coin flip, but it's nothing like a coin flip! Today I don't know if the flip will end up heads or tails and the best I can do is assign probabilities, but tomorrow I won't need probabilities at all, tomorrow I can state with 100% certainty exactly how it turned out; however with Bruno's thought experiment tomorrow after its completed everybody still will be as ignorant of the answer as they were the day before because it's still not clear what the question was. > > > I suppose it's just barely within the bounds of possibility that some > poor soul might be incapable of understanding what is entailed in BEING > someone as distinct from DESCRIBING someone. But if that were indeed the > case one could only shake one's head and pass on by. Even in a world with people duplicating machines I have no trouble understanding what *BEING* someone means, and I have no trouble understanding what having *BEEN* somebody means, but I have enormous difficulty understanding what the one and only one person I *WILL BE* means. Who asked you? Not me. But you can perhaps comprehend that you could find yourself in the position of remembering having had the same predecessor as someone else. In that case, as convention has it, the individual that you find yourself to be can be considered as one of the future continuations of that predecessor. And by that same token, as not being any of the others. So the predecessor's anticipated 'next moment is in fact a single present moment in the point of view of any one of the successors. Each will recall that moment of anticipation as the immediately preceding part of their personal history. The predecessor, knowing about the duplication, is able to DESCRIBE more than one such continuation. But they will also easily appreciate that their present state will inevitably be recalled from the perspective of not more than one of those continuations at any given future moment. The restrictions logically contingent on the nature of individuality preclude the possibility of BEING, which is to say occupying the perspective of, more than a single individual at any given moment. It may possibly help with any conceptual difficulties to consider that just as multiple continuations can't be experienced simultaneously, they can nevertheless be conceived as being experienced serially. Hence in a certain sense the predecessor can indeed anticipate experiencing BEING both continuations, but serially and not in the context of the same moment. The personal histories of such 'serially simultaneous' moments then subsequently diverge. This heuristic of what one may term 'universal agency' is borrowed from Hoyle. Since the relation with both personal history and spatial-temporal localisation is by assumption locally determined, this can make no difference to anything but ease of conceptualisation. Given this scenario and provided, as you must, that you now restrict your imagination to the perspective of one continuation at a time, probabilistic logic and games of chance such as those previously proposed can be seen to play out quite naturally and without further conceptual difficulty. To be honest, I wonder sometimes if the problem here is simply a failure to relinquish an initially faulty perception, even in the case that a correct one simplifies and resolves the puzzle. I'm reminded of the math docs who argued interminably over disfunctional interpretations of the Monty Hall problem when a simple solution was just obvious in the light of the correct one. But I strongly suspect you already know all this. Think of this as an experiment in intellectual honesty, John. It may hurt a little at first, but it's a lot less painful than pretending to be stupid. David John K Clark 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. -- 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.
