Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

[Quentin Anciaux]

Hi Bruno,

2009/3/15 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be



 Hi Günther,

 
  Hi Bruno,
 
  thanks for your interesting answer, I have some questions though.
 
  course, as I said, this will depend of what you mean by you. In
  case
  you accept the idea of surviving with amnesia, you can even get to a
  state where you know you are immortal, because your immortality
  is a
  past event.
 
 
  I would equate total amnesia with death (we've been through this
  before,
  Stathis has written about this, if I remember correctly).


 I remember Quentin identifying himself with his memory, and very
 logically, identifying total amnesia with death.
 It is a complex matter. Total amnesia concern only some form of
 declarative knowledge, you cannot loss your procedural memory,
 because it is part of ... arithmetic, and common to all elementary
 knowers.


Well I agree that in total amnesia thought experiment... well the amnesia is
not total... the subject still knows his former language and other
knowledge... except all knowledges/memories about *who* he was is lost. And
in this sense IF in one minute I lose these memories about my current ME,
then my current ME is dead for all practical purpose. And IF mwi and/or comp
is true then there must exists a moment which is a successor of current ME
without the current ME memories being lost... so I should end up in this
state and not in the state where my identity was erased because like I can't
be where I'm dead... I can't be where I'm not. The 'I' which is referred is
the one with memories, the one without cannot meaningfully say he is a
successor of me now, except if he sees like in real world total amnesia
case that his body was mine and causally connected to mine. But in comp
sense this is not meaningful... If my mind can be copied and transferred in
a metal body, this metal body is not causally connected to my biological
body... but that mind is a continuation of current me.

So in this sense, if you say that it is possible that all successor moment
to a moment could lead to a total amnesia, then QI is false... or
tautologically true because it means you are everyone (ie: no one). But for
all practical purpose current ME would be dead.

I'll continue to read the rest of the mail.

Regards,
Quentin


-- 
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

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Re: Changing the past by forgetting

[John Mikes]

Saibal and Stathis:

does this mean (in reverse) that some new idea (creative alteration or new
combination) would CHANGE the (future) world as well?
What I mean: if erasing from the inventory (of our memory-mass) DOES change
the PAST world(?), does some addition to it change it as well?
(Should I 'think' creatively and profusely about millions of dollars to get
rich? I will).

Respectfully

John Mikes

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Saibal Mitra smi...@zeelandnet.nl wrote:


 Thanks!  This is like undoing historical events. If you forget about the
 fact that dinosaurs ever lived on Earth and there is an alternative history
 that led to your existence in the multiverse, and you do the memory erasure
 also in sectors were dinosaurs never lived, you have some nonzero
 probability of finding yourself on an Earth were the dinosaurs never lived.

 - Original Message -
 From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
 To: everything-l...@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 06:54 PM
 Subject: Re: Changing the past by forgetting


 
  Nice! I did refer often to the Saibal Mitra backtracking procedure (in
  immortality discussions). I will take a further look on your paper.
  If valid, it should work in the comp frame. Amnesia could lead you to
  the original singularity, which could be a kind of blind spot of
  universal consciousness, except that with comp such a singularity
  should looks like a little Mandelbrot set, at first sight, I mean
  something like a compact view of a universal dovetailing.
 
  Bruno
 
  On 10 Mar 2009, at 19:55, Saibal Mitra wrote:
 
  
   http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825
  
   I've written up a small article about the idea that you could end up
   in a
   different sector of the multiverse by selective memory erasure. I had
   written about that possibility a long time ago on this list, but now
   I've
   made the argument more rigorous.
  
  
   
 
  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
 
 
 
 
  


 


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