Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
Norman Samish wrote: > Gentlemen: > > I've endured this thread long enough! Let's get back to something I can > understand! > > "Why?" you'll ask. > > I'll reply, "Because your audience is shrinking! I've plotted the Audience > vs. Topic, and find that, in 12.63 months, there is a 91% probability that, > if the topic doesn't become understandable to one with an IQ of 120, your > audience will be zero, and the only expositor will be Bruno. Not that > there's anything wrong with that, but we must acknowledge that Bruno speaks a > language that very few of us can understand. Bruno, and probably Russell and > a few others, are clearly Homo Superior, while the rest of us are mere Homo > Sapiens." > > You will then say, "Our discourse is meant for Homo Superior. If you can't > stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." > > I'll reply, "Damn! I was hoping to learn something!" > > Norman Samish > Norman: Even though the other current topic "Calculus of personal identity" has the word "calculus" in it, I think it's an understandable and interesting thread. And you can also start a new thread. For me, I'm hoping to learn something, too, as long as Bruno lasts, and feels like he's benefiting. This current topic I think is just starting to really get good, in my view. Or it may evolve to the next level and be less mathematical and more philosophical. Or maybe someone smarter than I am will pipe up and make it even more interesting. Who knows what will happen, but it's up to whoever wants to participate to make it happen. My thoughts. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
Gentlemen: I've endured this thread long enough! Let's get back to something I can understand! "Why?" you'll ask. I'll reply, "Because your audience is shrinking! I've plotted the Audience vs. Topic, and find that, in 12.63 months, there is a 91% probability that, if the topic doesn't become understandable to one with an IQ of 120, your audience will be zero, and the only expositor will be Bruno. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we must acknowledge that Bruno speaks a language that very few of us can understand. Bruno, and probably Russell and a few others, are clearly Homo Superior, while the rest of us are mere Homo Sapiens." You will then say, "Our discourse is meant for Homo Superior. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." I'll reply, "Damn! I was hoping to learn something!" Norman Samish --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: A calculus of personal identity (was:*THE* PUZZLE)
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 12:17:47PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Actually, the marquis de Sade (a famous mechanist philosopher, alas
> also, following la Mettrie, a famous materialist!) actually reason like
> that. If you expect to be demented or just to be dead, nothing between
> now and then should be a matter of concern. So Sade proposed that life
> belongs to the most egoist kind of people living just for the present
> instant.
> But comp is incompatible with materialism: we just cannot die in any
> absolute way, nor to be sure we will be demented in the normal
> (gaussian) futures.
>
> We can also interpret Sade as a proof by contradiction of the falsity
> of materialism (?)
Yes - I make this sort of argument for personal reasons in favour of
altruism in my book, in light of quantum immortality. I don't think I
have everything clear cut - its more of a handwaving exercise, but I'm
encouraged that others think in this way too...
Cheers
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Re: A calculus of personal identity (was:*THE* PUZZLE)
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > Finally, a variation on the type of thought experiments we have been > discussing (I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already brought this up > sometime, but I don't recall seeing it). We agree that if someone spends a > minute in Brussels, then is destructively teleported to Washington, where he > spends another minute, he will experience two minutes of continuous > consciousness, the first minute in Brussels and the second minute in > Washington, even if there is a delay between the disintegration and > rematerialisation. But what if, somehow, the minute's experience in Brussels > were run simultaneously with the minute's experience in Washington, just as > they would have happened consecutively, and then the person in Brussels > instantly disintegrates. We could even arrange it so that the minute in > Washington objectively precedes the minute in Brussels, as Greg Egan does > with uploaded beings in "Permutation City". Would the subject experience the > same linear progression of time in either c ase? Would there be a moral problem with "killing" the subject in Brussels which was not an issue with the "normal" teleportation? > > Stathis Papaioannou Without really getting into your thought experiment, I want to ask a question. What does it mean to "experience a minute of continuous consciousness"? OK, we have a biological clock that gives us a rough sense of relative passing of time. But I don't think you maintain that our personal identity is tied to that, do you? In order to really be sure we are going through time, I think we have to get discrete input from the external world every once in a while to see how much time (roughly) has passed. If we are annihilated and duplicated with a delay, I think we would be interested in how much time actually *did* pass, in order to continue to live our life (identity) in the most effective way. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 11:12:52AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> ?
I'm not sure which bit you were having trouble with. A description is
an infinite length bitstring. It is therefore equivalent to a point in
the unit interval [0,1] (modulo a little bit of funny stuff on a set of
measure zero). The uniform measure on the unit interval is equivalent
to the Levin-Solomonoff distribution, or universal prior, were sets of
descriptions are partitioned by a UTM. Information (or complexity) is
simply the negative logarithm of the set's measure:
I = -log mu(S)
Clearly, the set of all descriptions is equivalent to the unit
interval, and has I=0. This is the zero information object. Subsets of
the unit interval have smaller measure than 1, so the equivalent sets
of descriptions have larger information content.
A finite string can be thought of as a set of descriptions that share the
same finite prefix, and so have I <= length of string.
>
>
> > I think he
> > is wrong too, and agree with you, however I'm not so sure his
> > arguments are this easy to dismiss.
>
>
>
> Which argument in particular?
>
The speed prior argument (advanced in his "Algorithmic Theories of
Everything") paper.
>
>
>
>
> > It is related again to the ancient
> > debate on ASSA vs RSSA - Schmidhuber's argument works if you assume
> > just one computation is selected as your universe, which is rather
> > contrary to functionalism (and COMP).
>
> Remember Schmidhuber assumes comp.
>
I'm not so sure. At heart, I suspect he is a computationalist, however
what he assumes in his papers is that the universe (that we see) is a single
specific computation selected from the dovetailer algorithm. With COMP (and
with functionalism too) we assume that consciousness supervenes on all
consistent computations, which leads to your famous first person
indeterminism result. Schmidhuber's assumption directly implies
determinism (we are living inside one particular computation only).
I do not see Schmidhuber's argument as inconsistent, but it does seem
to contradict COMP, so Schmidhuber may have inconsistent faiths if he
insists both on this argument and COMP.
I'm thinking out loud here, so I welcome comments and corrections, of course.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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Re: A calculus of personal identity (was:*THE* PUZZLE)
Bruno Marchal writes: > > rather, it has been so fundamental to our evolution that it has a > > tenacity at the visceral level that is only otherwise seen in the > > delusions of the psychotic patient. But evolution has not had to cope > > with teleportation, mind duplication, duplication with partial amnesia > > in one copy, partial or complete mind merging, and all the other > > fantastic possibilities which may or may not one day be realised. > > > > ... or which have already been realised. And perhaps "Nature" bet on it > all the time. Our brains witness the importance of quick adaptation. > Now I don't think the third person and first person "self" is > necessarily a delusion, but its unicity could be (for some). The same > holds for the MWI. Obviously, if the MWI is true, then we have evolved to adapt to conditions in the multiverse, but evolution where multiple copies are extant in the *same* world would be very different. > > If it had (or if it will, in the far future), we might be left with a > > view of personal identity something like that espoused by Lee Corbin, > > where each copy is regarded as "self" and the (selfish) aim of life is > > not to preserve a single linear temporal sequence of related copies, > > but to maximise the total number of copies, even at the cost of a > > single individual's death. > > > Eventually Corbin accepted the first person indeterminacy. Unlike > people like Chalmers who thinks the first person can split (which > explained why he needs to defend dualism in the philosophy of mind). > With comp there is a definite answer for the notion of personal > identity: it is a personal question no "others" can solve for you. We have deal with this first person indeterminacy in the face of third person determinacy at some level. I would argue that it is based on an illusion: that you are a single conscious entity travelling through time. When you are introspecting here-and-now, that is something unique and personal, which cannot be captured by a third person description, no matter how complete. But when you consider your future, you are actually making a third person assessment of someone else's first person experience; and when your future self recalls his past, he is doing the same thing. > > Returning to the question of teleportation and probabilities, I would > > say that objectively there is only one unequivocal answer: you don't > > survive the experiment at all, > > > Ok, but do you agree that, keeping comp in front of such a statement, > it means we are dying each night, or even at each instant? > Of course with comp we cannot know that, nor can we know when we are > split, although we can believe it from thrid person available clue > (being the two slit experiment or some concrete doppelganger). Yes, that's exactly what I believe - although it certainly isn't what I *feel*, and it isn't what I base my behaviour on. The illusion of being a single entity travelling through time is maintained due to a sense of psychological continuity, which is in turn maintained by physical activity in my brain which varies within an ultimately arbitrary set of constraints. A future self might not have a single atom or a single mental attribute in common with a past self, might even have arrived at the latter state discontinuously, yet still consider himself the "same" person. Dying each night and being replaced with an exact copy is a rather mild change compared to what happens normally in the course of a person's life. > > but people who look like you and believe they are you materialise in > > Washington, Sydney and Beijing with P=1. Subjectively, I would try > > to apply the (delusional, or may as well be delusional) belief that > > you are a single person persisting through time as best as I can to > > the unnatural situation. I think that the best answer in the two-step > > teleportation (Br..>W,M; M..>S,Be) is that you should expect P(W)=1/2, > > P(S)=P(Be)=1/4. I prefer this to an equal P of 1/3 for each > > destination city because (again, due to our evolved psychology, not > > because it is the "truth") we anticipate all possible candidates for > > the "next moment", but once this next moment arrives, all the other > > concurrent copies become irrelevant, and the only thing that matters > > is the *next* next moment. Consistent with this method, if there is > > complete amnesia for all that happens in Moscow, it is as if that > > stage has not occurred, and from Br you can anticipate arriving in W, > > S and Be with equal probability. In the case of intermediate levels of > > amnesia in Moscow, I suppose this would yield intermediate > > probabilities. However, I'm not very confident about this, because our > > minds are simply not made to deal with the situation. > > > That is why we do mathematics and logic. To escape our "historical" > prejudices and handle counterintuitive propositions. Like
Re: A calculus of personal identity (was:*THE* PUZZLE)
Le 18-juin-06, à 15:59, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : I should clarify, I have taken "amnesia in Moscow" as meaning that you arrive in Moscow with a proportion of your pre-teleportation memories missing, so that total amnesia would mean you are unconscious or in a vegetative state, as after a severe head injury. On re-reading, I see that you probably meant that you are fully conscious in Moscow, but then forget some or all of what happened in Moscow (but not in Brussels) at your next destination. Actually, analogous situations occur all the time with medical procedures involving the use of amnesia-inducing drugs such as midazolam. Faced with the prospect of a procedure which you know will ultimately be wiped from your memory, should you expect an unpleasant experience, or should you expect to just wake up post-operatively with a gap in your memory? If the latter, then if you expect to become demented when you are very old, shouldn't you stop worrying about anything that might happen between now and then? I believe this is an important and hard question, which has extremely counter-intuitive answer (with comp). Actually, the marquis de Sade (a famous mechanist philosopher, alas also, following la Mettrie, a famous materialist!) actually reason like that. If you expect to be demented or just to be dead, nothing between now and then should be a matter of concern. So Sade proposed that life belongs to the most egoist kind of people living just for the present instant. But comp is incompatible with materialism: we just cannot die in any absolute way, nor to be sure we will be demented in the normal (gaussian) futures. We can also interpret Sade as a proof by contradiction of the falsity of materialism (?) We should talk again on Midazolam, but be very cautious with the fusing/amnesia sort of arguments. Difficult matter. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
Le 18-juin-06, à 06:35, Tom Caylor a écrit : > I don't know much about Church Thesis, but I want to learn more. Even > though it seems easy to recite, as in the existence of a Universal > Language, it seems very deep and mysterious. I think so. > Almost like stating a > Unified Field Thesis. I agree. > You just state it, and then see where it leads, Yes. > at least as far as you are able to follow it. ? I mean we follow it. Comma. Of course in case we get a contradiction we will abandon it. If we get just weirdness, well, personnaly I follow Deutsch dicto: let us take our theory seriously, it is the only chance to make them wrong ... > > But on the surface, the very prospect of someone trying to disprove > Church Thesis is funny to me. I think so too. To be honest, one paper on continuous (quantum) teleportation made me doubt on Church thesis during several hours ... but no more. > Perhaps I am missing something. To > think of a counterexample seems like a contradiction. Didn't Turing > describe his Turing machine as equivalent to what a mathematician can > do with a pencil and paper? But the counterexample would have to be > something that someone (probably a mathematician ;) could think up! So > a counterexample would be a function F that > > 1) a mathematician could think up > 2) without using a pencil and paper! Oooo. Not really, because Church thesis asks for the "pencil and paper". So a counterexample of Church thesis would be a FINITE description of how to compute a function, description which can be send by radio wave or by pedestrian mailing and understandable by human but not by computer. The main problem is that we cannot define really what we mean by "FINITE". It is as hard to define the term "finite" (without using its meaning implicitly) than the term "consciousness". (and in my opinion the term "matter" is still more complex, and that almost follows from comp in fact, cf UDA). > > Actually, I am aware that people like Penrose actually say that > something is going on in the brain (quantum-mechanically) that could > never happen on a piece of paper. After having read his cute "road to reality" book I think he has changed his mind. > But putting it in the above way > makes it sound funny. And I think actually Penrose might claim that > the function G is just such a function. Penrose knows perfectly well that no known human can compute g. (G can be compute partially and is in general undefined in a predictible way (for example on its own code)). So Penrose has concentrated his non-comp argument on the formal version of that argument, that is on Godel second incompleteness theorem. He needs to say that humans know their are consistent and thus escape the godelian fate, but Judson Web already refutes such attempts. I propose we come back to this when we will go the fact 1 and to to the facts I and II (cf Smullyan). We need the notion of theory for doing that. > He doesn't say much in his > Shadows of the Mind about Church Thesis. Interesting. I will try to reread what he says about Church thesis. > But, Bruno, your posts on > this seem to be assuming Church Thesis and then seeing what the > conclusion is about G, which is perhaps the opposite of Penrose. Sure. remember I put explicitly Church thesis in the definition of computationalism. Penrose postulates non-comp at the start (of its two best-sellers book). penrose uses Godel as an argument for non-comp. I take it as the most lucky possible event for the mechanist, because it saves mechanism from reductionism. With a good understanding of Church thesis you can realize that comp is the most anti-reductionist philosophical standpoint possible. Church thesis and comp are the rationalist road to the mystical notion of unconceivable freedom. Unfortunately, although we have practice rational mysticism for a millenium (from Pythagoras to Proclus), we have (irrationally, after mixing religion and state) separate them since about 1500 years. > > Do you think that there is a possibility that Church Thesis has the > same status as the Continuum Hypothesis in this sense: the Continuum > Hypothesis has been shown to be independent of the axioms of > arithmetic, i.e. both the truth and the falsity of the Continuum > Hypothesis is consistent with the axioms of arithmetic. You mean with the axioms of Zermelo Fraenkel set theory, I guess. (The continuum hypothesis is not even expressible in first order axiomatized arithmetic, like Peano). > Could the > Church Thesis be independent of... what?... The problem is: what body > of knowledge is there that is in the pursuit of truth, and is also > intimately affected by the Church Thesis? The mind-body problem, I > guess. Could the Church Thesis be independent of the mind-body > problem? Quite interesting question. In 1922, Emil Post, the real first discoverer of "Church thesis" (except perhaps for Babbage
Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
Le 18-juin-06, à 01:55, Russell Standish a écrit : > A description is an infinite length (bit)string (bits in brackets, > because any other alphabet will do also). This use does sometimes fly > in face of what people expect, Certainly. > but I define this explicitly - it is a > useful term. > > I'm just using the term "object" informally. The zero information > object is in > fact a set of descriptions. ? > >> I can understand "an infinite length object", like some putative >> infinite physical universe for example. I can understand "a zero >> information description"; for example the empty program or some empty >> theory (I will address "theories" later though). It is harder for me >> to >> understand what can be the use of infinite description or a >> zero-information object. >> > > Only sets of descriptions (remember infinite length bitstrings) can > have finite information. ? > > This looks like a terminological issue... ? >> I think the only trouble with Schmidhuber, and then with many people >> to >> be sure, is that they find hard to take seriously enough the >> distinction between first and third person point of views. >> The UD is a (finite) program, and when it runs, like any program >> running on some universal machine, it uses only at each time a finite >> piece of its (potentially infinite) tape, etc. >> Now, indeed, once you grasp that the probabilities of relative >> histories relies on the first person point of view, the case can been >> made that the infinite computations have a higher measure that the >> finite one, so that somehow physicalities emerges from the infinite >> set >> of those infinite (crashing-like) computations. >> > > You're talking here of his speed prior argument of course. ? (I was just saying that Schmidhuber miss the 1/3 distinction). > I think he > is wrong too, and agree with you, however I'm not so sure his > arguments are this easy to dismiss. Which argument in particular? > It is related again to the ancient > debate on ASSA vs RSSA - Schmidhuber's argument works if you assume > just one computation is selected as your universe, which is rather > contrary to functionalism (and COMP). Remember Schmidhuber assumes comp. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: *THE* PUZZLE (was: ascension, Smullyan, ...)
James,
Le 17-juin-06, à 20:10, James N Rose a écrit :
>
> Bruno,
>
>
> Sometimes gedankenexperiments - or even theoretical
> contemplations - include unvoiced/unconsidered
> presumptions and biases that a system may not
> be self-aware of. Benj Whorf brought this aspect
> of systemic nature into consideration, in the 1930's,
> when he applied Einstein/Reichenbach notions of
> 'relativity' to the "subjective" field of language
> and linguistics. {Reichenbach called his analysis
> of it (1927) vis a vis gravity, Theorem Theta.}
>
>
> Several years ago, I proposed that attention
> should not be paid to the Halting Problem, but
> instead be paid to what comes after. Meaning,
> not to the effective information production
> of the computation run, nor to any activity
> resulting from the computation run .. but rather
> to this: future re-activation of 'the' or any
> computation process.
>
> We exist in a universe that is always 'in process'.
> Even if some operations 'halt', the essential nature
> of co-present simultaneous systems is that dynamics
> are so 'on-going' that the main priority is on
> re-enacted/re-established/re-initiated actions.
>
> No systems are 'pure isolates' .. there are always
> and importantly: relationships of context, continuity,
> and recursion.
>
> Placing the Turing or Church or any other devised
> 'closed conditioned system' on the table of evaluation,
> is to miss THE critical group of parameters, that no
> 'idealized' parameters group includes.
I argue that the contrary is true. I have no evidence that you did
follow the argument. You are not enough clear that I can counter-argue
here.
>
> Current closed-set evaluations are fundamentally:
> utilitarian, task-oriented, single assignments/missions.
?
>
> But the statespace of the universe is open, relative,
> re-accessible, and re-instantiable .. WITH .. all
> systems being vulnerable to correlary/additional
> instructions.
Which universe?
>
> It makes no nevermind if a system or computation
> 'halts' or not.
>
> The crucial things is whether 1) if a computation
> halts .. what are the conditions for re-instantiation?,
> and 2) if it never self-halts .. then what parameters
> are present to induce halting? (a) sufficient utility of
> incomplete data, (b) eradication due to untimely utility,
> (c) exhaustion of operational resources, (d)
We have proved that such question cannot be answer in any systematic
way.
>
>
>
> You see Bruno, mathematics carries a self-blinding
> presumption: Perfect universal information distribution/access.
>
> "Sequential operations" functions are an attempt to
> evaluate non-instantaneous information processing.
>
> And physical reality includes both AND contraints
> unique to both - but interactive with the other
> domain.
What do you mean exactly by "physical reality"?. In this list such an
expression is ambiguous. Are you talking about the observables which
are emerging from the relation between numbers (if comp is true
together with the reasoning I am trying to convey) or about some (non
comp) materialist theory?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: A calculus of personal identity (was:*THE* PUZZLE)
Le 17-juin-06, à 14:41, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : The problem hinges on an answer to the question, what criteria must be satisfied for two instantiations of a person to be the "same" person? In the world with which we are familiar, most people would agree that there is an objectively right or wrong answer. Our brains have evolved so that we are sure that we are the same person today as we remember being yesterday, and will remember having been tomorrow. I might add that this isn't a view that is subject to revision in the light of new information, like the belief that the world is flat; I am not so sure about that. It is known that people who introspects themselves can be led to the discovery of delusions about the world and personal identity. Somehow this what will be mirrored in the interview of any self-referentially correct universal machine. rather, it has been so fundamental to our evolution that it has a tenacity at the visceral level that is only otherwise seen in the delusions of the psychotic patient. But evolution has not had to cope with teleportation, mind duplication, duplication with partial amnesia in one copy, partial or complete mind merging, and all the other fantastic possibilities which may or may not one day be realised. ... or which have already been realised. And perhaps "Nature" bet on it all the time. Our brains witness the importance of quick adaptation. Now I don't think the third person and first person "self" is necessarily a delusion, but its unicity could be (for some). The same holds for the MWI. If it had (or if it will, in the far future), we might be left with a view of personal identity something like that espoused by Lee Corbin, where each copy is regarded as "self" and the (selfish) aim of life is not to preserve a single linear temporal sequence of related copies, but to maximise the total number of copies, even at the cost of a single individual's death. Eventually Corbin accepted the first person indeterminacy. Unlike people like Chalmers who thinks the first person can split (which explained why he needs to defend dualism in the philosophy of mind). With comp there is a definite answer for the notion of personal identity: it is a personal question no "others" can solve for you. Returning to the question of teleportation and probabilities, I would say that objectively there is only one unequivocal answer: you don't survive the experiment at all, Ok, but do you agree that, keeping comp in front of such a statement, it means we are dying each night, or even at each instant? Of course with comp we cannot know that, nor can we know when we are split, although we can believe it from thrid person available clue (being the two slit experiment or some concrete doppelganger). but people who look like you and believe they are you materialise in Washington, Sydney and Beijing with P=1. Subjectively, I would try to apply the (delusional, or may as well be delusional) belief that you are a single person persisting through time as best as I can to the unnatural situation. I think that the best answer in the two-step teleportation (Br..>W,M; M..>S,Be) is that you should expect P(W)=1/2, P(S)=P(Be)=1/4. I prefer this to an equal P of 1/3 for each destination city because (again, due to our evolved psychology, not because it is the "truth") we anticipate all possible candidates for the "next moment", but once this next moment arrives, all the other concurrent copies become irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is the *next* next moment. Consistent with this method, if there is complete amnesia for all that happens in Moscow, it is as if that stage has not occurred, and from Br you can anticipate arriving in W, S and Be with equal probability. In the case of intermediate levels of amnesia in Moscow, I suppose this would yield intermediate probabilities. However, I'm not very confident about this, because our minds are simply not made to deal with the situation. That is why we do mathematics and logic. To escape our "historical" prejudices and handle counterintuitive propositions. Like in contemporary physics. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
