Re: QTI, Personnal Identity and Superposition of States.
Le 22-août-05, à 18:51, GottferDamnt (Andy) a écrit (FOR-list): I have another problem with the quantum theory of immortality. During the superposition of states, *I* am *both* dead and alive, isn't it? Or maybe dead parts can't be taken into account because I am not conscious of them? Because I don't understand why after a split of universe, even if I was conscious during the superposition, I could not be in another universe where I would be dead. You answer your own question. Dead parts, as you say, cannot be taken into account because you cannot be conscious of them. That is why Everett said that the probabilities concerned are subjective, not in the Bayesian sense of interpreting the notion of probability in a subjective way, but in the sense of objective probabibilties bearing on subjective element. Those subjective elements are given by sequences of automata memories in the MWI. This is based on the assumption of the *classical* computationalist hypothesis in the cognitive science (Note that the classical feature is a rare point where Bohr and Everett meet). Actually this raises many questions because once the comp hyp is assumed, it remains to explain why the quantum histories win the *observability conditions* in the competition with *all* classical computational histories. My point is that comp should justified QM if one want to use it to justify the subjective (first person) justification of the collapse of the wave packet, in the manner of Everett and Deutsch. Note that your point above justify in the same manner a more general form of comp-immortality. (See my url and the everything mailing list for work and discussion on similar questions) Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: subjective reality
Le 22-août-05, à 17:17, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : I guess I spoke too soon... Do you think that YD is incompatible with (SWE + collapse) or with only SWE? (YD = accepting an artificial brain for some level of description (Yes Doctor); SWE = Schroedinger Wave Equation). Imo, YD is the driving motor of the Everett interpretation of QM. What is your opinion about quantum suicide, quantum immortality, and their comp (a priori more general) form? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: subjective reality
-Original Message- From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 01:15:22PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Tom, Than you can surely understand how disappointed I feel! It's even more like the hooka-smoking-Caterpillar since Bruno pulled the mushroom right from under me!!! Oh! Maybe was just a pipe dream, like those of that Lob(otomy?) machine of his. How sad!!! Sorry guys. Looks like I have been scooped... Godfrey Kurtz (New Brunswick, NJ) But was your argument based on the white rabbit problem? And in any case, the white rabbit problem is merely a problem for Bruno's thesis, not a show stopper. As far as I'm aware, my solution to the white rabbit problem is compatible with Bruno's COMP, although it does require some additional assumptions. Nobody has checked this thoroughly, of course. [GK] Hi Russell, My argument is not based on the White Rabbit Problem since I don't even know what that is, in all honesty! From reading Brunos's popular account I gather it has something to do with the possibility of finding unruly or unexpected things once you believe the kind of theory he and, I guess you, profess. No? Without meaning to disrespect your solutions, I think Quantum Mechanics produces a very good deal of White Rabbits on its own, and by this I mean predictions that thwart any of the everyday type of expectations you place on reality! Have you heard of the Mean King Problem, for example? If you want a big hat from where loads of these come out The argument I believe I have is just a simple working out of the premise of YD till you get to a situation that our current knowledge of QM can defeat. I am sure there are many more that you can think up with a bit of reflection. If you want to consider those White Rabbit's is entirely up to you as long as you start getting used to have them around... [RS] So it is time to put up or shut up Godfrey! If you have some genuine argument against the YD, let's hear it. Cheers [GK] As I stated before I don't react very well to that style of macho pressure in spite of my (clumsy) attempts to use it on Bruno! As it turns out my argument may be of interest for another issue that some people have been disputing in the land of quantum marginalia, but I am not entirely convinced of that yet. When I am I may try and sketch it for the list, though I am doubtful that you would have any interest in it since its speculative level is orders of magnitude below what you guys are used to... (;-) Cheers indeed, -Godfrey, -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 c Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection.
Re: subjective reality
Sorry Russell, Everyone One of mys sentences got mangled in the middle in my last reply. I meant to direct you to the recent book by Aharonov, Y. and Rohrlich D. Quantum Paradoxes: Quantum Theory for the Perplexed. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/3527403914/qid=1124806729/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-8758662-2102523?v=glances=books as a source of quantum mechanical white rabbits. Enjoy, Godfrey Kurtz (New Brunswick, NJ) -Original Message- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection.
Re: subjective reality
Hi Godfrey At 01:09 PM 8/22/2005, you wrote: Hi Hal, I am sorry I have not responded to you previously and I thank you for the further clarifications your provide about your theory. Sounds quite extraordinary but unfortunately I don't feel I grasp it well enough to make any useful comment as to its contents. There is a recent thread I started An All/Nothing universe model that gives some of the model's recent development. I can not access the archive right now so I can not give you a URL for the start of the thread. From what you say before it seems that you claim that you derive YD, CT and AR from it which happen to be Bruno's points of departure! Is that the case? Does your All include false statements too? I do not derive YD, CT or AR. The model is based on a list of properties that objects can have. Definition divides this list into two sub lists. The Nothing has the sole property empty, the All has all the remaining properties. The list of course would have properties that seem incompatible as simultaneous properties of a single object, but nevertheless definitions create such objects as the is not member of the definitional pair. So the All is - in total - self incompatible, but so what? It would seem that the All contains YD, CT, and AR since these are potential properties of objects and would be on the list. I gave an example of a universe that seems compatible with these and seems to become more compatible with our universe if one adds noise which is the result of the random dynamic. The fact that YD may be incompatible with QM or any other item on the list is not relevant to the All but only to sequences of states of universes that are given instantations of reality by the dynamic. Thus if Bruno's reasoning from YD, CT, and AR is correct - I am not one to judge - then the All would contain potential sequences of universe states compatible with comp. The noise causes such sequences to jump tracks here and there. I am asking this out of curiosity not because I see any obvious way of addressing the falsification of your model. As to falsifiability of my model I will try to list my assumptions, etc.: 1) There exists a list [call it the Everything] of all possible properties of objects that can have reality. 2) The list is divided into two sub lists by the process of definition [definition forms a definitional [is:is not] pair]. 3) The definition resulting in the [Nothing:All] definitional pair is unavoidable and thus this pair has simultaneous existence with the list. It is then noted that the Nothing can not respond to any meaningful question about itself and there is such a question: Does it persist? Thus the Nothing is incomplete. The necessary attempt at resolution of this incompleteness by the Nothing by accessing [incorportating] parts of the list [a symmetry breaking?] results in a random dynamic within the All producing a randomly evolving Something [that which the Nothing has become by incorporating parts of the list] [an evolving universe]. But by #3 the Nothing must be restored so the process of creating randomly evolving Somethings repeats [a form of an MWI]. A random evolution can produce long strings of states of universes that can support Self Aware Structures [SAS], YD, comp etc. [A state of a universe is one side of a definitional pair - a sub list, and I have in the past called sub lists kernels [of information] to tie in with some of my previous posts.] That is my model in a nut shell. I don't want to sound like a big stickler for Popper or anything but I am sure you are familiar with the infamous libel often directed at String Theory that it is not even false! I believe that particular description is actually more like that is not even wrong [citation unknown] and may be older than string theory. In any event I think we should be careful how we use descriptions such as true/false, right /wrong, compatible/incompatible, in contradiction with, etc. because they seem to have different domains. I am now interested in how you and Bruno use such terms re comp, YD, UDA, QM, MWI, etc. In that regard I think it is time you present your argument re YD/QM and see what the list has to say about it. Hal Ruhl
Re: subjective reality
Hi Bruno, I might have partly answered your query in my response to Russell. I am not sure. Godfrey Kurtz (New Brunswick, NJ) -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 12:55:07 +0200 Subject: Re: subjective reality Le 22-août-05, à 17:17, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : I guess I spoke too soon... [BM] Do you think that YD is incompatible with (SWE + collapse) or with only SWE? (YD = accepting an artificial brain for some level of description (Yes Doctor); SWE = Schroedinger Wave Equation). [GK] I believe that YD is incompatible with the whole formalism of QM which I don't quite think is simply reducible to Unitary Evolution plus Collapse, by the way. But if you put it that way, yes, it is the conjunction of both that does it (and entanglement, of course!) [BM] Imo, YD is the driving motor of the Everett interpretation of QM. [GK] I am afraid I don't understand what you mean by this! Are you saying that Everett based his interpretation of QM on the premise that YD is true? I strongly doubt that... [BM] What is your opinion about quantum suicide, quantum immortality, and their comp (a priori more general) form? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ [GK] The short answer to that is that I agree with Milan Circovic (and David Lewis) on the issue of quantum suicide: arXiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412147 [Check what he says on Everett, by the way...] Plus I think much the same can be said about quantum immortality a few other Deutschian and Tiplerian notions that you take, let us just say, a little too much to the letter. The general idea is that one has to be extremely careful in the use of conventional terms in the quantum context because they may not even be definable... I can give you a longer answer, but you would like it even less... Best regards, -Godfrey Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection.
Re: YD is the driving motor of the Everett interpretation of QM?
Hi Bruno, How is this the case? YD requires that the mind, or some token of subjective awareness, can be faithfully represented in terms of TM, or some other equivalent that can be implemented in a finite number of steps in a physically realizable machine. It is my belief that such TM are equivalent to Boolean algebras which have been proven to not be able to faithfully represent any QM system having more than 2 dimensions. A QM system, or more to the point here, its logical equivalent can embed at least one Complete Boolean Algebra. The converse is not possible exept for the trivial case. Unless the Multiverse is restricted to 2 dimensions, how does your claim *not* fall apart? Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 6:55 AM Subject: Re: subjective reality Do you think that YD is incompatible with (SWE + collapse) or with only SWE? (YD = accepting an artificial brain for some level of description (Yes Doctor); SWE = Schroedinger Wave Equation). Imo, YD is the driving motor of the Everett interpretation of QM.
Kaboom
The various 'laws' of quantum mechanics, in the minds of those involved in their study, have been discovered, as opposed to invented. In the quest to explain their power in prediction of the behaviour of the natural world I can make the following observation: Let's say we do science on football. We observe the players from 100,000 light years away with nifty telescopes. We send probes out to interfere with football matches and we form QF, the quantum theory of football. In fact it is just the rules of football, which we are not privy to except by experiment. Those rules of QF are powerfully predictive. Within all the random darting about and obscurity of the behaviour of the players and the ballall manner of behaviour of the footballers can be predicted. So we write the rules of QF down and then we think: wow, these rules work _so well_! What sort of circumstances must exist in order that these rules come about?. So we start to think... and we come up with a set of multi-footballs. Rules for Irish football, grid iron, soccer, aussie rules, rugby flavours A and B. and so on. We then postulate that within a country the rules coalesce into their national sports through the choice of the observers. We invent the most incredible series of amazing scenarios that might provide the underlying incredible reality of these sets of rules as observed. How can the observers do such a thing? = Spot the problem? There is an attribution. An assumption. That assumption is that the universe of football, in being described by the rules of football, that the rules of football exist and are the goal we seek and are the quintessential reality of the footballing world. I posit this as a fatal mistake. Fatal in the sense that the idea of the multi-footballs is telling us anything useful about reality. The real answer, which is there all along: is to start talking about the footballers. For it is they who are displaying the behaviour so well characterised by the rules of QF, not literally driven by the rules of QF. What is actually driving the footballers is a whole gamut of social imperatives! The rules are incidental. The lesson here? That the natural world can contrive to behave in a manner depicted by a set of rules in no way necessitates that those rules are driving the natural world. Isn't it time to look at the natural world as mathematics instead of the other way around? I have real trouble with this list because I can even get to square 1 because of all the unnecessary assumptions driving the whole discourse. No multiverses are necessary study as I might I can't make any sense in any corner of physics where the 'rules'/'laws' are taken so literally. To go down this path is to ascribe without foundation that the rules are driving the universe. I can't even get past the axioms of COMP. They just don’t hold unless I delude myself that the universe is driven by some mechanism implementing the underlying 'ruleness' we observe. Instead I can contrive a whole class of universes that coalesce to approximate various mathematics in a certain contexts that will 'appear' to behave according to the rules we observe. So frustrating. When are we going to stop interpreting the symbols of these apparent laws and start dealing with the underlying reality? Somebody justify why all the various interpretations are worth thinking about? Chew on this instead: as soon as you pick up a pen and write one symbol you have failed. The natural world is its own and only perfect describer. All else is an approximation. Useful approximation? yes. Predictive and poweful approximation? yes. -but- literally capturing the natural world? -no way! Understanding consciousness is my goal and playing around with human generated symbols symbols seems to be diverting good thinking away from the thing that is actually responsible for consciousness - the natural world. How about we fit in with it instead of the other way around. Just for a change... pick a natural symbol and see if you can make a calculus with it. I can. Please... someone else try... pretty please? I think I'll be off to lose myself in some neuroscience for a while.maybe a rest will help!! :-) Cheers Colin Hales
