RE: ASSA and Many-Worlds
Jason Resch writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jason Resch writes: Let's say being spared is neutral while being tortured is obviously bad, even if you are tortured for only a few minutes. Also, assume the intensity of the torture and the quality of life on being spared is the same in duplication/ coin toss situations. What if I change the example and say you will be duplicated a million times, and only one of the copies will be tortured? From a selfish point of view, you can almost certainly expect to find yourself one of the copies that will be spared, and I think you would be crazy to choose the coin flip. The equivalence of the coin flip/ duplication example (when the probabilities are equal) is why we cannot distinguish between MWI and CI of QM. It makes no difference to me whether the world splits into two and one copy of me is tortured if I toss the coin or whether there is only one version of me with a 50% chance of being tortured. In the case you laid out you give two choices: A) The replicator B) The coin flip Case A results in 999,999 neutral lifetimes worth of observer moments and 1 lifetime of excruciating torture filled observer moments. Net outcome among all branched universes: -1 Case B results if half of one's future observer moments remebering torture and half remembering being spared. Net outcome among all branched universes: -0.5 Therefore it's still best to take case B, the coin flip. What makes the result seem so unintuitive is the concept of a lifetime of observer moments that has a net result being neutral. That means that trough all the ups and downs in that life, if one could see it all laid out before them, they would realize that person had so many negative events in their life that they might as well never have been born. With this consideration, it becomes more apparent that the 999,999 extra neutral lives offer no real advantage in living out, nor does the spared life in the coin flip need to be figured in. All that should be considered in this case is that with replication all universes will have someone who is tortured, while in the coin flip only half will. Most people consider their life to be a positive thing, and few would say they wouldn't mind if they had never been born. For most people, if it came down to a million life times for one person's torture, it would be a better choice over than the coin flip. Here the replication is only the optimal choice for neutral life times. If a lifetime is very positive, the 999,999 good lives outweigh the one tortured. If the spared lifetimes were very negative, the 999,999 lifetimes would only add to the negative observer moments created through the torture, and again the coin flip is best. and correction: My appologies to those on this list, this is how I should have worded my conclusion: Positive spared lives = Take replication Neutral spared lives = Take coin flip Negative spared lives = Take coin flip This is an analysis from an altruistic viewpoint, i.e. which choice will increase the net happiness in the world. What I am asking is the selfish question, what should I do to avoid being tortured? If I choose the replication it won't worry me from a selfish point of view if one person will definitely be tortured because I am unlikely to be that person. Indeed, after the replication it won't affect me if *all* the other copies are tortured, because despite sharing the same psychology up to the point of replication, I am not going to experience their pain. If some multiverse theory happens to be true then by your way of argument we should all be extremely anxious all the time, because every moment terrible things are definitely happening to some copy of us. For example, we should be constantly be worrying that we will be struck by lightning, because we *will* be struck by lightning. But normally we don't worry about this because being struck by lightning in 1/million actual worlds is subjectively equivalent to being struck by lightning in a single world with probability 1/million. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép : The Meaning of Life
Le 23-janv.-07, à 06:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Searle's theory is that consciousness is a result of actual brain activity, not Turing emulable. No... True: Searle's theory is that consciousness is a result of brain activity, but nowhere does Searle pretend that brain is not turing emulable. He just implicitly assume there is a notion of actuality that no simulation can render, but does not address the question of emulability. Then Searle is known for confusing level of description (this I can make much more precise with the Fi and Wi, or with the very important difference between computability (emulability) and provability. Searle seems to accept that CT implies the brain is Turing emulable, but he does not believe that such an emulation would capture consciousness any more than a simulation of a thunderstorm will make you wet. Thus, a computer that could pass the Turing Test would be a zombie. Yes. It confirms my point. And Searle is coherent, he has to refer to a notion of physically real for his non-computationalism to proceed. He may be right. Now his naturalistic explanation of consciousness seems rather ad hoc. But all what I say is that IF comp is correct, we have to abandon physicalism. Searle is not a computationalist - does not believe in strong AI - but he does believe in weak AI. Penrose does not believe in weak AI either. Yes. In that way Searle is not even wrong. snip: see my preceding post to you If there are more arbitrary sequences than third person computations, how does it follow that arbitrary sequences are not computations? I guess I miss something (or you miss your statement?). Is it not obvious that if there are more arbitrary sequences than third person computations, then some (even most) arbitrary sequences are not computations. Let us define what is a computable infinite sequence. A sequence is computable if there is a program (a machine) which generates specifically the elements of that sequence in the right order, and nothing else. The set of programs is enumerable, but by Cantor theorem the set of *all* sequences is not enumerable. So the set of computable sequences is almost negligible compared to the arbitrary one. Does it mean there is no program capable of generating a non computable sequence? Not at all. A universal dovetailer generates all the infinite sequences. The computable one, (that is, those nameable by special purpose, specific, program) and the non computable one (how? by generating them all). I give another example of the same subtlety. One day a computer scientist told me that it was impossible to write a program of n bits capable of generating an incompressible finite sequence or string of length m with m far greater than n. I challenge him. Of course, what is true is that there is no program of n bit capable of generating that m bits incompressible string, AND ONLY, SPECIFICALLY, THAT STRING. But it is really easy to write a little program capable of generating that incompressible string by letting him generate ALL strings: the program COUNT is enough. I think this *is* the main line of the *everything* list, or a miniature version of it if you want. Now, when you run the UD, as far as you keep the discourse in the third person mode, everything remains enumerable, even in the limit. But from the first person point of view, a priori the uncountable stories, indeed generated by the UD, take precedence on the computable one: thus the continua of white rabbits. This results from the lack of any possibility from the first person point of view to locate herself into UD*. Somehow the first person belongs to 2^aleph_zero histories at the start. A similar explosion of stories appears with quantum mechanics, except that here the physicist as an easy answer: white rabbits and Potter universe are eliminated through phase randomization (apparently). I am not satisfied by this answer if only because my motivation is to understand where that quantum comes from. Is complex randomization of histories the only way to force normal nature into the shorter path? Well, my point is that if we take comp seriously, we have to justify the absence of rabbits from computer science. In case too much white rabbits remains, comp would be false, and this would be an argument in favor of materialism. But, when you interview a universal machine on this question you can realize at least that this question is far from being settled. Hope you don't mind I continue to comment your post tomorrow, 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
Re: ASSA and Many-Worlds
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: If some multiverse theory happens to be true then by your way of argument we should all be extremely anxious all the time, because every moment terrible things are definitely happening to some copy of us. For example, we should be constantly be worrying that we will be struck by lightning, because we *will* be struck by lightning. If MWI is true, *and* there isn't a lowest quantum of probability/measure as Brent Meeker speculates, there is an interesting corollary to the quantum theory of immortality. While one branch always exists which continues our consciousness forward, indeed we are constantly shedding branches where the most brutal and horrific things happen to us and result in our death. Their measure is extremely small, so from a subjectively probability perspective, we don't worry about them. I'd speculate that there are far more logically possible ways to experience an agonizing, lingering death than to live. Some have a relatively high measure, like getting hit by a car, or getting lung cancer (if you're a smoker), so we take steps to avoid these (though they still happen in some branch.) Others, like having all our particles spontaneously quantum tunnel into the heart of a burning furnace, are so low in measure, we can blissfully ignore the possibility. Yet if MWI is true, there is some branch where this has just happened to us. (modulo Brent's probability quantum.) If there are many more ways to die than to live, even of low individual measure, I wonder how the integral of the measure across all of them comes out. -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---