On 17 Apr 2012, at 11:44, Loet Leydesdorff wrote: >> It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the > protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow > and > Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two > people with > absolutely identical physique and memories immediately afterwards, > which > will then begin to diverge.
OK. Then the uncertainty is bearing on the outcome of that divergence You can predict this, in Helsinki: (I will feel to be in W) and (I will feel to be in M) But here you adopt a 3-view on your future 1-views. But we assume comp, so we know that both copies will *feel* to be entire and complete in only one city. So from the first person point of view, it is (I will feel to be in W) or (I will feel to be in M). Assuming comp and the correct substitution level, you will never feel to be simultaneously in W and in M. This would entail a telepathic element which, given that we have chosen the right substitution level, would have a non computable element, and contradict comp. We can verify this by asking the copy in W, and he will assesses to feel to be in W, and not in M, and having only an intellectual (3- view) belief of the existence of its copy in M. He cannot even know for sure that the copy has already been reconstituted there or not. > Both, looking back to pre-bifurcation times, > will say "that was me", and both will be correct. Absolutely so. That is why we have to listen to both of them, and both of them agree to feel to be in only one city. One sees english speakers around him, the other sees russian speakers, and none of them can realy *know* if their doppelganger has been reconstituted. Nor could they know in advance that they would hear russians or americans. The advantage of proceeding with such thought experience is that it avoids the need to agree on personal identity. The indeterminacy bears only on experience which can be noted in a diary. Of course, the experience suggest that personal identity is an illusion. If you keep your identity on both copies, then we can argue that we are all the same amoeba, who duplicates itself a lot since a long time. But this remark needs not to be agreed upon to understand that computationalism reverses physics and the information/computer/ number science. If you really believe that the you-in W and the you-in M are really still exactly the same person, having different experience, then I can argue that you and me are already exactly the same person. Why not? Perhaps God, playing hide-and-seek with itself :) But here we try to predict direct accessible results of self- localization after a self-duplication, and without a non computable telepathic link, the answer of the copies are different. > There is no "essence" to > be randomly (or non-randomly) assigned to one location and not the > other. But there are human beings, knowing in which city they feel to be. None will write "I feel to be in both M and W at once". Each will write "I feel to be in just the city X", with X being M or W respectively. They can only bet, intellectually, about the existence of the other. Indeed, the guy in W would not been able to see I have cheated on him, and that I did not reconstitute him in M. OK? > The individual is now two people and therefore can be and is in both > cities. Only from a third person point of view. From the point of view of each copies, despite both being the "same" person as the one in Helsinki, they both feel right now to be in only one city. And the first person indeterminacy bears on such feeling, not on the bodies to which we can attriibute consciousness, but on the content of the consciousness, which in this case corresponds to the result of the self-localization (W, M?) which they will write in their diaries. None will write in the diary "I feel to be in W and M". Just replace humans by robots having some amount of inference inductive power. And imagine the iteration of the experience. So after finding themselves in some city, they buy a ticket to come back by plane to Helsinki, and they do the experience again and again. After iterating that experience 64 times, there will be 2^64 copies, and each of them will have, written in their respective personal diaries a specific sequence of "W" and "M". Such robots can have already well defined elementary inference inductive power to guess that their sequences are non algorithmically compressible. Each of them cannot predict the next outcome of the self-duplication. Of course, some of them will develop theories. For example the one having the story WWWWWWWWW...W, will be tempted to predict "W", but we know she will have many "descendants" contradicting that theory, and in this setting, they are deluded. Of course "real life" will not be a sequence of self-duplication, but it will be a sequence of self-multiplication or differentiation on an extremely redundant set of computations, already existing through elementary arithmetical relations (if you agree with the definition of comp and the meaningfulness of Church thesis, you have already accepted that elementary arithmetical truth (like "17 is prime") are not dependent of humans, nor of any universal machines. All right? > > But this ignores the second law: one can expect unavoidable error in > the > replication. :-) ! L. > I don't think we need such an error. Nor do we need any precise physical theory. We need only the amount of "grand-mother physics" to believe in doctor, hospital, brains, the duplication device making sense of comp, etc. Eventually the apparent existence of such objects will have be justified from more fundamental notions. It is the purpose of the whole reasoning to explain this logical obligation. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
