Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Quentin Anciaux]

Le 24 juil. 2017 05:45, "Stathis Papaioannou"  a écrit :

Yes, AFTER the duplication
​ it would make perfect sense for ONE of the copies to say that, but we
were talking about what the original could say BEFORE the duplication. If
the original said "I will come in at city A and come out at city B and
nowhere else" that prediction would turn out to be incorrect. Not that
predictions, correct or incorrect, have anything to do with the sense of
self.



> On 24 July 2017 at 12:05, John Clark  wrote:
>
On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 7:42 PM, Stathis Papaioannou 
>
> ​> ​
>>  Each copy that comes out of the transporter would continue to say "I
>> went into the transporter in city A and came out in city B",
>
>
> Yes, AFTER the duplication
> ​ it would make perfect sense for ONE of the copies to say that, but we
> were talking about what the original could say BEFORE the duplication. If
> the original said "I will come in at city A and come out at city B and
> nowhere else" that prediction would turn out to be incorrect. Not that
> predictions, correct or incorrect, have anything to do with the sense of
> self.
>

The original would argue as follows: I have gone through the teleporter
multiple times, and about half the time I have come out in city A and half
the time in city B, with no way for me to predict which it would be, even
given all the information. So if I go through again, I should expect I will
arrive in either A or B with about a 1/2 probability. I know that in actual
fact the original version of me will be destroyed, and there will be two
new versions, one in each city, but that's not what it feels like, and what
I care about is what it feels like. Furthermore, in the days before
teleporters when I travelled by train, the version of me that arrived was
different to the version of me that left - different atoms in different
configurations - and that never bothered me.



Don't bother, now the loop will restart, wait for the peepee...

Quentin



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Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Yes, AFTER the duplication
​ it would make perfect sense for ONE of the copies to say that, but we
were talking about what the original could say BEFORE the duplication. If
the original said "I will come in at city A and come out at city B and
nowhere else" that prediction would turn out to be incorrect. Not that
predictions, correct or incorrect, have anything to do with the sense of
self.



> On 24 July 2017 at 12:05, John Clark  wrote:
>
On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 7:42 PM, Stathis Papaioannou 
>
> ​> ​
>>  Each copy that comes out of the transporter would continue to say "I
>> went into the transporter in city A and came out in city B",
>
>
> Yes, AFTER the duplication
> ​ it would make perfect sense for ONE of the copies to say that, but we
> were talking about what the original could say BEFORE the duplication. If
> the original said "I will come in at city A and come out at city B and
> nowhere else" that prediction would turn out to be incorrect. Not that
> predictions, correct or incorrect, have anything to do with the sense of
> self.
>

The original would argue as follows: I have gone through the teleporter
multiple times, and about half the time I have come out in city A and half
the time in city B, with no way for me to predict which it would be, even
given all the information. So if I go through again, I should expect I will
arrive in either A or B with about a 1/2 probability. I know that in actual
fact the original version of me will be destroyed, and there will be two
new versions, one in each city, but that's not what it feels like, and what
I care about is what it feels like. Furthermore, in the days before
teleporters when I travelled by train, the version of me that arrived was
different to the version of me that left - different atoms in different
configurations - and that never bothered me.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 7:42 PM, Stathis Papaioannou 

​> ​
>  Each copy that comes out of the transporter would continue to say "I went
> into the transporter in city A and came out in city B",


Yes, AFTER the duplication
​ it would make perfect sense for ONE of the copies to say that, but we
were talking about what the original could say BEFORE the duplication. If
the original said "I will come in at city A and come out at city B and
nowhere else" that prediction would turn out to be incorrect. Not that
predictions, correct or incorrect, have anything to do with the sense of
self.

​> ​
> Everyone would know what they mean, because the nature of pronouns is that
> they can stand for multiple entities.


​Then what is the correct answer to the question "How tall is he?". The
answer is the same as "What city will I see after I am duplicated?". The
answer to both is the null set, not because the answer is unknown but
because the question is unknown.

John K Clark ​




  ​

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 23 July 2017 at 23:53, John Clark  wrote:

Well then what exactly was the question? Explain how a demand for the name
> of one and only one city as a answer to a question made about the future
> posed to somebody who was only one but was about to become 2 can make any
> sense.  And try replacing the 4 uses of the personal pronoun "you" in the
> short sentence I quote above with "
> Stathis Papaioannou
> ​".​
>
> Personal pronouns simply can't be used in the casual way we do in everyday
> life if personal pronoun duplicating machines are introduced into the mix.
> Nothing, absolutely positively nothing, has caused more confusion in this
> topic than the careless use of personal pronouns; the fact that
> contradictions results implies nothing about physics or mathematics or
> philosophy but plenty about grammar.
>

Each of the 7.5 billion people in the world use the pronoun "me" to refer
to themselves, and can point to any of the other 7.5 billion and use the
pronoun "you" to refer to any of them. If there were trillions of copies of
everyone, the pronouns would still be used in the same way, i.e. each copy
would point at himself and say "me" and point to each of his identical
neighbours and say "you". Each copy that comes out of the transporter would
continue to say "I went into the transporter in city A and came out in city
B", even though he knows that copies also came out in cities C, D, E etc.
Everyone would know what they mean, because the nature of pronouns is that
they can stand for multiple entities.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 5:11 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

​> ​
> Instead about haggling about the use of personal pronouns
>

​Haggling? This isn't about some small technical point, this is about the
very difference between meaning and gibberish.  ​



> ​> ​
> why not just stipulate to the point of the example, i.e. that in Everett's
> MWI first person indeterminancy produces the appearance of randomness even
> though the physics is deterministic.
>

​Not even Everett can get around the fact that experiment has found that
bell's inequality is violated, so
if the universe is deterministic then it is non-local or non-realistic or
both. And that to my mind is worse than being non-deterministic. ​

​ John K Clark​

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

​> ​
> John seems to say that there is a problem with "THE" experience,


​That is because there is no such thing as "THE experience",

​not in a world with people duplicating machines; therefore when the term
is used carelessly, as it usually is on this list, there is no way of
knowing who it refers to or when.   ​

​> ​
> but this refers to the fact that in Helsinki, the guy know that he will
> surivive


​The Helsinki guy, that is the guy who remembers being in Helsinki, will
survive, twice, although neither will be in Helsinki. As for "he", tell me
who that is and I'll know if "he" survives or not.  ​


​> ​
> By W and M, I mean the experience of opening a door and looking in which
> city we are


​Therefore only a idiot would expect an answer to the gibberish
non-question "what one and only one city will you live in after you are no
longer one but are two?"  ​



> ​> ​
> The H-guy, that is the guy in Helsinki before the "cut and paste"  is
> asked "what do you expect to live".


Therefore we can ​confidently state that the person asking the H-guy that
"question" is a idiot.
​ And ​
​I have no idea what that"​
 cut and paste"
​ stuff is about.

​> ​
> The H-guy, that is the guy in Helsinki before the "cut and paste"  is
> asked "what do you expect to live".
>

​Is "you"
 the person currently living ​in Helsinki
or is "you" a person or persons living in the future someplace other than
Helsinki but remembers living in Helsinki?

​It is unnecessary to consider such things in everyday life, but everyday
life does not contain people duplicating machines.   ​

​> ​
> John seems to say that there is a problem with "THE" experience, but this
> refers to the fact that in Helsinki, the guy know that he will surivive
>

That depends entirely on what that goddamn person pronoun "he" means. If
"he" means the guy currently in Helsinki right now then "he" will not
survive because very soon nobody will be in Helsinki and because now will
not exist in the future, at least not the same now. But if "he" means Bruno
Marchal, or if "he" means somebody who remembers being the Helsinki man
then "he" will survive, in fact "he" will survive in 2 different places.


> ​> ​
> wherever he survives, he will feel to be unique in a precise city, and so
> "THE" refer to that certain experience.
>

​So which ​
certain experience
​ is Bruno Marchal referring to, ​the one in M or the one in W?

To make things easier, we give him a paper, to glue in his personal diary
> ​ [blah blah]​
>

​To hell with that stupid diary, it serves absolutely no purpose. From day
one i was willing to specify that the people in the though experiment are
not lying and are telling the truth as they know it, so ink on paper is not
needed and just adds useless complication.  ​

 John K Clark






>

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Brent Meeker]

Instead about haggling about the use of personal pronouns; why not just 
stipulate to the point of the example, i.e. that in Everett's MWI first 
person indeterminancy produces the appearance of randomness even though 
the physics is deterministic.


Brent

On 7/23/2017 6:53 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 8:33 AM, Stathis Papaioannou 
mailto:stath...@gmail.com>>wrote:


​> ​
lack the answer we don't even understand the question.


​>> ​
You would come to an understanding of the question if you realised
that there are two copies of you but both of you have a memory of
being only one person persisting through time.


​Well then what exactly was the question? Explain how a demand for the 
name of one and only one city as a answer to a question made about the 
future posed to somebody who was only one but was about to become 2 
can make any sense.  And try replacing the 4 uses of the personal 
pronoun "you" in the short sentence I quote above with "

Stathis Papaioannou
​".​

Personal pronouns simply can't be used in the casual way we do in 
everyday life if personal pronoun duplicating machines are introduced 
into the mix. Nothing, absolutely positively nothing, has caused more 
confusion in this topic than the careless use of personal pronouns; 
the fact that contradictions results implies nothing about physics or 
mathematics or philosophy but plenty about grammar.


 John  K Clark


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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Jul 2017, at 08:49, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 23/07/2017 11:56 am, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jul 22, 2017  Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:


​ >  The first person indeterminacy is essentially no more than  
this simple psychological observation.


Psychology is important and subjectivity is, in my opinion, the  
most important thing in the universe, but Bruno is just talking  
nonsense. In a world where first person duplicating machines are  
being used there is no such thing are THE first person, so for a  
prediction to be meaningful it is necessary to specify which first  
person the prediction is supposed to be about. I have high  
confidence that ​my prediction ​ the Moscow first person will  
experience ​   Moscow and the Washington ​   first person ​
will experience Washington; and I really don't know what else I  
could say to the Helsinki first person about that, not even if I  
went back in a time machine from the future and knew exactly how  
everything would turn out ​ , ​  And as this was before any  
copies were made the Helsinki first person is the only one I can  
talk to.


 John K Clark


You actually have some substantial support for this view. In a  
passage in his paper to the Oxford conference on "Many Worlds?  
Everett, Quantum Theory, and Reality", published under this title by  
OUP, Adrian Kent makes the following comments:


Saunders gives the following exposition:

"Consider a concrete example: Alice, we suppose, is about to perform  
a Stern-Gerlach experiment; she understands the structure of the  
apparatus and the state preparation device and she is convinced EQM  
is true. In what sense does she learn, post-branching, something  
new? The answer is the each Alice, post-branching, learns something  
new (or is in a position to learn something new) -- each will say  
something (namely, 'I see the outcome is spin-up (respectively, spin- 
down), and not spin-down (respectively, spin-up)') that Alice prior  
to the branching cannot say. It is true that Alice, prior to  
branching, knows that this is what each successor will say -- but  
still herself cannot speak in this way. The implication of this  
line of thought is that, appearances notwithstanding, prior to  
branching Alice does not know everything there is to know. What is  
it she does not know? I say 'appearances notwithstanding' for of  
course in one sense (we may suppose) Alice does know everything  
there is to know: she knows (we might as well assume) the entire  
corpus of impersonal, scientific knowledge. But what that does not  
tell her is just which person she is--or where she is located--in  
the wave function of the universe."


Kent's comment is:

"But the entanglement between the observer and the outcome does not  
give any meaning to this question before the experiment. Nothing in  
the mathematics corresponds to 'Alice, who will see spin up' or  
'Alice, who will see spin down'. On the left we have 'Alice, before  
the experiment'; on the right we have 'Alice who has seen spin up'  
and 'Alice, who has seen spin down'. If one wants to postulate an  
'Alice, who will see spin up', well, one can -- but one should then  
include her in the mathematics."


Kent thinks that this line of thought leads to the many-minds  
interpretation, and he is not persuaded that there is a legitimate  
alternative formulation of Saunder;'s account.



I don't see how this gives some subtancial support to John Clark  
remarks.


Let us do the thought experience, using the "diary definition" of the  
first person experience.


By W and M, I mean the experience of opening a door and looking in  
which city we are, and this as in step 3 ("cut" in Helsinki, and  
pasted in both Moscow and Washington), assuming all default hypotheses.


So W = I  live the particular experience of seeing the city Washington
and M = I  live actually the particular experience of seeing the city  
Moscow


The H-guy, that is the guy in Helsinki before the "cut and paste"  is  
asked "what do you expect to live". To make things easier, we give him  
a paper, to glue in his personal diary, with the following hints, and  
to mark which one he believes to be correct.


0) P(I die) = 1
1) P(W and M) = 1,
2) P(W) = 1
3) P(M) = 1
4) P(W or M) = 1

The H-guy is asked to put a mark on what he expect to be true and  
remain true throughout the experience. By definition P(x) = 1 if x  
remains true in all consistent extension.


If the H-guy has put the mark on "0)", then both copies have to admit  
the prediction failed, as they feel alive in both place (and are  
alive, as we assume comp).


If the H-guy has put a mark on "1)", then again both copies have to  
admit the prediction failed, as both feel alive in only one city and  
not in the other.


If the H-guy has put a mark on "2)", or on "3)", then one copy can say  
that he get it right, but the other copy admits he was wrong, and  
thus, the prediction was wrong, in both case.


If the H-g

Re: A profound lack of profundity

[John Clark]

Saunders
​ wrote:​


​> ​
> Alice does know everything there is to know: she knows (we might as well
> assume) the entire corpus of impersonal, scientific knowledge. But what
> that does not tell her is *just which person she is--or where she is
> located*--in the wave function of the universe."


​Before the experiment Alice knows Alice is the person before the
experiment, and also knows that after the experiment, assuming Everett was
right about many Worlds, Alice will be in the universe where the electron
went right and Alice wil
l be in the universe where the electron went
​left. ​Before the experiment
​even if Alice could ask God Himself what more could God say to Alice that
Alice didn't already know?

 John K Clark



>

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 8:33 AM, Stathis Papaioannou 
wrote:


>> ​> ​
>> lack the answer we don't even understand the question.
>>
>
> ​>> ​
> You would come to an understanding of the question if you realised that
> there are two copies of you but both of you have a memory of being only one
> person persisting through time.
>

​Well then what exactly was the question? Explain how a demand for the name
of one and only one city as a answer to a question made about the future
posed to somebody who was only one but was about to become 2 can make any
sense.  And try replacing the 4 uses of the personal pronoun "you" in the
short sentence I quote above with "
Stathis Papaioannou
​".​

Personal pronouns simply can't be used in the casual way we do in everyday
life if personal pronoun duplicating machines are introduced into the mix.
Nothing, absolutely positively nothing, has caused more confusion in this
topic than the careless use of personal pronouns; the fact that
contradictions results implies nothing about physics or mathematics or
philosophy but plenty about grammar.

 John  K Clark

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Re: A profound lack of profundity

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2017 at 11:57 am, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 22, 2017  Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
>
> ​>> ​
>>> ​If "he" knows "he" will be duplicated and if "he" is not a idiot "he"
>>> will know not to ask what one and only one city "he" will end up in after
>>> there are 2 of "he" ​
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ​> ​
>> But you may have been duplicated in the last few minutes and you wouldn't
>> know it.
>>
>
> ​Yes.​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> You would feel that you were the one unique version of you,
>>
>
> ​Yes.​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> and so would your copy
>>
>
> ​Yes.​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> even if intellectually you all knew that there were multiple versions of
>> you.
>>
>
> ​Yes, but neither I nor my copy knows what exactly the correct answer that
> was asked yesterday before the copies were made should have been, not only
> do we lack the answer we don't even understand the question.
>

You would come to an understanding of the question if you realised that
there are two copies of you but both of you have a memory of being only one
person persisting through time. If you were going to be duplicated again
then you would expect that, like last time, you will feel that your
identity has persisted in one or the other. This is a profoundly strong
evolved feeling, and you won't be able to overcome it, even if you are
staring at your copy.

​>
>> The first person indeterminacy is essentially no more than this simple
>> psychological observation.
>>
>
> Psychology is important and subjectivity is, in my opinion, the most
> important thing in the universe, but Bruno is just talking nonsense. In a
> world where first person duplicating machines are being used there is no
> such thing are *THE* first person, so for a prediction to be meaningful
> it is necessary to specify which first person the prediction is supposed to
> be about. I have high confidence that
> ​my prediction ​
> the Moscow first person will experience
> ​
> Moscow and the Washington
> ​
> first person
> ​
> will experience Washington; and I really don't know what else I could say
> to the Helsinki first person about that, not even if I went back in a time
> machine from the future and knew exactly how everything would turn out
> ​, ​
>  And as this was before any copies were made the Helsinki first person is
> the only one I can talk to.
>
>  John K Clark
>
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