Re: MWI question for the physicists...
Pierz wrote: And it's true, you can't determine probabilities by counting branches. Not by counting the number of eigenvalues, but by treating the probability amplitude associated with each eigenvalue as a measure of underlying worlds - well that was my understanding. So you have, in fact, achieved nothing. You have to impose a probability interpretation that is external to MWI, whether given by the number of branches or not. Postulating an infinity of branches in every case, and then using the Born rule to give a probability measure over this infinity, is all rather much a waste of time. Besides the fact that there is zero experimental support for such an idea. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
On Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 5:00:05 PM UTC+10, Bruce wrote: Pierz wrote: And it's true, you can't determine probabilities by counting branches. Not by counting the number of eigenvalues, but by treating the probability amplitude associated with each eigenvalue as a measure of underlying worlds - well that was my understanding. So you have, in fact, achieved nothing. You have to impose a probability interpretation that is external to MWI, whether given by the number of branches or not. Postulating an infinity of branches in every case, and then using the Born rule to give a probability measure over this infinity, is all rather much a waste of time. Well it would be, if it didn't save you from the ugliness of collapse. It doesn't let you derive the Born rule, but its intention is not to explain the probabilities, which are not explained in standard Copenhagen QM either. Its intention is to provide a framework within which collapse and the associated measurement problem are eradicated. Besides the fact that there is zero experimental support for such an idea. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
On Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 3:24:08 AM UTC+10, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: Consider a set-up in which a photon is polarized in the z direction, so that we know that the particle will, with probability 1, pass through another polarizer also oriented in the z direction. However what of the situation where the second polarizer is oriented at 45 degrees to the first one? In that case, the probability is 0.5 that the photon will pass through. If it does, then obviously the probability is 1 that it will also pass through a third polarizer also oriented at the same angle. There is an interesting variant to that experiment that's easy to perform. Set one polarizer at Z degrees and a second one at Z + 90 degrees and there is a 0% chance that a photon will make it past both, but place a third polarizer between them set at an intermediate angle of Z+45 degrees and there is a 25% chance a photon will make it through all three polarizers. Try it at home, it's really quite counterintuitive, adding a third sheet of dark plastic actually makes things get brighter. Yes, which reflects the fact that photons that pass through the intermediate polarizer have their wave functions collapsed, if you think in those terms. Their quantum state is reset in the 45 degree orientation. So what is going on in the multiverse in this scenario? When a photon hits a polarizer sometimes the universe splits and sometimes it does not, Well, if you're going to talk about 'splitting' (Deutsch would say it differentiates), it always splits - into a branch in which the photon passes through and a branch in which it doesn't. it depends on the angle of the polarizer and perhaps on something else too. We know from experiment that Bell's inequality is violated so we know for sure that in the Many Worlds Interpretation, just like every other quantum interpretation, at least one of the following must be wrong: 1) Realism (things exist in a definite state even if they are not measured) 2) Determinism 3) Locality The Many Worlds Interpretation is realistic so if it's true then nothing determines if the universe splits or not (it's random) It's not random! The whole point of MWI is that it all happens, and the randomness arises from which branch you end up in (ah, the pronouns again!). I'm sure you understand that, so this statement confuses me. and all we can do is assign probabilities based on the angle of the polarizer (cos(Z)^2) . Or it is deterministic after all, something did indeed cause it to split but the cause can not be local, your decision on what angle to place the second polarizer somehow went back in time and changed the photon before it even reached the first polarizer because the future can effect the past. One thing is certain, whatever turns out to be true it's weird. What is going on at the point of the photon's interaction with the polarizer in an MWI account? The universe may or may not split depending on angle Z of the polarizer + X. X could be a random factor, and that's OK, there is no law of logic that says every effect must have a cause. Or X could be a non-local cause. But one thing X can not be is a local cause, we know that from experiment. And it's true, you can't determine probabilities by counting branches. Not by counting the number of eigenvalues, but by treating the probability amplitude associated with each eigenvalue as a measure of underlying worlds - well that was my understanding. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Idiot Test
OK - so the inability to be sure if someone is an idiot is just as fraught as trying to be sure that they are intelligent, I hear you say. Sounds like the ideal situation doesn't it! Tends to suggest that people rise only to the heights of their incompetence at understanding whether they or others are intelligent or stupid! So we are all stupid and the sand on the beach is intelligent. This is becoming very Smullyan, this bit... So if we adopt your simple criteria of the repetition of stupidities as idiocy and the silence of the pebble as intelligence, it seems the human race is suffering a terrible toll of redundancy. I hope yours is in fact the correct definition because it means we can do something about the problem of latency with respect to the evolution of human consciousness. I mean - the idiots (if there be such) really are holding us back. They are in all the top jobs. They cannot not be idiots so where does that leave us? Flexibility and tolerance and reform are not supported by the mental software idiots use throughout their lives. I actually wasn't thinking of John Clark when I started this thread. It's amusing to me in the extreme that everyone thought that's what I was doing! John isn't an idiot. He's just taking a long time to understand. He'll get there. I love Bruno's patience with him. Nobody here is an idiot. Kim On 13 Aug 2015, at 8:02 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 12 Aug 2015, at 01:42, meekerdb wrote: If you think you have a sure fire way to identify an idiot...it's you. It might be easy, for some class of beings. Perhaps, for the human, a simple criteria is simply being adult, and for a computer, being not yet programmed. Idiocy reveals itself by, not the mistake, but by the more or less systematic repetition of them, and the inability to change its mind, despite evidences. Denying evidence is also a common symptom. Then, obviously with the theory I gave, asserting one own intelligence, or one own idiocy is a (local) symptom. Asserting one own Intelligence/Idiocy can be replaced with asserting someone else intelligence/idiocy. Saying that Einstein is intelligent is either a cliché or a way to assert one's own intelligence. In fact idolatry, and uncritical attitude with respect to the boss, or anyone, even a God, is also a symptom of idiocy/cowardliness. But there is no criteria for intelligence, except that with the definition taken, keeping silence is a sort of local quasi-criteria (making pebble intelligent, but why not as they rarely utters stupidities). Bruno Brent On 8/11/2015 4:06 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 11 Aug 2015, at 10:26 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No doubt that it would be interesting to look at. Salvia has been called a cure of ... atheism (the non agnostic one 'course). Not that it makes you believe in anything new, it just shows reasons to doubt more, and to recognize we are more ignorant that we would have been able to conceive before. Bruno Well, that’s it, surely. The Idiot Test administered in this way has as a basic assumption that only what might be called The True Public Idiot is by nature incapable of changing or modifying his stated beliefs. A hallmark of idiocy is absolute certainty. In this light, Richard Dawkins for example, qualifies pretty much as a TPI. The other thing about this possible theological definition of ‘idiocy’ is: you will never meet an idiot who thinks the test was run fairly. This person has to accept that there is now an institution-backed sanction against them due to someone ticking a box marked ‘idiot’ next to their name. Still, they can justify themselves by saying how ‘in the past’ they changed their mind over certain matters when people whose opinions they could respect convinced them otherwise. You might like to check this assertion by interviewing his mother or sister instead. You will never, therefore, catch a certified public idiot in the act of changing his beliefs. This is because he has never changed his beliefs in the past and will never in the future - not because you are unlucky in the matter of catching him at it. The ticking of the box marked ‘idiot’ is a truly serious business. True (ie incorrigible) Public Idiots are actually quite rare. Even David Icke had to kind of admit that he probably wasn’t the reincarnation of JC…proving therefore that he was capable of recognising the lie he was telling himself. This leads to further refinements of the concept: 1. An idiot is one who lies about core matters - but only to himself. Others long since realised he enjoys playing this game with himself and that any other setup would entail him in ceasing to enjoy the game. 2. ?? Please feel free to add your own refinement. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group.
Re: Idiot Test
On 13 Aug 2015, at 01:06, chris peck wrote: Here's a thread with all the list's alpha-male geniuses mocking someone. Here's me, the village idiot, convinced they all pass their own idiot test with flying colours. lol. Looks you are the one mocking others, ... lol. I mean if the test involves understanding the implications of psychedelic drugs then you all just failed to do that. A monumental fail to Kim and Bruno, particularly. There's absolutely bugger-all metaphysically that people who have taken these drugs can agree on. Sod Salvia, even DMT and the mighty 5meo-DMT fail to deliver a consistent metaphysical message to those who take it, and 'psycho- nauts' effectively fall into two camps with Strassman-ites on the one hand claiming these drugs open the mind to real alien hyper- spaces (roll eyes), and the Sand-ites on the other believing they are just tools to explore one's own mind. But there's no consensus. There is no consensus on themundane experience too. Once there are experience, we can only have partial consensus. Now, I know better salvia than DMT, and the resemblance of the experience is striking. It goes like -30% feel the feminine presence (called lady D, or virgin Maria, etc..). -75% feel the rotation/vortex -67% feel the alternate reality/realities -10% feel the copy/reset effect -49% feel the home effect, etc. From a personal statistics based on the Erowid reports and the persons I have been a sitter for. How to interpret those effect is difficult, and will depends already if the base theory is Aristotelian or Platonist (and as I said, there is no consensus for the mundane observable realty). Many people feels, with salvia, that the mundane picture is interrogated and are less sure of their preceding thought on the subject. If there is any general consensus about psychedelics it is a psychological/moral one. That we should have a healthy sense of self- doubt about our own convictions. I hope so, but it is frequent that some people believe a plant, like other would believe a government. Here salvia seems peculiar in the sense that whatever way you interpret an experience, the next one will refute the interpretation. It is almost like a logical diagonalization. With salvia there is two parts in the experience: first the carnival/ magic-garden, where the plant do a lot of theatrical stuff perhaps to impress the beginners, and very often to deter them to go farer: to make them realize that they are not ready. Then, secondly, the breakthrough which is beyond words, and plausibly well the same for everybody (and provably so if the Galois connection comp theory of dissociation is correct (where the brain is a filter of consciousness, because we eventually identify ourself with a very small type of (universal or sub-universal) routine in arithmetic (but it is just a theory)). You guys are half way there with a healthy sense of doubt about everyone elses convictions but none for your own. That seems just gratuitous. beyond being conscious roght now, I am not sure I have a conviction, and still less that I would make it public. In fact the salvia report is close to many mystic report, and indeed the big lesson of such experience is the learning of different (rational) way to conceive reality. It opens the mind, and when done seriously, it enlarge the range of the doubts. From just the reports it seems that salvia is much more efficacious than the drug on the DMT family, which looks often like intense magic-garden with no obvious breakthrough. Of course there is abig debate between salvia and DMT experiencers on this question. Concerning idiocy, I think it is a state of mind, close to cowardliness, perhaps due to lack of attention and encouragement of parents or people around you in the childhood. As a teacher, I have observed that in general, student who fails have parents who treats them as stupid. That state of mind can change in a second, but sometimes some shock can help (be it a war, a drug, an accident, a near death experience, a dream, etc.). It can change in the two directions, and the most intelligent *can* soon make or assert the biggest stupidity, all the time. Bruno Are you sure you weren't just chewing mint? From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Idiot Test Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 17:21:19 +0200 On 12 Aug 2015, at 01:06, Kim Jones wrote: On 11 Aug 2015, at 10:26 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No doubt that it would be interesting to look at. Salvia has been called a cure of ... atheism (the non agnostic one 'course). Not that it makes you believe in anything new, it just shows reasons to doubt more, and to recognize we are more ignorant that we would have been able to conceive before. Bruno Well, that’s it, surely. The Idiot Test administered in this way has as a basic
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
Pierz wrote: On Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 5:00:05 PM UTC+10, Bruce wrote: Pierz wrote: And it's true, you can't determine probabilities by counting branches. Not by counting the number of eigenvalues, but by treating the probability amplitude associated with each eigenvalue as a measure of underlying worlds - well that was my understanding. So you have, in fact, achieved nothing. You have to impose a probability interpretation that is external to MWI, whether given by the number of branches or not. Postulating an infinity of branches in every case, and then using the Born rule to give a probability measure over this infinity, is all rather much a waste of time. Well it would be, if it didn't save you from the ugliness of collapse. It doesn't let you derive the Born rule, but its intention is not to explain the probabilities, which are not explained in standard Copenhagen QM either. Its intention is to provide a framework within which collapse and the associated measurement problem are eradicated. One can avoid collapse in much simpler ways. It is clear that the plenitude of worlds you suggest do not actually play any role, let alone an essential role. If they do not give the probabilities, then it is simpler to follow Everett's original idea and have one world for each dimension of the underlying Hilbert space. Then one would get probabilities from elsewhere. Occam's Razor surely comes into play here to toss out Deutsch's extravagance. One's dislike of a physical collapse postulate cannot be used to justify just anything -- there are sensible proposals, and then there is David Deutsch. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Idiot Test
On 12 Aug 2015, at 01:42, meekerdb wrote: If you think you have a sure fire way to identify an idiot...it's you. It might be easy, for some class of beings. Perhaps, for the human, a simple criteria is simply being adult, and for a computer, being not yet programmed. Idiocy reveals itself by, not the mistake, but by the more or less systematic repetition of them, and the inability to change its mind, despite evidences. Denying evidence is also a common symptom. Then, obviously with the theory I gave, asserting one own intelligence, or one own idiocy is a (local) symptom. Asserting one own Intelligence/Idiocy can be replaced with asserting someone else intelligence/idiocy. Saying that Einstein is intelligent is either a cliché or a way to assert one's own intelligence. In fact idolatry, and uncritical attitude with respect to the boss, or anyone, even a God, is also a symptom of idiocy/cowardliness. But there is no criteria for intelligence, except that with the definition taken, keeping silence is a sort of local quasi-criteria (making pebble intelligent, but why not as they rarely utters stupidities). Bruno Brent On 8/11/2015 4:06 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 11 Aug 2015, at 10:26 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No doubt that it would be interesting to look at. Salvia has been called a cure of ... atheism (the non agnostic one 'course). Not that it makes you believe in anything new, it just shows reasons to doubt more, and to recognize we are more ignorant that we would have been able to conceive before. Bruno Well, that’s it, surely. The Idiot Test administered in this way has as a basic assumption that only what might be called The True Public Idiot is by nature incapable of changing or modifying his stated beliefs. A hallmark of idiocy is absolute certainty. In this light, Richard Dawkins for example, qualifies pretty much as a TPI. The other thing about this possible theological definition of ‘idiocy’ is: you will never meet an idiot who thinks the test was run fairly. This person has to accept that there is now an institution-backed sanction against them due to someone ticking a box marked ‘idiot’ next to their name. Still, they can justify themselves by saying how ‘in the past’ they changed their mind over certain matters when people whose opinions they could respect convinced them otherwise. You might like to check this assertion by interviewing his mother or sister instead. You will never, therefore, catch a certified public idiot in the act of changing his beliefs. This is because he has never changed his beliefs in the past and will never in the future - not because you are unlucky in the matter of catching him at it. The ticking of the box marked ‘idiot’ is a truly serious business. True (ie incorrigible) Public Idiots are actually quite rare. Even David Icke had to kind of admit that he probably wasn’t the reincarnation of JC…proving therefore that he was capable of recognising the lie he was telling himself. This leads to further refinements of the concept: 1. An idiot is one who lies about core matters - but only to himself. Others long since realised he enjoys playing this game with himself and that any other setup would entail him in ceasing to enjoy the game. 2. ?? Please feel free to add your own refinement. Kim -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A curious puzzle - teaching a computer to understand infinity
On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 4:35:06 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Jul 2015, at 06:21, Pierz wrote: On Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 7:07:50 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Jul 2015, at 20:54, John Mikes wrote: I think JC resoinded to Brent: *I don't have a visceral grasp of the true immensity of infinity. Do you? * I wonder if 'immensity' means - B I G - ? in which case I cannot refrain from thinking about the* infinite SMALL* as well. The infinitely small is infinitely large, in the relative way. And in string theory I believe there are two solutions to the size of the universe relative to the Planck length - either we are much, much bigger or we are much, much smaller. Once the universe collapses below the size of the Planck length, it becomes mathematically identical to expansion, so collapse becomes expansion and vice versa. All very weird. Reminds me of a nightmare my brother used to complain about as a kid which he called macro-micro, in which a boulder would become immense, and at the same time as it expanded to infinity, it would become infinitesimal, like the cube which can be seen in one of two perspectives. He found this unpleasant, even terrifying. I can understand. I made similar nightmare in my youth, notably involving infinitely complex infinite knots. You're still having that nightmare. But now it's called your job. At any rate, from the point of view of this question, infinitesimal is as good as infinite, since computationally it involves the same problem of unending iteration. Sure, same difficulty. Now, is not like consciousness? I mean, it is easy to do a machine which can grasp many notion of infinite and reason with them. The mystery is more in the apparent instantaneous qualitative understanding of infinity that we seem to have, when we say that we understand that a program like 10-got-10 will never stop. Simple machine can prove that, and know that in the Theaetetus' sense, but how could they feel that in a finite time? That suggests to me that consciousness is more on the side of truth (p) than representation ([]p) in the Theaetetus definition of knower []p p. That would confirm the filter of consciousness that brain and memories would impose in the relative way. It is very counter-intuitive though, but *that* fact can be intutited when familiar with machine's self-reference. I'll take your word for it! You're right that the real point I am making is with respect to the qualia. You can make a machine manipulate the symbol of infinity, and call that reasoning about infinity, as JC does above, but that's a little bit the Chinese Room. Now the Chinese Room may not be the greatest philosophical argument, but it does make *some *sense. A parrot can proclaim, To be or not to be, that is the question! but that doesn't make it an existential philosopher. What I am sure of is that my Macbook Pro, which is a damned complicated piece of computational hardware, does not understand infinity, and with all my programming skills I have no way of making it. It seems to me to reside in the domain of the unprovable mathematical intuition. Bruno The Mandelbrot set illustrates this well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo-MB1QPZ7E The more you zoom, the more the mini-mandelbrot set are small, with ever bigger filaments around them. Perhaps it is even clearer in this zoom where we go near 8 mini-brots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkNNrfZz7dg Just like I may think for 'eternal' as being momentary and timeless. Sometimes we can distinguish eternity from timelessness, depending on the context. We like to imagine meanings for concepts as we like. That is why we have to be careful to not introduce wishful thinking in the picture. We must be able to not deny the logical consequences of our beliefs. Bruno JM On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 4:26 AM, Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Jul 2015, at 20:25, meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 07/14/15, John Clark wrote: On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 , Brent wrote: Just ask yourself how you grasp the notion of infinity. I don't have a visceral grasp of the true immensity of infinity. Do you? No, I don't, which was more or less my point. What we think of as our grasp of infinity is an ability to consistently manipulate and use some symbol that just means bigger than anything else we're concerned with. In mathematics it mostly comes up in proofs by induction. There's an interesting book available online, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/publications/moore-wirth-2014a.pdf which describes one somewhat successful effort to have a computer do automatic proof by induction; which is what I would regard as one kind of 'grasping infinity'. Another one is a theorem prover for a formal and effective (the theorems are recursively enumerable)
Re: Idiot Test
On 13 Aug 2015, at 13:15, Kim Jones wrote: OK - so the inability to be sure if someone is an idiot is just as fraught as trying to be sure that they are intelligent, I hear you say. I was saying that idiocy is easy to judge, but you can also deduce impossible to assert (of oneself or some-else). But we can see, and see from time to time, person behaving like idiots, even children! intelligence is often used for flattery or vanity. idiot is often use as an insult (usual with more vulgar synonyms). But it is better to not encapsulate people with such terms. Sometimes people believe it, making them into idiot in my protagorean sense. That will not help them. It refers to character, and I think it is related to some amount of attention from the parents, which get it from their parents, etc. Sounds like the ideal situation doesn't it! Tends to suggest that people rise only to the heights of their incompetence at understanding whether they or others are intelligent or stupid! So we are all stupid and the sand on the beach is intelligent. This is becoming very Smullyan, this bit... So if we adopt your simple criteria of the repetition of stupidities as idiocy and the silence of the pebble as intelligence, it seems the human race is suffering a terrible toll of redundancy. I hope yours is in fact the correct definition because it means we can do something about the problem of latency with respect to the evolution of human consciousness. I mean - the idiots (if there be such) really are holding us back. They are in all the top jobs. They are more dishonest than idiots, I think, a bit like we can suspect John Clark to be when reading some of its post (where we see he got the point, but still deny it or mock it). We might put dishonesty in idiocy. I don't know if this would be useful. Robbing a bank does not really look like a mistake, even if it makes money mistakenly representing work. That's a whole debate. They cannot not be idiots so where does that leave us? Flexibility and tolerance and reform are not supported by the mental software idiots use throughout their lives. But that is normal, given our long evolution. At least we have a big cortex making us able to do reasoning and thought experiences ... Insects are much more wired, but that does not make them necessarily idiots. It take a lot of neurons and reflexive ability to be an idiot, and the more we are intelligent, the bigger we can be idiot. Intelligence and idiocy are not that much in opposition. They always come together. May be the human are the most idiot among the animals, as few animals say so much stupidities for so long, believe in fairy tales, and cut the head of those who don't, etc. But the human grandeur is that he can be aware of this, and try to do something (which often aggravates the case, as it is not easy). Bruno I actually wasn't thinking of John Clark when I started this thread. It's amusing to me in the extreme that everyone thought that's what I was doing! John isn't an idiot. He's just taking a long time to understand. He'll get there. I love Bruno's patience with him. Nobody here is an idiot. Kim On 13 Aug 2015, at 8:02 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 12 Aug 2015, at 01:42, meekerdb wrote: If you think you have a sure fire way to identify an idiot...it's you. It might be easy, for some class of beings. Perhaps, for the human, a simple criteria is simply being adult, and for a computer, being not yet programmed. Idiocy reveals itself by, not the mistake, but by the more or less systematic repetition of them, and the inability to change its mind, despite evidences. Denying evidence is also a common symptom. Then, obviously with the theory I gave, asserting one own intelligence, or one own idiocy is a (local) symptom. Asserting one own Intelligence/Idiocy can be replaced with asserting someone else intelligence/idiocy. Saying that Einstein is intelligent is either a cliché or a way to assert one's own intelligence. In fact idolatry, and uncritical attitude with respect to the boss, or anyone, even a God, is also a symptom of idiocy/cowardliness. But there is no criteria for intelligence, except that with the definition taken, keeping silence is a sort of local quasi-criteria (making pebble intelligent, but why not as they rarely utters stupidities). Bruno Brent On 8/11/2015 4:06 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 11 Aug 2015, at 10:26 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No doubt that it would be interesting to look at. Salvia has been called a cure of ... atheism (the non agnostic one 'course). Not that it makes you believe in anything new, it just shows reasons to doubt more, and to recognize we are more ignorant that we would have been able to conceive before. Bruno Well, that’s it, surely. The Idiot Test administered in
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
On 13 Aug 2015, at 18:51, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: We know from experiment that Bell's inequality is violated so we know for sure that in the Many Worlds Interpretation, just like every other quantum interpretation, at least one of the following must be wrong: 1) Realism (things exist in a definite state even if they are not measured) 2) Determinism 3) Locality The Many Worlds Interpretation is realistic so if it's true then nothing determines if the universe splits or not (it's random) It's not random! MWI is realistic and if it's deterministic too then we know from the violation of Bell's inequality that for it to be true it must be non-local; and to my mind that is far more disturbing than if some things were just random. I beg to differ on this. I can make sense of randomness in the 1p, and many kind of them actually, but in the 3p it always look like let us not try to understand. And I have not yet see a proof that the multiverse is non local. No- locality proved by Bell, Grz or Hardy and non contextuality à-la Kochen and Specker seems to me first person plural notions, coming from our ignorance of the non accessible branches of the superposition. Everett wave evolve deterministically, randomness, non- locality and non-contextuality are, I would bet on this, first person plural subjective (thus) realities. It is not shocking as the UD argument predicts this to happen (quai trivially, it is the amount of locality and determinism which might be a problem for the computationalist later. The whole point of MWI is that it all happens, and the randomness arises from which branch you end up in (ah, the pronouns again!). No, Everett didn't develop the MWI because he was desperate to find a deterministic theory, he did it to explain quantum weirdness, and randomness is one of the least weird parts of it; That is your opinion. Einstein called insanity the belief in God play dice, and about non-locality, he said he would prefer to be a plumber than a physicist if that was true. That is not argument, but point that 3p randomness is a bit hard to accept for some. It is God made it in disguise. Consistent, but not worth it as an explanation. There is no logical contradiction in saying God made it, but that explains nothing. Bruno in fact I don't think that's weird at all, but non-local is weird. You'll never find something if you don't look for it so for practical reasons it is often useful to have every event has a cause as your default position, and in many cases events do have causes, but there is no logical reason to think all of them do. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: A curious puzzle - teaching a computer to understand infinity
On 13 Aug 2015, at 14:33, Pierz wrote: On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 4:35:06 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Jul 2015, at 06:21, Pierz wrote: On Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 7:07:50 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Jul 2015, at 20:54, John Mikes wrote: I think JC resoinded to Brent: I don't have a visceral grasp of the true immensity of infinity. Do you? I wonder if 'immensity' means - B I G - ? in which case I cannot refrain from thinking about the infinite SMALL as well. The infinitely small is infinitely large, in the relative way. And in string theory I believe there are two solutions to the size of the universe relative to the Planck length - either we are much, much bigger or we are much, much smaller. Once the universe collapses below the size of the Planck length, it becomes mathematically identical to expansion, so collapse becomes expansion and vice versa. All very weird. Reminds me of a nightmare my brother used to complain about as a kid which he called macro- micro, in which a boulder would become immense, and at the same time as it expanded to infinity, it would become infinitesimal, like the cube which can be seen in one of two perspectives. He found this unpleasant, even terrifying. I can understand. I made similar nightmare in my youth, notably involving infinitely complex infinite knots. You're still having that nightmare. But now it's called your job. At any rate, from the point of view of this question, infinitesimal is as good as infinite, since computationally it involves the same problem of unending iteration. Sure, same difficulty. Now, is not like consciousness? I mean, it is easy to do a machine which can grasp many notion of infinite and reason with them. The mystery is more in the apparent instantaneous qualitative understanding of infinity that we seem to have, when we say that we understand that a program like 10-got-10 will never stop. Simple machine can prove that, and know that in the Theaetetus' sense, but how could they feel that in a finite time? That suggests to me that consciousness is more on the side of truth (p) than representation ([]p) in the Theaetetus definition of knower []p p. That would confirm the filter of consciousness that brain and memories would impose in the relative way. It is very counter- intuitive though, but *that* fact can be intutited when familiar with machine's self-reference. I'll take your word for it! You might be careful on this, but OK. (You might buy Forever Undecided by Smullyan: it can help). You're right that the real point I am making is with respect to the qualia. You can make a machine manipulate the symbol of infinity, and call that reasoning about infinity, as JC does above, but that's a little bit the Chinese Room. Now the Chinese Room may not be the greatest philosophical argument, but it does make some sense. A parrot can proclaim, To be or not to be, that is the question! but that doesn't make it an existential philosopher. What I am sure of is that my Macbook Pro, which is a damned complicated piece of computational hardware, does not understand infinity, and with all my programming skills I have no way of making it. It seems to me to reside in the domain of the unprovable mathematical intuition. Tha fact is that the machine is not a symbol itself, nor is the symbol for infinite, infinite, but the machine, like us, can have a stroy making it experimenting with non stopping, climbing complexity and to bet of a relation between those symbols, and the experiences. But for the self-referentially correct machine, it converges on the same hypostases, and then the theory of knowledge justifies entirely why the machine can be aware of not being able to describe the qualia, and feel metaphysically a bit alone for a period. Bruno Bruno The Mandelbrot set illustrates this well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo-MB1QPZ7E The more you zoom, the more the mini-mandelbrot set are small, with ever bigger filaments around them. Perhaps it is even clearer in this zoom where we go near 8 mini- brots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkNNrfZz7dg Just like I may think for 'eternal' as being momentary and timeless. Sometimes we can distinguish eternity from timelessness, depending on the context. We like to imagine meanings for concepts as we like. That is why we have to be careful to not introduce wishful thinking in the picture. We must be able to not deny the logical consequences of our beliefs. Bruno JM On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 4:26 AM, Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Jul 2015, at 20:25, meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 07/14/15, John Clark wrote: On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 , Brent wrote: Just ask yourself how you grasp the notion of infinity. I don't have a visceral grasp of the true immensity of infinity. Do you?
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: We know from experiment that Bell's inequality is violated so we know for sure that in the Many Worlds Interpretation, just like every other quantum interpretation, at least one of the following must be wrong: 1) Realism (things exist in a definite state even if they are not measured) 2) Determinism 3) Locality The Many Worlds Interpretation is realistic so if it's true then nothing determines if the universe splits or not (it's random) It's not random! MWI is realistic and if it's deterministic too then we know from the violation of Bell's inequality that for it to be true it must be non-local; and to my mind that is far more disturbing than if some things were just random. The whole point of MWI is that it all happens, and the randomness arises from which branch you end up in (ah, the pronouns again!). No, Everett didn't develop the MWI because he was desperate to find a deterministic theory, he did it to explain quantum weirdness, and randomness is one of the least weird parts of it; in fact I don't think that's weird at all, but non-local is weird. You'll never find something if you don't look for it so for practical reasons it is often useful to have every event has a cause as your default position, and in many cases events do have causes, but there is no logical reason to think all of them do. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again
On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: if that definition of you is used then the question What one and only one city did you end up seeing? has no answer because it is not a question at all, it is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which happens to be a question mark. You might argue that it is false, If it's a question how can it be false? And if it is a question what is the answer? but not that it is meaningless. I have 2 cupcakes one red and one blue, what is *the* one color of *the* one and only cupcake that I have? That is another example of something that is not a question but is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which is a question mark. Each observer moment believes they are a unique individual with a unique past and a unique future. People can believe all sorts of foolish things, but if a person enters a person duplicating machine that person will still have a unique past but will NOT have a unique future. Yes that is odd, but odd things happen when a person is duplicated. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Idiot Test
Once there are experience, we can only have partial consensus. Now, I know better salvia than DMT, and the resemblance of the experience is striking. It goes like -30% feel the feminine presence (called lady D, or virgin Maria, etc..). -75% feel the rotation/vortex -67% feel the alternate reality/realities -10% feel the copy/reset effect -49% feel the home effect, etc. These are not the kind of 'metaphysical messages' I was referring to. These are just phenomena that similar physical systems perturbed by the same physical substance might be expected to experience. Take the rotation/vortex. Theres no question its an impressive sight and far from being ephemeral seems utterly immersive and made of physical stuff. On weaker psychedelics you get a hint of it, but with DMT or high doses of Psilocybin etc, you are thrown into the vortex as if it were as real as any perception of the real world. On the one hand you could imagine that you are genuinely travelling through an alien geometry and architecture, and many people who 'smoalk' do. On the other hand you might conclude that the neural apparatus of perception is just being tickled in the same way by the same chemical, and many people who 'smoalk' think that instead. The fact that the imagery can be accounted for and predicted could be evidence for a brute identity theory. https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations The point being that the brute phenomena itself doesn't lend itself easily to one conclusion or its opposite. Strassman thinks DMT allows the mind to escape 'consensus reality' to another realm. Sand thinks the visions are just a psychedelic trick and that the real value of psychedelics is in unshackling people from decades of psychological baggage so that they can re-evaluate their moral and social worth. The one feeling that seems to get repeated more than any other is a feeling of greater empathy towards and understanding of other people and a more profound love for oneself, and that feeling, I think, stems from a greater appreciation of ones own fallibilty...self doubt. So, to cut to the chase, when a thread appears claiming the benefit of a psychedelic is to work out who the idiots are, when it is suggested that the substance be used in such a miserly way, I can't help but feel the people suggesting that are the ones who have missed the message From: marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Idiot Test Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:27:29 +0200 On 13 Aug 2015, at 13:15, Kim Jones wrote: OK - so the inability to be sure if someone is an idiot is just as fraught as trying to be sure that they are intelligent, I hear you say. I was saying that idiocy is easy to judge, but you can also deduce impossible to assert (of oneself or some-else). But we can see, and see from time to time, person behaving like idiots, even children! intelligence is often used for flattery or vanity.idiot is often use as an insult (usual with more vulgar synonyms). But it is better to not encapsulate people with such terms. Sometimes people believe it, making them into idiot in my protagorean sense. That will not help them. It refers to character, and I think it is related to some amount of attention from the parents, which get it from their parents, etc. Sounds like the ideal situation doesn't it! Tends to suggest that people rise only to the heights of their incompetence at understanding whether they or others are intelligent or stupid! So we are all stupid and the sand on the beach is intelligent. This is becoming very Smullyan, this bit... So if we adopt your simple criteria of the repetition of stupidities as idiocy and the silence of the pebble as intelligence, it seems the human race is suffering a terrible toll of redundancy. I hope yours is in fact the correct definition because it means we can do something about the problem of latency with respect to the evolution of human consciousness. I mean - the idiots (if there be such) really are holding us back. They are in all the top jobs. They are more dishonest than idiots, I think, a bit like we can suspect John Clark to be when reading some of its post (where we see he got the point, but still deny it or mock it). We might put dishonesty in idiocy. I don't know if this would be useful. Robbing a bank does not really look like a mistake, even if it makes money mistakenly representing work. That's a whole debate. They cannot not be idiots so where does that leave us? Flexibility and tolerance and reform are not supported by the mental software idiots use throughout their lives. But that is normal, given our long evolution. At least we have a big cortex making us able to do reasoning and thought experiences ... Insects are much more wired, but that does not make them necessarily idiots. It take a lot of neurons and reflexive ability to be an idiot, and the more we are intelligent, the
Re: MWI question for the physicists...
MWI is not realistic in the sense you need to define it here. I.e. you need to assume that whether or not a photon moves through a polarizer depends on its hidden variable and the setting of the polarizer it is moving through, not the setting of the other polarizer or other hidden variables of particles elsewhere. Saibal On 13-08-2015 18:51, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: We know from experiment that Bell's inequality is violated so we know for sure that in the Many Worlds Interpretation, just like every other quantum interpretation, at least one of the following must be wrong: 1) Realism (things exist in a definite state even if they are not measured) 2) Determinism 3) Locality The Many Worlds Interpretation is realistic so if it's true then nothing determines if the universe splits or not (it's random) It's not random! MWI is realistic and if it's deterministic too then we know from the violation of Bell's inequality that for it to be true it must be non-local; and to my mind that is far more disturbing than if some things were just random. The whole point of MWI is that it all happens, and the randomness arises from which branch you end up in (ah, the pronouns again!). No, Everett didn't develop the MWI because he was desperate to find a deterministic theory, he did it to explain quantum weirdness, and randomness is one of the least weird parts of it; in fact I don't think that's weird at all, but non-local is weird. You'll never find something if you don't look for it so for practical reasons it is often useful to have every event has a cause as your default position, and in many cases events do have causes, but there is no logical reason to think all of them do. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [1]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout [2]. Links: -- [1] http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [2] 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again
On 14 Aug 2015, at 12:38 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 14 August 2015 at 06:28, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: if that definition of you is used then the question What one and only one city did you end up seeing? has no answer because it is not a question at all, it is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which happens to be a question mark. You might argue that it is false, If it's a question how can it be false? And if it is a question what is the answer? The answer that you saw one and only one city is false if there are multiple versions of you. but not that it is meaningless. I have 2 cupcakes one red and one blue, what is the one color of the one and only cupcake that I have? That is another example of something that is not a question but is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which is a question mark. The question is if there are two versions of you, one with a red cupcake and one with a blue cupcake, which cupcake will you see? The nature of our minds is such that, even if we know as a matter of fact that there are multiple versions of us, it seems that there is only one version. Maybe the conclusion is that things are not always the way they seem. Bruce Each observer moment believes they are a unique individual with a unique past and a unique future. People can believe all sorts of foolish things, but if a person enters a person duplicating machine that person will still have a unique past but will NOT have a unique future. Yes that is odd, but odd things happen when a person is duplicated. And both versions of that duplicated person - even if it's John Clark, who knows very well the facts of the matter - will feel that they are the unique continuation of the original. It's a question about psychology, not physics. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again
On 14 August 2015 at 12:45, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: On 14 Aug 2015, at 12:38 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 14 August 2015 at 06:28, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: if that definition of you is used then the question What one and only one city did you end up seeing? has no answer because it is not a question at all, it is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which happens to be a question mark. You might argue that it is false, If it's a question how can it be false? And if it is a question what is the answer? The answer that you saw one and only one city is false if there are multiple versions of you. but not that it is meaningless. I have 2 cupcakes one red and one blue, what is the one color of the one and only cupcake that I have? That is another example of something that is not a question but is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which is a question mark. The question is if there are two versions of you, one with a red cupcake and one with a blue cupcake, which cupcake will you see? The nature of our minds is such that, even if we know as a matter of fact that there are multiple versions of us, it seems that there is only one version. Maybe the conclusion is that things are not always the way they seem. Of course not - but how things seem is important and worth careful consideration. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Idiot Test
On 14 Aug 2015, at 8:21 am, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: So, to cut to the chase, when a thread appears claiming the benefit of a psychedelic is to work out who the idiots are, when it is suggested that the substance be used in such a miserly way, I can't help but feel the people suggesting that are the ones who have missed the message I think Strassman was right. You need a certain substance in your system to be even able to conceive of thinking without some limiting effect of consensus. The human mind has a 'native' behaviour and we might refer to this as 'baseline consciousness'. It is merely a starting point in the enterprise of exploring the terrain of consciousness. The Idiot Test is a cynical exercise, you seemed to have missed that. It's a cartoon in words designed to focus on something sinister; either a lie or a form of stupidity. A thought bubble as we say nowadays. Just one grade better than a silly poster on Facebook. The term 'idiot' is a pejorative, so we do need another word to cover the concept the lack of imagination to envisage alternatives to the one currently held under any scenario which to my mind at least, does sound rather mentally deficient. But I learnt a lot from Bruno's breakdown of it. Idiocy and Intelligence are not polar opposites. They walk hand in hand. Anyway - at a certain point in the presumably not too distant future, somebody WILL decide who all the idiots are - using whatever rationale - and they will all be eliminated. Probably by an AI who worked it out all by itself. So 2. Idiots usually end up designing technology that eventually destroys them and everyone else. So, it may be that such people also receive a Darwin Award for performing the inestimable service to the human race of removing their DNA from the gene pool. K -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again
On 14 August 2015 at 06:28, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: if that definition of you is used then the question What one and only one city did you end up seeing? has no answer because it is not a question at all, it is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which happens to be a question mark. You might argue that it is false, If it's a question how can it be false? And if it is a question what is the answer? The answer that you saw one and only one city is false if there are multiple versions of you. but not that it is meaningless. I have 2 cupcakes one red and one blue, what is *the* one color of *the* one and only cupcake that I have? That is another example of something that is not a question but is just a sequence of ASCII characters the last of which is a question mark. The question is if there are two versions of you, one with a red cupcake and one with a blue cupcake, which cupcake will you see? The nature of our minds is such that, even if we know as a matter of fact that there are multiple versions of us, it seems that there is only one version. Each observer moment believes they are a unique individual with a unique past and a unique future. People can believe all sorts of foolish things, but if a person enters a person duplicating machine that person will still have a unique past but will NOT have a unique future. Yes that is odd, but odd things happen when a person is duplicated. And both versions of that duplicated person - even if it's John Clark, who knows very well the facts of the matter - will feel that they are the unique continuation of the original. It's a question about psychology, not physics. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: 1P/3P CONFUSION again and again
On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: after the door is opened there is no such thing as *the* 1-view. I have explained why this is directly refuted by all copies. So is *THE* 1-view a view of Moscow or of Washington? a natural confusion between 3-1 views and 1-views. Confusion naturally arises because Bruno Marchal can not explain what the 3-1 views is supposed to mean without lots of personal pronouns that are all rendered meaningless in a world with people duplicating machines. See below for more. Why? There is little of substance below. they all feel to be different from the others Yes, and that's exactly why there are 7.1 billion 1ps and not just one. Sure, in the 3-1 view. But [...] To hell with the but, unless you're a solipsist and believe there are 7.1 billion zombies on the Earth not people then the are 7.1 billion 1ps on this planet, and there are no buts about it. see above. Why? There is little of substance above. Those damn diaries again! The diaries are useless after the duplication unless the person who wrote them could be unambiguously identified and you can't do that; False. (Easy exercise, done many times). Somehow I missed that so please do that exercise one more time and point to *THE* one and only one person who wrote the diary now that the duplication has been made. Or if you think pointing is impolite just tell me if he lives in Washington or Moscow. There is no purely logical reason to make coffee or not to make coffee, but people who enjoy being alive and are good at hypothesizing what the future will be like are more likely to pass more of their genes into the next generation than people who don't enjoy life and aren't good at making plans for the future. So you prepared that coffee because you have some of those genes. You make my point, Glad to be of service. and explicitly contradict yours. Where? Show me! Search on Searle in the archive for more. Why should I search for more idiocy? Searle is a moron and his Chinese room is imbecilic. What remains un-predicted? The personal experience that the candidate in Helsinki can expect to live. If The Helsinki Man's name is Ed and if Ed is logical and if Ed expects to be duplicated then Ed would expect that there would not be just one answer to that question there would be two because that's what happens when people are duplicated. Yes that seems unusual but it's not illogical and it's only unusual because we haven't seen it yet , and we haven't seen it yet for technological reasons and not for scientific, logical or philosophical reasons. A few decades from now this entire debate will seem as quaint as a butterchurn. By reasoning, and using comp, I never use comp and never will until I know what it means and I don't and neither do you. And ask if you will be that M guy or that W guy. You you and you! Even at this late stage Bruno Marchal just can't stop using that god damn ambiguous personal pronoun! Because it was just made clear that the question was asked in Helsinki, and you have recently, and more than once, accepted that the pronoun was not ambiguous in Helsinki (i.e. before the duplication). Yes, but to confirm or reject the prediction THE one and only you must be found and interviewed *AFTER* the duplication. It would be easy to find Bruno Marchal after the duplication and easy to find Ed, but it would be impossible to find you because people duplicating machines have made that personal pronoun ambiguous. And that is exactly why Bruno Marchal loves personal pronouns, only by liberally using them can Bruno Marchal state a ambiguous theory of personal identity. the ambiguity of pronouns is in your head only, as most of us have shown to you more than once. Then prove me wrong by giving The Helsinki Man a name and stop using those stupid pronouns! But of course Bruno Marchal will never do that. I was in Helsinki, and did not know if I would have become the W or the M guy, And even after the duplication I still doesn't know if I is the W guy or the M guy because that personal pronoun has become meaningless by people duplicating machines, and that is why Bruno Marchal loves them so much, ambiguous words come in very handy in describing ambiguous ideas. given that I become both of them in the 3-1 description of the protocol. But unfortunately nobody, including Bruno Marchal , knows what the 3-1 description is supposed to mean. Yet, after pushing the button, I get the personal, private, and non justifiable feeling that I am the one in W, and not the one, in M And I gets the personal, private, and non justifiable feeling that I am the one in M and not the one in W. Use the man's name and
