Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow
There are many ways to escape from this scenario. If you are Tookie, you will find yourself shunted into increasingly less likely situations: not being caught in the first place; being caught but not being found guilty; being sentenced to death but getting off on appeal; being pardoned by the Governer at the last moment; finding that you are one of the 1/billion people who have a natural resistance to the lethal agent. If that all falls through, you might find that your arrest and execution was all part of a dream, or that you were actually executed but your head was preserved and you were resurrected as a computer upload in the future, or you were resurrected as a result of brute force emulation of every possible human mind in the very far future. These latter possibilities may be more likely than quantum tunneling to a tropical island, but in the final analysis, however unlikely the escape route may be, if its probability is non-zero, then it *has* to happen, doesn't it? Stathis Papaioannou Jonathan Corgan wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > In the multiverse, only other people end up in dead ends. Kind of makes you wonder what Tookie is doing right now. To us, he died as a result of lethal injection. What sort of successor observer-moments can follow a thing like that? Better question--what is the most likely type of 1st-person observer-moment that would follow experiencing lethal injection? Sure, there is an infinitesimal probability that all his constituent particles quantum-tunneled to a Pacific island paradise and right now somewhere in the multiverse he's enjoying a drink with an umbrella in it, thanking the fine State of California for his new life. More likely, but still infinitesimally small, is the probability that only the molecules of toxin in the injection syringe quantum-tunneled away and right now there are execution officials puzzling over whether to pardon him after this "act-of-God" miraculous reprieve from death. But seriously, when the overwhelmingly vast majority of successor moments to an instant in time are all 3rd-person dead-ends, what would would be an example of a high-expectation 1st-person successor observer-moment from the tiny sliver of physically possible (but extremely unlikely) ones left? Is there in fact always one left, no matter how unlikely? -Johnathan _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow
Quentin Anciaux writes: Hi Jesse, > unless you are willing to say that white rabbit universes have a > lower absolute measure than stable-laws-of-nature universes, you have no > justification for expecting that you are unlikely to experience such events > in your future. > > Jesse You have no justification, but in (everything like) multiverse, it is for sure (probability 1) that an extension of your present self *will* experience weird events. Because all possibilities are fullfiled in the multiverse... The problem arise because of what we call "I"... the "I" that will experience weird thing will remember being the present "I"... So when you say that you have to explain why *you* are unlikely to experience weird event, who is "you" ? All next "you" will remember being current "you". This is true, but you can only experience being one person at a time. When I contemplate what may happen to me tomorrow, I have to consider all the future versions of me in the multiverse as having equal right to consider themselves "me". So if half the versions of me tomorrow are expected to suffer, I am worried, because I might be one of those who suffers. But when tomorrow comes and I am not suffering, I am relieved - even though those who are suffering have as much right to consider themselves the continuation of yesterday's version of "me" as I do. Our psychology creates an asymmetry between the present and the future when it comes to personal identity. Some on this list (eg. Lee Corbin) have argued that this is irrational: copies that are "me" in the future should also be considered "me" in the present and past. However, our psychological makeup is as it is: our future encompasses many possibilities, but our present and past is fixed and single. Stathis Papaioannou _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow
Le 15-déc.-05, à 03:04, Saibal Mitra a écrit : To me it seems that the notion of ''successor'' has to break down at cases where the observer can die. The Tookies that are the most similar to the Tookie who got executed are the ones who got clemency. There is no objective reason why these Tookies should be excluded as ''successors''. They miss the part of their memories about things that happened after clemency was denied. Instead of those memories they have other memories. We forget things all the time. Sometimes we remember things that didn't really happen. So, we allow for information loss anyway. My point is then that we should forget about all of the information contained in the OM and just sample from the entire set of OMs. The notion of a ''successor'' is not a fundamental notion at all. You can define it any way you like. ? It will not lead to any conflict with any experiments you can think of. ? Counterexamples will appear if I succeed to explain more of the conversation with the lobian machines. But just with the Kripke semantics we have a base to doubt what you are saying here. Indeed, it is the relation of accessibility between OMs which determine completely the invariant laws pertaining in all OMs. For example, if the multiverse is reflexive the Bp -> p is true in all OMs (that is, Bp -> p is invariant for any walk in the multiverse). If the mutliverse is "terminal" of "papaioannou-like) then Dt -> ~BDt is a law. In Kripke structure the accessibility relation determined the invariant laws. later, the modal logic is given by the machine interview, and from that, we will determine the structure of the multiverse, including the "observable" one. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow
Le 14-déc.-05, à 01:34, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : In the multiverse, only other people end up in dead ends. Although from a third person perspective every entity in the multiverse could be said to exist only transiently because at every point of an entity's history we can say that there sprouts a dead end branch of zero extent, from a first person perspective, these branches cannot by definition ever be experienced. All right. Could I take this as a defence of the "Papaioannou multiverse" for some third person description: those where each world where you have a next state leads to a dead end? I call them "realist frames" in Conscience & Mechanism". Sometimes they are called "terminal frames" in the literature. I know you have solved the "only if" part of following exercise: (W, R) is reflexive iff (W,R) respects Bp -> p. I will come back on the "if" part later. Have you done this: showing that (W,R) is a "Papaioannou multiverse" iff(W,R) respects Dt -> D(Bf). Note that this question is a little bit academical. I have already explain how I will choose the modal logics. Actually I will not choose them, I will extract them from a conversation with the machine (and its "guardian angel"). This will leave no choice. It will happen that the formula Dt -> D(Bf) will appear in the discourse machine; indeed perhaps some of you know already that this is just the second incompleteness of Godel, once you interpret Bp by "the machine proves p", coded in some language the machine can use. = Exercises for those who begins the study of modal logics: Does every one see that all the following formula are equivalent? : Dt -> ~B(Dt) Dt -> D(Bf) BDt -> Bf ~Bf -> ~B(~Bf) Those are equivalent (in all the modal logics we will meet), and the only things people should know to prove those equivalences are that: 1) ~Bp is equivalent with D~p (not necessary p = possible not p) ~Dp is equivalent with B~p (not possible p = necessary not p) Bp is equivalent with ~D~p Dp is equivalent with ~B~p From this you can deduce a nice memo: a not "~" can jump over boxes by transforming them into diamonds, and reciprocally: For example: ~BBf is equivalent with Dt and 2) the contraposition law: (A -> B) is equivalent with (~B -> ~A). I urge people who have difficulties NOT to hesitate to ask me question OUT of line. Too bad to miss the marvel of all marvels (G and G*) for reason of math-notation-anxiety!!! Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
