subject:"Re\\\: Autonomy\\\?"



On 05 Jul 2012, at 21:53, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/5/2012 11:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 05 Jul 2012, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/5/2012 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 04 Jul 2012, at 18:29, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one  
Bruno Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to  
Washington2 then there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a  
Washington experience.


 No problem with that.

I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious  
that you can't extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion.  
When the start button is pushed on that duplicating machine your  
brain and body may have been instantly duplicated but you, the  
first person perspective, has not been and will not be until  
there is something in the environment in Washington that makes a  
change to one of your sense organs that is missing in the  
environment of Moscow; only then, when there is a difference  
between the two, is your first person perspective split and it's  
meaningless to ask which one is really you.



There is no sense to ask who is really me, but this has never  
been asked. On the contrary what is asked is the probability of  
the specific events seeing Washington , or seeing Moscow.


Both are 'seen'.  The question is by whom.


Well, you can say that I provide the answer in AUDA, and that the  
answer is the inner god, alias the knower, alias Bp  p, alias  
S4Grz. It has no name and is already NOT arithmetical. Unlike the  
machine, or the third person self which is arithmetical.





It is only related to 1-p indeterminancy by assuming there is one  
person who does the seeing.


But there is indeed one person who does the seeing, indeed they are  
two of them. There is one person in Moscow, and one person in  
Washington, and those are the one we interview. We just continue to  
use the you and me, if they are used in the first person  
indexical sense, in the usual way.





It would no puzzle at all if Moscow were seen by Putin and  
Washington was seen by Obama.


And there is no puzzle if we duplicate Brent either. Comp implies  
both Brent will see one city, that they could not have predicted to  
live that one in particular. For each of them subjectively the  
experience is the same as having one in either city by throwing a  
coin. You can replace Brent by machine having enough ability to  
be able to distinguish Moscow from Washington, and you can prove  
easily that such machine has no technic to predict which location  
she (in the usual sense) will observe in his immediate future.






I know in advance that it will be only one of them from my future  
first person perspective. This is confirmed in all experience, as  
your own  1) and 2) prediction illustrates.


But then there is not probability interpretation.


? John agreed that 1) and 2) are 1-pov incompatible, so here the  
and is an 1-pov or. It is the same as head or tail.







You write, The theory is P(W) = P(M) = 1/2. the confirmation and  
refutation of this is isomorphic to any prediction in a Bernouilli  
experience (throwing of a coin), both in the iterated and non  
iterated cases.


But P(W)=P(M)=1/2 is shorthand and it hides the implicit  
assumption that there is some X such that X is in Washington or  
X is in Moscow.


That is assumed in the protocol, at steps 1-7.
And that is guarantied by only a tiny part of arithmetic by step 8.  
(assuming comp)





If W=X1 is in Washington and M=X2 is in Moscow, then there is  
no probability interpretation of where X0 is.


Then no probability makes any sense, because if I throw a dice, I  
cannot know if the guy who looks at the result is still me.


You can if there is only one Bruno Marchal and only one die.  But if  
there are six Bruno's seeing six dice with spots 1 thru 6...


Not from their first points of view. The Bruno who see 2 is  
unique. Same for each outcome here.





But with comp we agree that P(W) = 1 for a simple (no duplication)  
teleportation. So we accept some local comp type of identity, and  
that it can be duplicated. So although you will be in Washington  
and Moscow, for a third person observer view, both of you, and any  
of you, will feel as having been randomly selected (as the  
iteration makes clearer) among Washington and Moscow.


Indeed, you can't predict in advance any city you will feel to be,  
as that would contradict the survival of the other. If you predict  
Moscow, you make the Brent in Washington into a zombie, or a non- 
Brent. Comp says both are Brent.


Right.  So when asked what is the probability Brent sees Washington  
the answer is 1.


No because the question bears on the 1-pov and they are mutually  
exclusive.




And the probability Brent sees Moscow is 1.  The probability 1/2  
only comes by equivocating on you.


No, it comes from the fact that all Brent feels to be unique,

Re: Autonomy?



On 05 Jul 2012, at 22:14, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/5/2012 11:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
OK. But this happens because my computational state in Helsinki has  
been duplicated, and the changes you talk about is the experience  
of self-localization. This is a rephrasing which does not suppress  
in any way the fact that in Helsinki I am uncertain about the  
experience I will feel next.


But that uncertainty could exist without the duplication - just the  
uncertainty of which city you would be teleported to.   But in the  
duplication case, when you say, I am uncertain about the experience  
I will feel next. the second I, the I of the future, has an  
ambiguous reference.  The uncertainty is in the ambiguity of this  
reference.


No problem with this. AUDA explains indeed why the 1-I is equivocating/ 
ambiguous. Comp makes this into an indeterminacy of outcome. So, this  
does not change the fact that if comp is true, then physics is reduce  
to arithmetic.

Exactly the same ambiguousness is applied in Everett.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?



On 05 Jul 2012, at 20:40, David Nyman wrote:


On 5 July 2012 18:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

But we can already justify the relative indeterminacy of the  
relative first person perspective, from what is an entirely  
deterministic background.


Hoyle wan't necessarily assuming comp (and nor do I when talking in  
this way).  But the point which I have consistently tried to put to  
you is more basic.  This is that the relative indeterminacy of the  
relative first person perspective already, by that very  
formulation, assumes without justification (albeit rather  
inexplicitly) some specific relative localisation within what is,  
more properly considered, an indifferent ensemble (e.g. UD* or  
alternatively some cosmological SWE).


This is ambiguous. There is a know localization, as I feel to be here  
and now, but that feeling is distributed on the whole of the UD*, and  
is a priori something no local. So the localization is given by the  
first person view, like the fact that the one reconstituted in M knows  
that he is that one. The 3-localization does not need to be assumed as  
it follows from arithmetic.






Hoyle's way of thinking makes the indeterminate localisation of  
experience explicit and absolute at the outset:


But this is exactly what I can hardly interpret in comp. It looks like  
ASSA, which I have explained when I enter in this list as being non  
sensical when we assume comp. Even without comp, I am not sure it can  
make sense. What do you mean by localization exactly. With comp,  
physical localization is an emerging pattern, and computational  
localization in the UD, is defined by arithmetical relations.




he just imagines, in effect, what would it be like if the ensemble  
of all possible occasions of sentience were unrolled  
stochastically in a sort of eternal recurrence. This gives,  
effectively, a relative-frequency interpretation of the probability  
of any particular occasion being presently given.


In which structure is that relative-frequency defined, and to whom  
does it apply? How can we verify it?






But then such stochastic process will interfere with the outcomes of  
duplication, and transportation, at least to make sense. But then it  
might be in conflict with computationalism.


I don't see why you think so.  The experiences associated with each  
duplication or transportation outcome are assumed to be present in  
the deterministic substrate in due measure, and hence to occur in  
the associated stream of consciousness in due course.  That there is  
always some given occasion of experience is consequent on an  
absolute first-personal indeteminism;


I fail to see why this would be needed, or even what it could mean, to  
be honest.





relativisation to an episode of a particular personal history is  
then dependent on whatever deterministic substrate is associated  
with the given occasion.  Relative amnesia (or selective memory)  
effectively compartmentalises first-personal histories from each  
other and is consequently transparent to reconstitution delay.


The above considerations seem so basic to our disagreement that  
rather than comment further on your other points, I will await your  
response to this.  It is of course perfectly possible (not to say  
likely) that I am missing something basic here, so I am trying to be  
as explicit as possible.


I don't think you are enough explicit.




Let me know what, if anything, is still unclear.


I don't see how to define the absolute first person indeterminacy in  
the comp context. I am also suspicious in front of any assumed  
indeterminacy. That is my major critics of the collapse of the wave  
packet, and Everett confirmed, for me at least, that we don't need it.
But even for probability in general: it is always relative to the  
context where we do a random experiment, and I fail to make sense of  
it in some absolute context, for context is a relative notion. Unless  
you agree that it is the first person indeterminacy of the universal  
machine, but here two, the machine can become any of us, but not in  
one step, in many steps, so that it is not just the comp- 
indeterminacy, but more its transitive closure on the histories/ 
computations.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread David Nyman

On 6 July 2012 10:27, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

*In which structure is that relative-frequency defined, and to whom does it
apply? How can we verify it?*
*
*

The structure, if you like, is the total state of knowledge of the knower
(as you have characterised it in a post to Brent) which ex hypothesi must
embrace all possible occasions of sentience.  Each such occasion is here
conceived as a set of spatio-temporal relations in the context of a
particular personal history.  Taken as a whole the structure is of course
timeless and eternal.  Hoyle's heuristic is then simply a way of thinking
about this structure such that occasions are given (i.e. from the pov of
the knower) in proportion to their measure, in mutually exclusive
succession.  Hence the intrinsic spatio-temporal relations of the substrate
are conceived as unfolding experientially in the form of the myriad
personal histories.  It's a way of rationalising the experiential dynamic,
if you like, from the pov of a universal knower, which as you yourself
point out, cannot be an arithmetical, or indeed a physical, notion.

You ask me how this could be tested; since it is a way of thinking, rather
than a theory, the only relevant test is whatever power it may possess to
reduce confusion and enhance conceptual clarity.  I became particularly
aware of this when reading some of the posts about jumping and
backtracking, etc.  When we reason about some divergence of my future
moments in copying scenarios it is perfectly natural of course to
relativise these to my personal history as given, without consideration
that the relevant reference class might be any broader.  Furthermore, since
our reasoning here seems naturally to follow the spatio-temporal
evolution of some underlying real system (as Bitbol calls it), it does
not seem relevant to distinguish the logico-physical relations of next or
prior from the bare notion of succession itself.

Real problems of coherency in this way of thinking emerge, however, when we
begin to consider future moments of low intrinsic measure, such as in
quantum suicide scenarios, or extreme threats to conscious survival.  At
this point, we seek to avoid cul-de-sacs or occasions of extreme
improbability by resorting to notions of jumping or backtracking referred
to a particular personal identity, or even in extreme cases the idea of
merging with the infant consciousness of a different identity entirely. But
here we are no longer following - or at the very least least are forced to
undertake highly non-standard excursions within - the real system.  This
reaches perhaps its reductio ad absurdum in Saibal Mitra's treatment of
memory erasure scenarios.  He is forced by this mode of reasoning to
speculate, for example, that the you that escapes disaster by memory
erasure has swapped histories with another you that would otherwise
have avoided it!  It is interesting to speculate how one would test, or
even recognise, *this* eventuality!

It should, I hope, be obvious that all of the above incoherencies can be
resolved quite simply by adopting the heuristic under discussion.  The
structure under consideration, as I have said, is the total state of
knowledge of the knower; all possible occasions of sentience, duly
distributed amongst distinguishable personal histories in due measure,
exist within it.  All that is required, conceptually, is to make explicit
the experiential notion of the mutually-exclusive succession of occasions
of sentience; all relativisation of personal identity and past-future
relations are referred to those aspects of the substrate associated with a
given occasion.  There is no suggestion of prior or next in the bare notion
of experiential succession; no extrinsic ordering whatsoever is implied.
 The logical consequence is that *all* notions of personal history are
referred to a singular point-of-view: that of the knower. I am
fundamentally that knower, and the knowledge successively recoverable from
occasions of sentience is what informs me of who, where, when, and relative
to what, I am on any given occasion.

David

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Re: Autonomy?



On 06 Jul 2012, at 15:07, David Nyman wrote:


On 6 July 2012 10:27, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

In which structure is that relative-frequency defined, and to whom  
does it apply? How can we verify it?


The structure, if you like, is the total state of knowledge of the  
knower (as you have characterised it in a post to Brent) which ex  
hypothesi must embrace all possible occasions of sentience.



This might lead to perhaps interesting question. The knower I  
described to Brent, was the knower that we might associate to the  
universal machine. Usually (before salvia!) I would not have been open  
to that idea, because, well, first the math is lacking, and might not  
exist or be trivial. I would have said that the knower begin with the  
Löbian entity. But that might be a detail in our setting: the Löbian  
machine is basically the same as the universal machine, but having the  
belief in some induction axioms. This gives the reflexive loop giving  
them the rich and stable cognitive abilities of the Löbian machine  
(with the 8 hypostases). Those hypostases will never get change on all  
computational histories where the machine remains correct (that is  
enough for the derivation of the physical laws, but is quite too much  
simple for real life psychology.
Now, such machine (the virgin universal or the Löbian which is  
slightly less virgin) have basically no knowledge at all, and live in  
a disconnected conscious state.


I am not sure it makes sense to ask for such a machine if there is a  
probability that they become suddenly me. I would say that may be  
the first person indeterminacy of such a machine might have a  
indeterminacy domain limited to slightly more complex universal state,  
perhaps becoming a bacteria, before becoming a mammal, say. The idea,  
is that you always survived in the most normal (Gaussian) neighborhood  
available to you, and that normal state is given by the relative  
proportion of computations going into that state. So in all situations  
the indterminacy is relative to the actual state of the machine, as  
brought by the universal dovetailer (or its arithmetical equivalent).


It is not impossible that a rich conscious state, like the one by a  
Löbian mammals, necessitates a very long computation, so that the  
probability to become such a Löbian mammals, directly from the  
universal knower, would be a very rare event (possible, but  
stochastically impossible).






Each such occasion is here conceived as a set of spatio-temporal  
relations in the context of a particular personal history.  Taken as  
a whole the structure is of course timeless and eternal.  Hoyle's  
heuristic is then simply a way of thinking about this structure such  
that occasions are given (i.e. from the pov of the knower) in  
proportion to their measure, in mutually exclusive succession.   
Hence the intrinsic spatio-temporal relations of the substrate are  
conceived as unfolding experientially in the form of the myriad  
personal histories.  It's a way of rationalising the experiential  
dynamic, if you like, from the pov of a universal knower, which as  
you yourself point out, cannot be an arithmetical, or indeed a  
physical, notion.


Indeed. But it is still describable in arithmetical terms, like  
arithmetical truth, which is not arithmetical, but concerns only  
arithmetical sentences.
I think that here you have a good intuition that the spatiol temporal  
unfold experentially from the knower, and this is confirmed, as the  
knower logic, with comp, is given by S4Grz (and the X logics) and this  
defined indeed a sort of dynamic. In my (old) opinion: this confirmed  
Brouwer theory of consciousness, which relates intrinsically  
consciousness and time (and S4Grz has indeed been used as a logic of  
time by some philosopher).
Now, the salvia experience has refuted this for me, as it generates an  
hallucination which put some doubt on that perspective, and which is  
why I am willing to attribute a consciousness to the non Löbian  
universal machine. Indeed, it seems conceivable that we can be  
conscious in a completely non spatio-temporal way. I thought comp  
would prevent such possibility, even through an hallucination.
Here your thought might be helpful. But I am not sure it needs to  
postulate an absolute indeterminacy. I am not sure it might make sense  
to ask: being a virgin UM, what is the probability of being David in  
the next instant?.


But the plant salvia, I have to say, provides evidence for your idea  
that it might make sense, for we can apparently get the virgin state  
(or be close to it), and yet *it seems* that we survive. It remains  
possible that actually, I am correct, and that the probability to  
become a bacteria when smoking salvia is close to 1, from the 1-pov.  
Of course the third person view will not confirm this. Brrr...




You ask me how this could be tested; since it is a way of thinking,  
rather than a theory, the

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote

 This is a rephrasing which does not suppress in any way the fact that in
 Helsinki I am uncertain about the experience I will feel next.


But that is ALWAYS true regardless of whether identity splitting or
duplicating chambers enter the picture; it's true because of the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle and the unpredictable nature of your external
environment, and even without that fact and even if the world was as
deterministic as Newton thought it was it would remain true that you don't
know what the results of a calculation will be until you finish the
calculation.

 If you have a better theory, you might mention it.


Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread David Nyman

On 6 July 2012 18:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

*I am sure your analysis might help to better apprehend consciousness, and
 can perhaps better handle the amnesia situation. But you have not (yet)
 convinced me that it has to be termed into a new form of *assumed at the
 outset* indeterminacy. The probability of being me is a sort of Dirac
 distribution: it is one, for me, and zero for the others. The probability
 of becoming me, is perhaps close to one on the transitive closure of the
 computations, and is complex to compute for particular brain instantiation.
 *


Thanks for your detailed critique up to this point, Bruno.  I understand of
course that you are particularly concerned to assess its consistency with
comp.  By contrast, as I have said, my own motivation has been more
generally to find a heuristic for navigating some of the thornier
conceptual puzzles presented by consciousness.  I understand that the kind
of global probability distribution entailed by this notion is poorly
defined in a strict mathematical sense.  The global distribution is simply
assumed ex hypothesi by the stipulation of a class of all sentient moments,
and the relative probability of any sub-class of moments is then assumed
to derive from a kind of global frequency-interpretation as a consequence
of the unique stochastic succession of moments.  This is essentially what
Hoyle had in mind with his pigeon hole metaphor, and it stands or falls in
terms of its utility as a mode of thought for certain purposes; no more, no
less.

Consequently the **assumed at the outset* indeterminacy *just follows
automatically from* *the specification of the heuristic; as moments succeed
each other without extrinsic ordering, the personalised spatio-temporal
characteristics associated with each successive moment have in this sense
no prior determination.  The notion of succession here simply grounds the
bare notion of experiential transition, and the consequence of each such
transition is to localise the knower in terms of an underlying real
system. This system, in turn, can readily be assumed to be as complex as
necessary to account for the unfolding relative scenarios thus recovered.

A feature of this view is that all subsequent notions of indeterminacy are
inherited from a single primitive notion, which is assumed to mediate
*all*questions of who, where, when and relative to what.  For example,
it
grounds the relative probabilities of the future outcomes of individual
persons as well as more general anthropic or observer self-selection
issues.  One could see this as a useful conceptual simplification or a step
too far, I guess.  The probability of being me, seems to be, as you say,
all or nothing; but in terms of the heuristic it is weird but inevitable
that this must always seem to be the case in the context of a given
occasion of experience.  The probability of becoming me (or that there
will be a me to be) depends, as I think you imply, on the entire web of
relations encoded in the real system.

Thank you again for the critique.  I hadn't really thought to convince
you, but you have helped me to test the usefulness of the view under
stress, as it were.  I continue to find it helpful, but I will of course
always be on the look-out for cases where it might seriously mislead.  We
cannot hope for full illumination in such matters, but a small guiding
light can often help us negotiate a conceptual obstacle in the path.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread Stephen P. King


On 7/6/2012 5:18 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 July 2012 18:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


/I am sure your analysis might help to better apprehend
consciousness, and can perhaps better handle the amnesia
situation. But you have not (yet) convinced me that it has to
be termed into a new form of *assumed at the outset*
indeterminacy. The probability of being me is a sort of
Dirac distribution: it is one, for me, and zero for the
others. The probability of becoming me, is perhaps close to
one on the transitive closure of the computations, and is
complex to compute for particular brain instantiation./


Thanks for your detailed critique up to this point, Bruno.  I 
understand of course that you are particularly concerned to assess its 
consistency with comp.  By contrast, as I have said, my own motivation 
has been more generally to find a heuristic for navigating some of the 
thornier conceptual puzzles presented by consciousness.  I understand 
that the kind of global probability distribution entailed by this 
notion is poorly defined in a strict mathematical sense.  The global 
distribution is simply assumed ex hypothesi by the stipulation of a 
class of all sentient moments, and the relative probability of any 
sub-class of moments is then assumed to derive from a kind of global 
frequency-interpretation as a consequence of the unique stochastic 
succession of moments.  This is essentially what Hoyle had in mind 
with his pigeon hole metaphor, and it stands or falls in terms of its 
utility as a mode of thought for certain purposes; no more, no less.


Consequently the /*assumed at the outset* indeterminacy /just 
follows automatically from//the specification of the heuristic; as 
moments succeed each other without extrinsic ordering, the 
personalised spatio-temporal characteristics associated with each 
successive moment have in this sense no prior determination.  The 
notion of succession here simply grounds the bare notion of 
experiential transition, and the consequence of each such transition 
is to localise the knower in terms of an underlying real system. 
This system, in turn, can readily be assumed to be as complex as 
necessary to account for the unfolding relative scenarios thus recovered.


A feature of this view is that all subsequent notions of indeterminacy 
are inherited from a single primitive notion, which is assumed to 
mediate _all_ questions of who, where, when and relative to what.  For 
example, it grounds the relative probabilities of the future 
outcomes of individual persons as well as more general anthropic or 
observer self-selection issues.  One could see this as a useful 
conceptual simplification or a step too far, I guess.  The 
probability of being me, seems to be, as you say, all or nothing; but 
in terms of the heuristic it is weird but inevitable that this must 
always seem to be the case in the context of a given occasion of 
experience.  The probability of becoming me (or that there will be a 
me to be) depends, as I think you imply, on the entire web of 
relations encoded in the real system.


Thank you again for the critique.  I hadn't really thought to 
convince you, but you have helped me to test the usefulness of the 
view under stress, as it were.  I continue to find it helpful, but I 
will of course always be on the look-out for cases where it might 
seriously mislead.  We cannot hope for full illumination in such 
matters, but a small guiding light can often help us negotiate a 
conceptual obstacle in the path.


David
--

Dear David and Bruno,

I am very informed by your discussion so far. I really appreciate 
the patience and depth of the discussion! I would only add that the idea 
of a single primitive notion, which is assumed to mediate all questions 
of who, where, when and relative to what is a form of Pre-Established 
Harmony ala what Leibniz had in mind to explain the synchronization of 
the Monads. I see this idea as problematic because it assumes something 
that is completely unphysical and even impossible! It is my claim that 
any such PEH is equivalent to a solution to an optimization or 
satisfaction problem and such require computations to be actually 
performed to be said to have solutions.
One can claim that a solution exists and even privite a proof of 
this existence, but this is no substitute for actually having the 
solution in hand so as to use it. The real world requires that we 
physically instantiate our computations; we have to do work to gain 
knowledge of solutions to problems. The idea that there exists a 
Mediator of all questions is not sufficient if we do not have the means 
to acquire the exact nature of the who, where, when and relative to what.
We have to be very careful about this assumed from the onset 
stuff! Yes, it is necessary to assume things even for the sake of 
discussion of ideas, but to assume

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread David Nyman

On 6 July 2012 22:55, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote:

We have to be very careful about this assumed from the onset stuff! Yes,
 it is necessary to assume things even for the sake of discussion of ideas,
 but to assume that they are de facto primitive and/or a priori is often a
 fatal mistake.


Let me assure you, Stephen, that I make no assumptions or assertions as to
primitivity or a priori truth for these notions.  As I have said, I find
them useful and illuminating (as presumably did Hoyle) in connection with
certain conceptual problems of consciousness, particularly those relating
to personal identity and history.  It is also the case that, in discussing
these particular ideas with others, I've found that their particular
explicitness with respect to factors that are often tacit or even entirely
unrecognised has often been helpful in drawing out veiled aspects of
competing viewpoints.

I tend to agree that a comparison can be drawn with Leibnizian PEH, which I
suppose is rather unavoidable given the way the notion is formulated.  With
respect to the substrate or real system with which Hoyle's pigeon holes
are assumed to be associated *h**ypotheses non fingo; *the heuristic is
more or less neutral on this issue, which can be construed both as a
weakness or a strength, depending on one's purposes.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-06 Thread Stephen P. King


On 7/6/2012 7:26 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 6 July 2012 22:55, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net 
mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote:


We have to be very careful about this assumed from the onset
stuff! Yes, it is necessary to assume things even for the sake of
discussion of ideas, but to assume that they are de facto
primitive and/or a priori is often a fatal mistake.


Let me assure you, Stephen, that I make no assumptions or assertions 
as to primitivity or a priori truth for these notions.


 Hi David,

I did not mean to claim that you where making assumptions or 
assertions. I was speaking in generalities, thus the use of the word we.


 As I have said, I find them useful and illuminating (as presumably 
did Hoyle) in connection with certain conceptual problems of 
consciousness, particularly those relating to personal identity and 
history.


I agree. Hoyle was on to an important idea, IMHO. I really 
appreciate that you have pointed this out.


 It is also the case that, in discussing these particular ideas with 
others, I've found that their particular explicitness with respect to 
factors that are often tacit or even entirely unrecognised has often 
been helpful in drawing out veiled aspects of competing viewpoints.


Yes. I recall vividly how much David Bohm discussed tacit 
assumptions in his writings. It is more often the case than not that it 
is what we jsut assume to be true without question that is the problem 
that prevents progress in our thinking.




I tend to agree that a comparison can be drawn with Leibnizian PEH, 
which I suppose is rather unavoidable given the way the notion is 
formulated.  With respect to the substrate or real system with which 
Hoyle's pigeon holes are assumed to be associated /h//ypotheses non 
fingo; /the heuristic is more or less neutral on this issue, which 
can be construed both as a weakness or a strength, depending on one's 
purposes.


Would it be too bold to claim that we now have enough evidence to 
propose a hypothesis?


--
Onward!

Stephen

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: Autonomy?



On 04 Jul 2012, at 18:29, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one  
Bruno Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to  
Washington2 then there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a  
Washington experience.


 No problem with that.

I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious  
that you can't extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion. When  
the start button is pushed on that duplicating machine your brain  
and body may have been instantly duplicated but you, the first  
person perspective, has not been and will not be until there is  
something in the environment in Washington that makes a change to  
one of your sense organs that is missing in the environment of  
Moscow; only then, when there is a difference between the two, is  
your first person perspective split and it's meaningless to ask  
which one is really you.



There is no sense to ask who is really me, but this has never been  
asked. On the contrary what is asked is the probability of the  
specific events seeing Washington , or seeing Moscow. I know in  
advance that it will be only one of them from my future first person  
perspective. This is confirmed in all experience, as your own  1)  
and 2) prediction illustrates.





So first person indeterminacy is entirely the result of the fact  
that Washington and Moscow happen to be not identical, if they were  
there would be no differentiation of perspective regardless of how  
many brains and bodies there were.


Indeed. That is why W and M are used to make clear the presence of the  
differentiation.




So first person indeterminacy is functionally equivalent to the  
environment is changeable and unpredictable and the idea can bring  
no enlightenment into the nature of personal identity or  
consciousness.


The environment are not changeable, and have been chosen for their  
stability. The indeterminacy comes from the differentiation only  
between the identical first person (before going out of the boxes)  
when the copies discover where they are. In the two room case, with a  
one and a zero in some envelop in each room, the two rooms and the  
envelop does not evolve at at all. Your argument that it is the  
environment which evolve does not work, because it does not. That  
would be testable by a third person, when the first person  
indeterminacy is only something livable by the candidate themselves:  
there is no 3-indeterminacy in this setting at all.






 I can duplicate you in two closed little rooms. In step 6 you are  
duplicated on a chip. The unpredictable nature of the place where  
the reconstitution are done is irrelevant


If the two closed rooms are identical then its irrelevant where the  
rooms are, but if the rooms are identical then the first person  
perspective that you're so concerned about (me too) has NOT been  
duplicated.


Of course the two rooms contains a difference.



 With comp you know in advance that in the duplication experience,  
your 1-pov will remain unique


Forget comp, from simple logic you know that your first person  
point of view will remain unique.


I am glad you agree with this. that has not been always clear.



If 2 things have the same first person point of view then there is  
only one first person point of view


We agree on this since the start.




and so it remains unique;  and if 2 things have a different first  
person point of view then each one remains unique because it's  
different from anything else.  OK I admit that's not very profound,  
but unlike most theories in philosophies tautologies do have the  
virtue of being true.


And ... ?





 No matter what diary entry I come up with you keep saying it  
would not disprove your theory because of blah blah point of view  
blah blah, so I want you to tell me exactly what diary entry WOULD  
disprove your theory?


 I will feel to be in W.  Confirmed by the guy in W, but disproved  
by the guy in M.


I want to be certain I understand, you seem to be saying that if  
before the experiment the subject had written in his diary I will  
feel like I'm in Washington and only Washington and had written  
nothing else, and then after the experiment you had interviewed the  
subject in Moscow and he said I feel like I'm in Moscow and only  
Moscow then you would concede that your theory of first person  
indeterminacy is incorrect.


This is utterly ridiculous. First person indeterminacy indiscates that  
the guy who understand the point will never
write I will feel to be in W and in only in W, as he knows that this  
will be disqualified by the guy in Moscow. The correct guy will  
predict W or M, never W only, nor M only.
The fact that some idiotic predict that he will win the lottery does  
not lake false the probability that the he will win, which is very  
small.




I could be wrong but I have a feeling if that had happened

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread David Nyman

On 5 July 2012 08:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

The proof if by absurdo. Suppose there is an algorithm, or even just a God
 capable of predicting the specific outcome among 1) and 2).  Suppose it
 is 1), then the guy in Moscow refutes it, and comp invites us to listen
 to him. If it is 2), then the guy in washington refutes it, and comp
 invites us to listen to him.
 Indeterminacy has not been assumed: it results from the trivial fact that
 I am copied in the same state in two different place so that I can't
 predict which differentation will occur from my first person perspective.


This is where it may be more explicit - and hence clearer - to express the
logic in terms of Hoyle's heuristic, in my view. To remind you, a unique
first person locus is first assumed, all experiential content then being
the consequence of a unique stochastic multiplexing of the entire class of
sentient moments, from this singular perspective.  The objective
substrate, on which sentience may be supposed to supervene, is assumed to
be deterministic, as is the experiential multiplex, whose role is to make
explicit a means of conceiving an entire class as a serialisation.  But
this latter conceptualisation allows us to bring an *explicit
indeterminism*into the picture, against what appears as an otherwise
entirely
deterministic background.  An explicit stochastic multiplexing of moments
mandates that all occasions of sentience must take their place in due
course and in due measure, relativised to whatever personal histories may
be recoverable from the internal logic of the deterministic substrate.

There are several useful aspects of this way of thinking, I believe.
 Firstly, it takes seriously the singularity of first-personal location.
Secondly, it makes explicit a generalised first-personal indeterminacy as a
fundamental characteristic of experience.  Thirdly, and importantly, it
prises apart two distinct aspects of temporal experience: replaces and
logically prior or next.  Stochastic multiplexing of moments mediates the
former aspect: this moment - the moment as given - replaces all others in
experience.  It is only in the context of the moment as given that
logico-temporal ordering becomes relativised to a particular personal
history, as mediated by the deterministic substrate..  Thus Bruno's, John's
or David's occasions of experience become relativised to their particular
reference (or relevance) class through, in effect, the selective memory of
a more generalised stochastic process.  In this way, each of us can speak
meaningfully of my next expected moment, or my prior history by
exclusive reference to the memory state defined within a given
spatio-temporal location.

It is curious at first to apply this heuristic to the UDA and similar
scenarios, though ultimately simplifying, in my view.  Firstly we must put
aside any fundamental notion of past and future except as a logical
implication from the perspective of a momentary localisation within a
stochastic experiential multiplex.  We must however continue to take
personal history seriously - and not only our own - because any other
attitude would be bad faith. From this perspective we see that John's
description of the objective situation after copying is perfectly
reasonable and true of the deterministic substrate, and indeed the class of
all sentient moments considered as a whole.  It ceases, however, to make
any sense at all in the context of the present heuristic, in which
first-personal experience is explicitly recovered from a unique perspective
by the mutual replacement of singular givens.  This heuristic provides a
view of the first-person as a singular stream of consciousness in which all
personal episodes emerge in due course, in due measure and in due relation.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  There is no sense to ask who is really me


I'm glad to hear you say that.


  what is asked is the probability of the specific events seeing
 Washington , or seeing Moscow.


That depends entirely on something outside of you, namely Washington and
Moscow, it depends on the probability of Washington producing a sense
signal that Moscow does not produce, until then your environment is the
same and so are you and so there is no differentiation (assuming quantum
randomness can be ignored) and so there is only one Bruno Marchal. When the
cities start to display their differences then things will change,
especially you.

   So first person indeterminacy is functionally equivalent to the
 environment is changeable and unpredictable and the idea can bring no
 enlightenment into the nature of personal identity or consciousness.

 The environment are not changeable, and have been chosen for their
 stability.


If nothing can change then photons can not change their positions, so they
can not enter your eye, so it would be equivalent to Bruno1 and Brono2
starring into two identical Black Holes, so there would be no difference
between the two Bruno brains, so there would be no splitting of viewpoints,
so  there would be only one Bruno Marchal until something changed.

 In the two room case, with a one and a zero in some envelop in each room,
 the two rooms and the envelop does not evolve at at all.


By definition It's not a environmental factor until it encounters you, as
long as that zero or one stays in that envelope it's irrelevant, only when
its opened does it become an environmental factor.

  If 2 things have the same first person point of view then there is only
 one first person point of view

  We agree on this since the start.


Good.

  and so it remains unique;  and if 2 things have a different first person
 point of view then each one remains unique because it's different from
 anything else.  OK I admit that's not very profound, but unlike most
 theories in philosophies tautologies do have the virtue of being true.

  And ... ?


And so there is nothing insightful about first person indeterminacy and
it can not help us understand how the world works.

 I want to be certain I understand, you seem to be saying that if before
 the experiment the subject had written in his diary I will feel like I'm
 in Washington and only Washington and had written nothing else, and then
 after the experiment you had interviewed the subject in Moscow and he said
 I feel like I'm in Moscow and only Moscow then you would concede that
 your theory of first person indeterminacy is incorrect.


 This is utterly ridiculous. First person indeterminacy indiscates that
 the guy who understand the point will never write I will feel to be in W
 and in only in W, as he knows that this will be disqualified by the guy in
 Moscow. The correct guy will predict W or M, never W only, nor M
 only.The fact that some idiotic predict that he will win the lottery does
 not lake false the probability that the he will win, which is very small.


OK, you say that diary entry would not disprove your theory,  so I repeat
my request now for the third time, WHAT DIARY ENTRY WOULD DISPROVE YOUR
THEORY? I remind you that you introduced the idea of diaries not me and if
you can not answer my question because your theory predicts everything then
it predicts nothing and it is not science, and the world already has enough
metaphysical mush.

 John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?



On 05 Jul 2012, at 15:47, David Nyman wrote:


On 5 July 2012 08:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

The proof if by absurdo. Suppose there is an algorithm, or even just  
a God capable of predicting the specific outcome among 1) and  
2).  Suppose it is 1), then the guy in Moscow refutes it, and  
comp invites us to listen to him. If it is 2), then the guy in  
washington refutes it, and comp invites us to listen to him.
Indeterminacy has not been assumed: it results from the trivial fact  
that I am copied in the same state in two different place so that I  
can't predict which differentation will occur from my first person  
perspective.


This is where it may be more explicit - and hence clearer - to  
express the logic in terms of Hoyle's heuristic, in my view. To  
remind you, a unique first person locus is first assumed,


Is that different from the unique first person that we have to attach  
to any universal machine?






all experiential content then being the consequence of a unique  
stochastic multiplexing of the entire class of sentient moments,  
from this singular perspective.


This seems like adding an ASSA on top of all RSSA. I fail to see the  
simplification, but if it helps you why not. Do you think we can make  
an experimental test showing a role to such an ASSA?




 The objective substrate, on which sentience may be supposed to  
supervene, is assumed to be deterministic, as is the experiential  
multiplex, whose role is to make explicit a means of conceiving an  
entire class as a serialisation.  But this latter conceptualisation  
allows us to bring an explicit indeterminism into the picture,  
against what appears as an otherwise entirely deterministic  
background.


But we can already justify the relative indeterminacy of the relative  
first person perspective, from what is an entirely deterministic  
background.





An explicit stochastic multiplexing of moments mandates that all  
occasions of sentience must take their place in due course and in  
due measure, relativised to whatever personal histories may be  
recoverable from the internal logic of the deterministic substrate.


But then such stochastic process will interfere with the outcomes of  
duplication, and transportation, at least to make sense. But then it  
might be in conflict with computationalism.






There are several useful aspects of this way of thinking, I  
believe.  Firstly, it takes seriously the singularity of first- 
personal location.


I try to assume the less, and it seems to me that for UDA this is  
explained by the fact that machine have singular self-referential  
memories. Then AUDA confirms this singular aspect with the use of the  
classical theory of knowledge.



Secondly, it makes explicit a generalised first-personal  
indeterminacy as a fundamental characteristic of experience.


I fail to see how this is needed, nor even if it makes thing simpler.  
It is already hard for most to understand an indeterminacy whose  
existence follows from deduction, so another one imposed on the top of  
it might seem making the picture even more complex.



Thirdly, and importantly, it prises apart two distinct aspects of  
temporal experience: replaces and logically prior or next.   
Stochastic multiplexing of moments mediates the former aspect: this  
moment - the moment as given - replaces all others in experience.   
It is only in the context of the moment as given that logico- 
temporal ordering becomes relativised to a particular personal  
history, as mediated by the deterministic substrate..  Thus Bruno's,  
John's or David's occasions of experience become relativised to  
their particular reference (or relevance) class through, in effect,  
the selective memory of a more generalised stochastic process.


You might have a correct intuition, and I can intuit something, but  
all what I do, is to derive the consequence of surviving with  
probability one in case of technically successful brain transplant.  
What is the relation between the new stochastic process and the global  
(on arithmetic) comp one.


Perhaps the stochastic process you describe is the same as the comp  
one, applied to the virgin universal machine, more exactly to its  
first person pov.  Total ammesy would lead any one to that state.  
But we don't have to assume it. Universal numbers exists, and their  
domain of indeterminacy contains all possible experiences, except that  
the probability of going amnesic and getting my personal memory back  
might be a statistically rare event (I dunno, some experience reports  
can be amazing on this point).





In this way, each of us can speak meaningfully of my next expected  
moment, or my prior history by exclusive reference to the memory  
state defined within a given spatio-temporal location.


But machines/numbers can talk of their next expected moment without  
invoking any stochastic process. Stochasticness appears because their  
relative consciousness is

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread meekerdb


On 7/5/2012 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 04 Jul 2012, at 18:29, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one Bruno 
Marchal
to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to Washington2 then there 
would only
be one Bruno Marchal having a Washington experience.


 No problem with that.


I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious that you can't 
extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion. When the start button is pushed on 
that duplicating machine your brain and body may have been instantly duplicated but 
you, the first person perspective, has not been and will not be until there is 
something in the environment in Washington that makes a change to one of your sense 
organs that is missing in the environment of Moscow; only then, when there is a 
difference between the two, is your first person perspective split and it's meaningless 
to ask which one is really you.



There is no sense to ask who is really me, but this has never been asked. On the 
contrary what is asked is the probability of the specific events seeing Washington , 
or seeing Moscow.


Both are 'seen'.  The question is by whom.  It is only related to 1-p indeterminancy by 
assuming there is one person who does the seeing.  It would no puzzle at all if Moscow 
were seen by Putin and Washington was seen by Obama.


I know in advance that it will be only one of them from my future first person 
perspective. This is confirmed in all experience, as your own  1) and 2) prediction 
illustrates.


But then there is not probability interpretation.


You write, The theory is P(W) = P(M) = 1/2. the confirmation and refutation of this is 
isomorphic to any prediction in a Bernouilli experience (throwing of a coin), both in the 
iterated and non iterated cases.


But P(W)=P(M)=1/2 is shorthand and it hides the implicit assumption that there is some X 
such that X is in Washington or X is in Moscow.  If W=X1 is in Washington and M=X2 
is in Moscow, then there is no probability interpretation of where X0 is.


This is exactly the same problem raised by Everett's interpretation of QM.  If everything 
happens then what does it mean to say an event has a certain probability?


Brent


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Re: Autonomy?



On 05 Jul 2012, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/5/2012 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 04 Jul 2012, at 18:29, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one  
Bruno Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to  
Washington2 then there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a  
Washington experience.


 No problem with that.

I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious  
that you can't extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion.  
When the start button is pushed on that duplicating machine your  
brain and body may have been instantly duplicated but you, the  
first person perspective, has not been and will not be until there  
is something in the environment in Washington that makes a change  
to one of your sense organs that is missing in the environment of  
Moscow; only then, when there is a difference between the two, is  
your first person perspective split and it's meaningless to ask  
which one is really you.



There is no sense to ask who is really me, but this has never  
been asked. On the contrary what is asked is the probability of the  
specific events seeing Washington , or seeing Moscow.


Both are 'seen'.  The question is by whom.


Well, you can say that I provide the answer in AUDA, and that the  
answer is the inner god, alias the knower, alias Bp  p, alias  
S4Grz. It has no name and is already NOT arithmetical. Unlike the  
machine, or the third person self which is arithmetical.





It is only related to 1-p indeterminancy by assuming there is one  
person who does the seeing.


But there is indeed one person who does the seeing, indeed they are  
two of them. There is one person in Moscow, and one person in  
Washington, and those are the one we interview. We just continue to  
use the you and me, if they are used in the first person indexical  
sense, in the usual way.





It would no puzzle at all if Moscow were seen by Putin and  
Washington was seen by Obama.


And there is no puzzle if we duplicate Brent either. Comp implies both  
Brent will see one city, that they could not have predicted to live  
that one in particular. For each of them subjectively the experience  
is the same as having one in either city by throwing a coin. You can  
replace Brent by machine having enough ability to be able to  
distinguish Moscow from Washington, and you can prove easily that such  
machine has no technic to predict which location she (in the usual  
sense) will observe in his immediate future.






I know in advance that it will be only one of them from my future  
first person perspective. This is confirmed in all experience, as  
your own  1) and 2) prediction illustrates.


But then there is not probability interpretation.


? John agreed that 1) and 2) are 1-pov incompatible, so here the and  
is an 1-pov or. It is the same as head or tail.







You write, The theory is P(W) = P(M) = 1/2. the confirmation and  
refutation of this is isomorphic to any prediction in a Bernouilli  
experience (throwing of a coin), both in the iterated and non  
iterated cases.


But P(W)=P(M)=1/2 is shorthand and it hides the implicit assumption  
that there is some X such that X is in Washington or X is in  
Moscow.


That is assumed in the protocol, at steps 1-7.
And that is guarantied by only a tiny part of arithmetic by step 8.  
(assuming comp)





If W=X1 is in Washington and M=X2 is in Moscow, then there is no  
probability interpretation of where X0 is.


Then no probability makes any sense, because if I throw a dice, I  
cannot know if the guy who looks at the result is still me. But with  
comp we agree that P(W) = 1 for a simple (no duplication)  
teleportation. So we accept some local comp type of identity, and that  
it can be duplicated. So although you will be in Washington and  
Moscow, for a third person observer view, both of you, and any of you,  
will feel as having been randomly selected (as the iteration makes  
clearer) among Washington and Moscow.


Indeed, you can't predict in advance any city you will feel to be, as  
that would contradict the survival of the other. If you predict  
Moscow, you make the Brent in Washington into a zombie, or a non- 
Brent. Comp says both are Brent.



you = the owner of the identity cart. Just don't forget to take it  
with you,  before accepting a duplication experience.





This is exactly the same problem raised by Everett's interpretation  
of QM.  If everything happens then what does it mean to say an event  
has a certain probability?



But once you make the machine-observer relativization the theory  
explains why events have relative probabilities. For the same reason  
not all arithmetical propositions are true, not all physical  
propositions are true, and most factual truth are relative to context  
and self-reference.


Everything does not happen, neither with comp, nor with Everett.

Re: Autonomy?



On 05 Jul 2012, at 18:15, John Clark wrote:


On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 There is no sense to ask who is really me

I'm glad to hear you say that.

 what is asked is the probability of the specific events seeing  
Washington , or seeing Moscow.


That depends entirely on something outside of you, namely Washington  
and Moscow, it depends on the probability of Washington producing a  
sense signal that Moscow does not produce, until then your  
environment is the same and so are you and so there is no  
differentiation (assuming quantum randomness can be ignored) and so  
there is only one Bruno Marchal. When the cities start to display  
their differences then things will change, especially you.


In that sense OK. But so the first person indeterminacy remains on  
what I will feel if I do the experience in practice.




  So first person indeterminacy is functionally equivalent to  
the environment is changeable and unpredictable and the idea can  
bring no enlightenment into the nature of personal identity or  
consciousness.


The environment are not changeable, and have been chosen for their  
stability.


If nothing can change then photons can not change their positions,  
so they can not enter your eye, so it would be equivalent to Bruno1  
and Brono2 starring into two identical Black Holes, so there would  
be no difference between the two Bruno brains, so there would be no  
splitting of viewpoints, so  there would be only one Bruno Marchal  
until something changed.


OK. But this happens because my computational state in Helsinki has  
been duplicated, and the changes you talk about is the experience of  
self-localization. This is a rephrasing which does not suppress in any  
way the fact that in Helsinki I am uncertain about the experience I  
will feel next.
There is no uncertainty in W and M which interfere with this  
uncertainty.








 In the two room case, with a one and a zero in some envelop in  
each room, the two rooms and the envelop does not evolve at at all.


By definition It's not a environmental factor until it encounters  
you, as long as that zero or one stays in that envelope it's  
irrelevant, only when its opened does it become an environmental  
factor.
 If 2 things have the same first person point of view then there  
is only one first person point of view


 We agree on this since the start.

Good.
 and so it remains unique;  and if 2 things have a different first  
person point of view then each one remains unique because it's  
different from anything else.  OK I admit that's not very profound,  
but unlike most theories in philosophies tautologies do have the  
virtue of being true.


 And ... ?

And so there is nothing insightful about first person  
indeterminacy and it can not help us understand how the world works.


That is a quick jump. Also I am not saying that the comp indeterminacy  
explains the world, at this stage three it makes things more complex.  
It is a consequence of comp that we can just not put under the rug. I  
am not solving a problem, I am formulating it.






 I want to be certain I understand, you seem to be saying that if  
before the experiment the subject had written in his diary I will  
feel like I'm in Washington and only Washington and had written  
nothing else, and then after the experiment you had interviewed the  
subject in Moscow and he said I feel like I'm in Moscow and only  
Moscow then you would concede that your theory of first person  
indeterminacy is incorrect.


This is utterly ridiculous. First person indeterminacy indiscates  
that the guy who understand the point will never write I will feel  
to be in W and in only in W, as he knows that this will be  
disqualified by the guy in Moscow. The correct guy will predict W  
or M, never W only, nor M only.The fact that some idiotic  
predict that he will win the lottery does not lake false the  
probability that the he will win, which is very small.


OK, you say that diary entry would not disprove your theory,  so I  
repeat my request now for the third time, WHAT DIARY ENTRY WOULD  
DISPROVE YOUR THEORY?


The point is mathematical. Such diary entries would be trivial, like  
both diaries containing  I am in Washington.
Given it consists of statistics, it is clearer in repeating the  
experience, the theory would be disproved in the majority of the  
copies find an algorithm to predict their outcomes, or if the P(having  
be k times in W) does not fit with the Pascal triangle. Of course it  
is non sensical.




I remind you that you introduced the idea of diaries not me and if  
you can not answer my question because your theory predicts everything


The theory predicts that we don't have a predicting algorithm, just  
probabilities. It predicts P = 1/2. It would be refuted if the  
statistics of the first person experience violated the Pascal  
triangle, or the Gauss distribution. But it does not, for obvious  
mathematical

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread David Nyman

On 5 July 2012 18:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

*But we can already justify the relative indeterminacy of the relative
 first person perspective, from what is an entirely deterministic background.
 *


Hoyle wan't necessarily assuming comp (and nor do I when talking in this
way).  But the point which I have consistently tried to put to you is more
basic.  This is that the relative indeterminacy of the relative first
person perspective already, by that very formulation, assumes without
justification (albeit rather inexplicitly) some specific relative
localisation within what is, more properly considered, an indifferent
ensemble (e.g. UD* or alternatively some cosmological SWE).  Hoyle's way of
thinking makes the indeterminate localisation of experience explicit and *
absolute* at the outset: he just imagines, in effect, what would it be
like if the ensemble of all possible occasions of sentience were
unrolled stochastically in a sort of eternal recurrence. This gives,
effectively, a relative-frequency interpretation of the probability of any
particular occasion being presently given.

*But then such stochastic process will interfere with the outcomes of
duplication, and transportation, at least to make sense. But then it might
be in conflict with computationalism.*


I don't see why you think so.  The experiences associated with each
duplication or transportation outcome are assumed to be present in the
deterministic substrate in due measure, and hence to occur in the
associated stream of consciousness in due course.  That there is always
some given occasion of experience is consequent on an absolute
first-personal indeteminism; relativisation to an episode of a particular
personal history is then dependent on whatever deterministic substrate is
associated with the given occasion.  Relative amnesia (or selective
memory) effectively compartmentalises first-personal histories from each
other and is consequently transparent to reconstitution delay.

The above considerations seem so basic to our disagreement that rather than
comment further on your other points, I will await your response to this.
 It is of course perfectly possible (not to say likely) that I am missing
something basic here, so I am trying to be as explicit as possible.  Let me
know what, if anything, is still unclear.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread meekerdb

On 7/5/2012 11:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 05 Jul 2012, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/5/2012 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 04 Jul 2012, at 18:29, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one Bruno
Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to Washington2 then
there
would only be one Bruno Marchal having a Washington experience.

No problem with that.

I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious that you can't
extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion. When the start button is pushed on
that duplicating machine your brain and body may have been instantly duplicated but
you, the first person perspective, has not been and will not be until there is
something in the environment in Washington that makes a change to one of your sense
organs that is missing in the environment of Moscow; only then, when there is a
difference between the two, is your first person perspective split and it's
meaningless to ask which one is really you.

There is no sense to ask who is really me, but this has never been asked. On the
contrary what is asked is the probability of the specific events seeing Washington ,
or seeing Moscow.

Both are 'seen'. The question is by whom.

Well, you can say that I provide the answer in AUDA, and that the answer is the inner
god, alias the knower, alias Bp p, alias S4Grz. It has no name and is already NOT
arithmetical. Unlike the machine, or the third person self which is arithmetical.

It is only related to 1-p indeterminancy by assuming there is one person who does the
seeing.

But there is indeed one person who does the seeing, indeed they are two of them. There
is one person in Moscow, and one person in Washington, and those are the one we
interview. We just continue to use the you and me, if they are used in the first
person indexical sense, in the usual way.

It would no puzzle at all if Moscow were seen by Putin and Washington was seen
by Obama.

And there is no puzzle if we duplicate Brent either. Comp implies both Brent will see
one city, that they could not have predicted to live that one in particular. For each of
them subjectively the experience is the same as having one in either city by throwing a
coin. You can replace Brent by machine having enough ability to be able to distinguish
Moscow from Washington, and you can prove easily that such machine has no technic to
predict which location she (in the usual sense) will observe in his immediate future.

I know in advance that it will be only one of them from my future first person
perspective. This is confirmed in all experience, as your own 1) and 2)
prediction illustrates.

But then there is not probability interpretation.

? John agreed that 1) and 2) are 1-pov incompatible, so here the and is an 1-pov or.
It is the same as head or tail.

You write, The theory is P(W) = P(M) = 1/2. the confirmation and refutation of this is
isomorphic to any prediction in a Bernouilli experience (throwing of a coin), both in
the iterated and non iterated cases.

But P(W)=P(M)=1/2 is shorthand and it hides the implicit assumption that there is some
X such that X is in Washington or X is in Moscow.

That is assumed in the protocol, at steps 1-7.
And that is guarantied by only a tiny part of arithmetic by step 8. (assuming
comp)

If W=X1 is in Washington and M=X2 is in Moscow, then there is no probability
interpretation of where X0 is.

Then no probability makes any sense, because if I throw a dice, I cannot know if the guy
who looks at the result is still me.

You can if there is only one Bruno Marchal and only one die. But if there are six Bruno's
seeing six dice with spots 1 thru 6...

But with comp we agree that P(W) = 1 for a simple (no duplication) teleportation. So we
accept some local comp type of identity, and that it can be duplicated. So although you
will be in Washington and Moscow, for a third person observer view, both of you, and any
of you, will feel as having been randomly selected (as the iteration makes clearer)
among Washington and Moscow.

Indeed, you can't predict in advance any city you will feel to be, as that would
contradict the survival of the other. If you predict Moscow, you make the Brent in
Washington into a zombie, or a non-Brent. Comp says both are Brent.

Right. So when asked what is the probability Brent sees Washington the answer is 1. And
the probability Brent sees Moscow is 1. The probability 1/2 only comes by equivocating on
you.

you = the owner of the identity cart. Just don't forget to take it with you, before
accepting a duplication experience.

This is exactly the same problem raised by Everett's interpretation of QM. If
everything happens then what does it mean to say an event has a certain probability?

But

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-05 Thread meekerdb


On 7/5/2012 11:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
OK. But this happens because my computational state in Helsinki has been duplicated, and 
the changes you talk about is the experience of self-localization. This is a rephrasing 
which does not suppress in any way the fact that in Helsinki I am uncertain about the 
experience I will feel next.


But that uncertainty could exist without the duplication - just the uncertainty of which 
city you would be teleported to.   But in the duplication case, when you say, I am 
uncertain about the experience I will feel next. the second I, the I of the future, 
has an ambiguous reference.  The uncertainty is in the ambiguity of this reference.


Brent

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-04 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


   if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one Bruno
 Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to Washington2 then
 there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a Washington experience.


  No problem with that.


I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious that you
can't extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion. When the start
button is pushed on that duplicating machine your brain and body may have
been instantly duplicated but you, the first person perspective, has not
been and will not be until there is something in the environment in
Washington that makes a change to one of your sense organs that is missing
in the environment of Moscow; only then, when there is a difference between
the two, is your first person perspective split and it's meaningless to ask
which one is really you. So first person indeterminacy is entirely the
result of the fact that Washington and Moscow happen to be not identical,
if they were there would be no differentiation of perspective regardless of
how many brains and bodies there were. So first person indeterminacy is
functionally equivalent to the environment is changeable and
unpredictable and the idea can bring no enlightenment into the nature of
personal identity or consciousness.

 I can duplicate you in two closed little rooms. In step 6 you are
 duplicated on a chip. The unpredictable nature of the place where the
 reconstitution are done is irrelevant


If the two closed rooms are identical then its irrelevant where the rooms
are, but if the rooms are identical then the first person perspective that
you're so concerned about (me too) has NOT been duplicated.

 With comp you know in advance that in the duplication experience, your
 1-pov will remain unique


Forget comp, from simple logic you know that your first person point of
view will remain unique. If 2 things have the same first person point of
view then there is only one first person point of view and so it remains
unique;  and if 2 things have a different first person point of view then
each one remains unique because it's different from anything else.  OK I
admit that's not very profound, but unlike most theories in philosophies
tautologies do have the virtue of being true.

 No matter what diary entry I come up with you keep saying it would not
 disprove your theory because of blah blah point of view blah blah, so I
 want you to tell me exactly what diary entry WOULD disprove your theory?


  I will feel to be in W.  Confirmed by the guy in W, but disproved by the
 guy in M.


I want to be certain I understand, you seem to be saying that if before the
experiment the subject had written in his diary I will feel like I'm in
Washington and only Washington and had written nothing else, and then
after the experiment you had interviewed the subject in Moscow and he said
I feel like I'm in Moscow and only Moscow then you would concede that
your theory of first person indeterminacy is incorrect. I could be wrong
but I have a feeling if that had happened you would not make such a
concession, if so then please state precisely what diary entry WOULD
disprove your theory. If there is no hypothetical experimental result that
can disprove your theory then it predicts nothing because it predicts
everything and is not science.


  The 1-indeterminacy is not a theory, it is a theorem in the theory comp.


A theorem is a statement that has been proven from OTHER statements, but in
one important step in your proof of  1-indeterminacy you assume
1-indeterminacy.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 3:21 AM, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 2 July 2012 17:50, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 And one nanosecond after the copying when one receives sensory impulses that
 originated in Moscow and the other   receives sensory impulses that
 originated in Washington neither would be in precisely the first-person
 position they were in before.

 What does that have to do with anything?  Is it credible that after all this
 verbiage you have failed to grasp the difference between the first-person
 position of each copy and a third-person description of both copies
 together?  Congratulations, John - you really have succeeded in elevating
 the straw man argument to a level hitherto unsuspected.

I'm pretty sure John understands the argument but he prefers to give
primacy to the objective/third-person viewpoint. The first-person
viewpoint involves an assumption that I am a single person travelling
through time in the forward direction, which when looked at
objectively is an illusion. Some people are offended by illusions.


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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread David Nyman

On 3 July 2012 08:09, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:

I'm pretty sure John understands the argument but he prefers to give
 primacy to the objective/third-person viewpoint. The first-person
 viewpoint involves an assumption that I am a single person travelling
 through time in the forward direction, which when looked at
 objectively is an illusion. Some people are offended by illusions.


If that is indeed the case, Stathis, it would spare us all a great deal of
pointless argument if he simply made this preference as explicit as you
have just done.  If that is what we are talking about, then I agree that
the subjective experience of moving forwards in time is essentially
illusory, in the sense that each individuated first-person perspective
obscures a deeper, more general level of explanation.  But the
indeterminacy being discussed here precisely concerns appearances from the
individuated perspective; the illusion itself, if you like.  This is the
whole point of the argument. Hence attempting to evade it by dint of
substituting an objective description is an absolutely classic example of
a straw man.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Jul 2012, at 22:17, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 The profound thing is that in Helsinki he does not know which one  
he will feel to be, so he is confronted with an indeterminacy


Suppose I send the same identical Email to both you and to Craig at  
the same identical time, you look at your copy and think  when John  
hit the send button on his computer he could not have predicted that  
I would get this copy of the Email and not the one Craig got,


? It is the same. Leading to same experience, except one is  
(predictably) lived by me, and the other one 'experience, not mail) is  
lived by Craig. I don't see any indeterminacy here.




so it's a example of indeterminacy and all sorts of profound  
conclusions can be drawn from that fact. What makes this ridiculous  
is that the 2 Emails are identical and thus completely  
interchangeable. In the same way the man sent to Washington and the  
man sent to Moscow are also identical and thus completely  
interchangeable,


Before their differentiate, and the question is ask about the result  
of the differentiation.




and they will remain that way until the environments of Washington  
and Moscow, being different, change the two so they are different  
and no longer interchangeable. So first person indeterminacy is  
just the result of the unpredictable nature of what goes on in  
Washington and Moscow.


Nothing in W and M, relevant in the duplication experience, is  
unpredictable in W and M.





 Learning that the other is there will not make you suddenly being  
that one.


Why would I need to suddenly become that other fellow for a logical  
man to conclude that the predictions written in that diary was 100%  
correct??


You did not write any prediction (on the 1-pox, as asked) in the  
diary. You wrote the two outcomes, which is hardly a prediction.







  you have restricted your prediction on the third person view on  
the 1-views.


I am in Washington and feel like I'm in Washington and only in  
Washington and that is just what I predicted would happen.


Read yourself. You did not write W, nor M, but both W and M.  
That can be seen as a correct prediction on the 3-view (including the  
possible 1-view) but not on the 1-views themselves, as asked.




If that's not a 1-view what is?


No. It was two 1-views.





 But that is just not answering the question asked.

The answer is 42


sigh



but I can't figure out what the question is or why what was written  
in that diary is not a successful prediction.


To predict head and tail is not a prediction of what you will see when  
throwing a coin.







 In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that  
is clear


 This meaning is terribly debated since its inception.

That is entirely incorrect. The meaning of physical indeterminacy  
has always been crystal clear, it's the truth or falsehood of it  
that has been debated; but when you say first person indeterminacy  
I don't even know what you're talking about.


You said it yourself. The one in W is only in Washington. How can he  
be satisfied with having written 1) and 2) in the diary?


You persist in ignoring that the question concerns the 1-views.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Jul 2012, at 12:05, David Nyman wrote:


On 3 July 2012 08:09, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:

I'm pretty sure John understands the argument but he prefers to give
primacy to the objective/third-person viewpoint. The first-person
viewpoint involves an assumption that I am a single person travelling
through time in the forward direction, which when looked at
objectively is an illusion. Some people are offended by illusions.

If that is indeed the case, Stathis, it would spare us all a great  
deal of pointless argument if he simply made this preference as  
explicit as you have just done.


It seems so to me too. He would, like some people, just dismiss the 1- 
pov. But John understands well the 1-pov, as illustrated by the fact  
that he does agree that both copies will feel unique, in one place. So  
he remains just illogical in his last step when he just systematically  
forget that the question was bearing on the 1pov. Putting the emphasis  
somewhere else, in this case, is nothing less than simply avoiding the  
question.




 If that is what we are talking about, then I agree that the  
subjective experience of moving forwards in time is essentially  
illusory, in the sense that each individuated first-person  
perspective obscures a deeper, more general level of explanation.   
But the indeterminacy being discussed here precisely concerns  
appearances from the individuated perspective; the illusion  
itself, if you like.


Yes. And that illusion is more real than any third person object we  
might invent to explain that illusion.




 This is the whole point of the argument. Hence attempting to evade  
it by dint of substituting an objective description is an  
absolutely classic example of a straw man.


It seems to me too, indeed.

Of course, if Stathis think John Clark is offended by illusion, we can  
understand why John want to be stuck in a reasoning whose conclusion  
will make the primitive physical reality two times more illusory,  
given that we don't even experience it.


That's the reason why I would avoid the term illusion for any  
conscious experience. The raw experience cannot be an illusion, as  
consciousness cannot be an illusion. You can't wake up and say I  
dreamed that I was conscious, but that was an illusion, nor can you  
say I dreamed that I dream, but that was an illusion.


Personal identity, time, space, things like that can be illusion,  
but only for those who attach a primitive reality to it. It is not  
more an illusion that the net or a cyber form of life. The experiences  
remains real, in all situations, and as scientists we can try to  
relate it to objective existing patterns, like computations and  
relative self-observing numbers.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Suppose I send the same identical Email to both you and to Craig at the
 same identical time, you look at your copy and think  when John hit the
 send button on his computer he could not have predicted that I would get
 this copy of the Email and not the one Craig got,


  It is the same. Leading to same experience, except one is (predictably)
 lived by me, and the other one 'experience, not mail) is lived by Craig.


I'm saying your experience would be EXACTLY the same if you had received
Craig's Email and he had received yours because they are identical and
interchangeable. I'm also saying that if you duplicated the entire city of
Washington and sent one Bruno Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno
Marchal to Washington2 then there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a
Washington experience.

 I don't see any indeterminacy here.


It's precisely the same situation with your duplicating thought experiment,
they don't differentiate until there is a difference between them, just as
the word suggests; so if there is any indeterminacy it is entirely a
function of the unpredictable nature of large cities and tells us nothing
about the nature of personal identity.

  so it's a example of indeterminacy and all sorts of profound
 conclusions can be drawn from that fact. What makes this ridiculous is
 that the 2 Emails are identical and thus completely interchangeable. In the
 same way the man sent to Washington and the man sent to Moscow are also
 identical and thus completely interchangeable,

  Before their differentiate, and the question is ask about the result of
 the differentiation.


The result of the differentiation is that you might see the White House
tomorrow and you might see the Kremlin, and if Everett is right you WILL
see the White House tomorrow and you WILL see the Kremlin. I can't be more
specific about that, not because of something to do with you but because of
the indeterminacy inherent in the entire physical universe that makes it
impossible to make perfect predictions. Nature might throw the White House
at you next and it might throw the Kremlin. And all this is not exactly
breaking news, its not some new discovery of yours, we've known about it
for nearly 90 years.

  and they will remain that way until the environments of Washington and
 Moscow, being different, change the two so they are different and no longer
 interchangeable. So first person indeterminacy is just the result of the
 unpredictable nature of what goes on in Washington and Moscow.

  Nothing in W and M, relevant in the duplication experience, is
 unpredictable in W and M.


I don't know what that means. You seem to be saying that the activities in
Washington and Moscow are predictable but that can't be right.


  You did not write any prediction (on the 1-pox, as asked) in the diary.
 You wrote the two outcomes,


Two different things happened, you interacted with Washington and you
interacted with Moscow so of course I wrote about 2 outcomes, if I had not
done so you would complain that my prediction was incomplete and you would
have been right.

  I am in Washington and feel like I'm in Washington and only in
 Washington and that is just what I predicted would happen. If that's not a
 1-view what is?


   No. It was two 1-views.


I have no idea what a two 1-views is (are?) but regardless of what it is
apparently a feeling of being in Washington and only in Washington is just
not good enough to be a 1-view. So I repeat my original question, what is?

 I can predict the winning lotery ticket. It is enough to write
 1) ticket 00
 2) ticket 01
 3) ticket 02
 ...
 100) ticket 99.
 Wow. You are quite clairvoyant!



I don't know about clairvoyant but if every one of those lottery tickets
turned out to be correct then my prediction was a good one.

  Try to use the diaries with respect to the question asked


My difficulty is not finding an answer but figuring out what the question
is. No matter what diary entry I come up with you keep saying it would not
disprove your theory because of blah blah point of view blah blah, so I
want you to tell me exactly what diary entry WOULD disprove your theory? If
you can't do that then it's not a theory and it's not a proof, its just
blather.

 You said it yourself. The one in W is only in Washington.


Yes.

 How can he be satisfied with having written 1) and 2) in the diary?


Because there are now 2 John K Clarks and because 1+1= 2 from any point of
view.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread John Clark

On 3 July 2012  Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm pretty sure John understands the argument but he prefers to give
 primacy to the objective/third-person viewpoint.


On the contrary, the first person subjective viewpoint is the most
important thing in the universe, or at least it is in my opinion.  And
that's why I insist on thinking as clearly as I can about it.

Some people are offended by illusions.


Maybe some people are offended, but not me. As I said before illusions are
a perfectly real subjective phenomena as legitimate as any other.

 John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 03 Jul 2012, at 18:02, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 Suppose I send the same identical Email to both you and to Craig  
at the same identical time, you look at your copy and think  when  
John hit the send button on his computer he could not have  
predicted that I would get this copy of the Email and not the one  
Craig got,


 It is the same. Leading to same experience, except one is  
(predictably) lived by me, and the other one 'experience, not mail)  
is lived by Craig.


I'm saying your experience would be EXACTLY the same if you had  
received Craig's Email and he had received yours because they are  
identical and interchangeable. I'm also saying that if you  
duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one Bruno Marchal  
to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to Washington2 then there  
would only be one Bruno Marchal having a Washington experience.


No problem with that.




 I don't see any indeterminacy here.

It's precisely the same situation with your duplicating thought  
experiment, they don't differentiate until there is a difference  
between them, just as the word suggests; so if there is any  
indeterminacy it is entirely a function of the unpredictable nature  
of large cities and tells us nothing about the nature of personal  
identity.


I can duplicate you in two closed little rooms. In step 6 you are  
duplicated on a chip. The unpredictable nature of the place where the  
reconstitution are done is irrelevant, except to be stable again, but  
this is in the default hypothesis, yes we suppose there is no tsuanami  
or asteroids demolishing W or M in the experience.







  so it's a example of indeterminacy and all sorts of profound  
conclusions can be drawn from that fact. What makes this ridiculous  
is that the 2 Emails are identical and thus completely  
interchangeable. In the same way the man sent to Washington and the  
man sent to Moscow are also identical and thus completely  
interchangeable,


 Before their differentiate, and the question is ask about the  
result of the differentiation.


The result of the differentiation is that you might see the White  
House tomorrow and you might see the Kremlin, and if Everett is right


Better not to introduce physics, for the reasoning proposed does not  
assume any physical theory. It assumes only a physical reality being  
at least capable of supporting a Turing machine, but it does not  
identify it with such a machine.







you WILL see the White House tomorrow and you WILL see the Kremlin.



With some probabilities, depending in great part of what I decide to  
do. But Everett is not relevant at this stage of the reasoning.





I can't be more specific about that, not because of something to do  
with you but because of the indeterminacy inherent in the entire  
physical universe that makes it impossible to make perfect  
predictions. Nature might throw the White House at you next and it  
might throw the Kremlin. And all this is not exactly breaking news,  
its not some new discovery of yours, we've known about it for nearly  
90 years.



?

The question is do you agree with it or not. If you agree then what  
about step 4?





 and they will remain that way until the environments of  
Washington and Moscow, being different, change the two so they are  
different and no longer interchangeable. So first person  
indeterminacy is just the result of the unpredictable nature of  
what goes on in Washington and Moscow.


 Nothing in W and M, relevant in the duplication experience, is  
unpredictable in W and M.


I don't know what that means. You seem to be saying that the  
activities in Washington and Moscow are predictable but that can't  
be right.


Enough to take coffee and write the result of the experience in the  
diary.


You wrote 1) and 2), and the copies agrees that this what trivial  
and non precise, because they know that they each got only 1) or  
only 2), and now they understand that the question was bearing on  
exactly that, so they get the step 3, and move to step 4.





 You did not write any prediction (on the 1-pox, as asked) in the  
diary. You wrote the two outcomes,


Two different things happened,


In the 3-view. Not from the 1-view, as you can know by interviewing  
the resulting people.




you interacted with Washington and you interacted with Moscow so of  
course I wrote about 2 outcomes, if I had not done so you would  
complain that my prediction was incomplete and you would have been  
right.


You did not made a prediction. You made a list of the outcome, without  
much other precision.
After the experience, for the two people, only one outcome has been  
realized. The question was bearing on that outcome. Not on a 3-view on  
the situation.


You don't implicate yourself enough in the thought experience. You  
seem unable to put yourself at the place of one of the copies.







  I am in Washington and feel like

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-03 Thread meekerdb


On 7/3/2012 10:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
No matter what diary entry I come up with you keep saying it would not disprove your 
theory because of blah blah point of view blah blah, so I want you to tell me exactly 
what diary entry WOULD disprove your theory?


I will feel to be in W.  Confirmed by the guy in W, but disproved by the guy in M. Not 
good enough!


I will feel to be in Vienna. Disproved by both.

I will feel to be in W and M. Disproved by both.

I will feel to be in W and I will feel to be in M. Disproved by both.

I will die. Disproved by both.

I will feel to be in W or I will feel to be in M. Confirmed by both.

I will feel to be in W with a probability 1/2. Confirmed by most in the iteration 
experiences.


The 1-indeterminacy is not a theory, it is a theorem in the theory comp. No program nor 
machine can predict its future in the protocol of self-duplication. It is about a 
triviality, but then it has consequences.





Maybe John would feel more engaged with the question if you changed it to Washington and 
Damascus.  Suppose there were going to be ten duplicate John Clarks.  Would John feel the 
same if nine were in Washington and one in Damascus as compared to the other way around?


Brent

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 01 Jul 2012, at 19:26, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Jul 1, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 There are incompatible from the 1-pov ONLY if you assume there  
can be only one Bruno Marchal


 1-pov means 1-pov from the 1-pov view.

 That's real nice, but the predictions written down in advance were:

1) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Washington and only Washington.
2) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Moscow and only Moscow.


Without making silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno  
Marchal


That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of  
computationalism. After the duplication and differentiation, there is  
only one Bruno Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.

This shows that you don't really make the thought experiment.



show me how these predictions were wrong from ANY perspective you  
care to name.


You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions. You 1) + 2)  
only describe the domain of the 1-indeterminacy.









 There is only one.

Even if there is only one I they third party outside observer  
agree with you, the 1-pov from the 1-pov view about your diary  
entry and it's accuracy.


 Even if I am duplicated into 10^100, all of them will have a  
unique pov.


If there were 10^100 cities then before the experiment you would  
write down 10^100  predictions in your diary and after the  
experiment all 10^100 Brunos would read what they had written in  
their diary and say I was right.

So where is this first person indeterminacy you keep talking about?



If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was wrong.
If 1) + 2) means 1) OR 2):  both will agree it was correct, but  
that OR was necessarily non constructive, and this confirms the 1- 
indeterminacy. Same with 1) + 2) + ... + 10^100).




  just look and see what was written in the diary before the  
experiment started, it's right there clear as a bell in black and  
white. So where is this spectral first person indeterminacy you  
keep talking about?


 The incompatible experience I feel to be in M and I feel to be  
in W. After the experience we can interview the two copies, and  
they will confirm it.


Yes, they will confirm that they feel exactly as they predicted they  
would feel, and there was nothing incompatible in the prediction.


Only if + is interpreted as an OR, confirming the indeterminacy.




 It helps to understand that from the 1-pov, the experience was not  
predictible.


You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your  
diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow. From my first person  
perspective, I live a selection, and I have no mean to have predicted  
it.



Then you, Bruno Washington, receive a fax from Bruno Moscow and see  
that he wrote in his diary  I Bruno Marchal am now in Moscow and  
only Moscow. Please show me what was in error in the predictions  
from ANY point of view.


Let us write more completely your 1) and 2) predictions:

1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome, and I guess now that the question  
was bearing on that, so I got eventually the 1-indeterminacy point.
2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome, and I guess now that the question  
was bearing on that, so I got eventually the 1-indeterminacy point.


So they both eventually understand that their first person povs was  
indeterminate on 1) and 2), and that the + was an OR, as it was  
clear at the start for those who take into account the difference  
between 1-pov and 3-pov.
I have really no clues why you keep NOT taking that difference into  
account. In fact you do, as with the 1)+2), but you keep describing  
the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of listening to each reconstituted  
person, for whom the + can only be interpreted as an OR.

I don't think anyone else but you miss that distinction.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 You are, by definition asked to predict which one.


If the person asking the question demands one and only one prediction then
he has made the very silly logical assumption that there can only be one
Bruno Marchal.

 Your two predictions:

 1)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in
 Washington and only Washington.
 2)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Moscow
 and only Moscow.

 cannot work for this, because 1) and 2) are simply incompatible


Yes they are incompatible, but only if you make a very silly assumption,
but I have not done so.

 Each bruno marchal will see that only one of the two has been realized,


Yes, from his point of view he will only have proof that half of the
prediction is true and it will remain that way until he receives a fax from
the other Bruno Marchal definitively proving in black and white that the
entire prediction was 100% correct.

 When the W-John Clark and the M-John Clark will look at their diaries and
 see the two predictions,


Yes.

They will understand that only one of the two prediction has been
 verified, from their first person point of view,


No. I've read my diary and I've read the fax from the other John and from
my first person point of view I know that all the predictions made have
been verified, and the other John agrees, and so does any third party.

 If they redo the experience, they know that the prediction bears on the
 future unique first person experience. Which one cannot be predicted in
 advance for obvious logical reason.


In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is clear,
in this universe we can't know the position and momentum of something with
unlimited accuracy, perhaps in another universe you can but not in this
one. I can imagine a experiment that would prove physical indeterminacy is
untrue, that's why it's meaningful, but when you talk about first person
indeterminacy I don't understand what would satisfy you that it is untrue.
It seems to me you are trying to find something profound from the fact that
the Washington man will not see Moscow because if he did then he would not
be the Washington man, he'd be the Moscow man.

Even if it's not possible I can imagine what the desire to have a magic way
to know the exact momentum and position of something would mean, but I
don't know what  overcoming first person indeterminacy would look like in
this universe or any other. I don't know what you think is missing in the
prediction.

 Just after the experience is done, they will each know for sure which one
 among 1) and 2) has been realized,


They can't very well do it before the experience because before then
neither the Washington man nor the Moscow man exists and only the
experience of living in those cities creates them. I don't understand what
exactly the prediction is lacking that illustrates this first person
indeterminacy that you think is so very deep.

 In case you have not yet grasp the question,


And I most certainly have not grasped the question! I don't understand what
more you expect a successful prediction to do. If the evidence in the
diaries is not good enough exactly what would convince you that  first
person indeterminacy has been overcome. I can tell you exactly what would
convince me that physical indeterminacy has been overcome, just the exact
measurement of the momentum and position of something; all I ask is that
without getting all metaphysical  give me a concrete experiment that could
actually be performed that would convince you that first person
indeterminacy has been overcome. If you can't do that it's not science.

 I insist that the question bears only on that future first person
experience.

Like the first person experience of writing and reading a diary, a
experience which fortunately can be shared with a third party outside
observer; I say fortunately because otherwise we'd be talking about
mystical metaphysics not science.

 Not on a third person description of bodies nor on a third person
description of first person experiences, only on the first person
experience.

The only first person experience I know directly is my own, and science is
not good at making grand universal conclusions from only one example.

 Or give me the algorithm which will choose among 1) and 2)

OK, but First give me a algorithm that produces one unique answer to the
question Is 3 greater than 2 OR is 4 greater than 2?. If you can not
produce a single answer then the question is indeterminate, and it's also
silly.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 July 2012 15:06, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 Not on a third person description of bodies nor on a third person
 description of first person experiences, only on the first person
 experience.

 The only first person experience I know directly is my own


For heaven's sake re-read your own statement above and then carefully
re-consider the question you are being asked, and that question only.
 After Bruno has been copied each copy must be in precisely the
first-person position you describe.  It follows, as a precise consequence
of your own statement above, that the first-person position of each is now
indeterminate relative to any prior prediction.  Resist being distracted by
the jointly-describable third-person situation of both copies considered
together.  This joint situation corresponds to *the first-person experience
of neither copy*.  Consequently you are not being asked about that; it is
beside the point.  The point is simply that The only first person
experience I know directly is my own.  Got it now?

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Jul 2012, at 16:06, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 You are, by definition asked to predict which one.

If the person asking the question demands one and only one  
prediction then he has made the very silly logical assumption that  
there can only be one Bruno Marchal.


Not at all. It uses only the fact that from the point of view of the  
subject he will feel only one unique experience.






 Your two predictions:

1)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Washington and only Washington.
2)I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in  
Moscow and only Moscow.


cannot work for this, because 1) and 2) are simply incompatible

Yes they are incompatible, but only if you make a very silly  
assumption, but I have not done so.


No? They are justifiably (if not evidently) incompatible from the  
point of view of the subject or subjects. Both will only *live* only  
one of the two possibilities.






 Each bruno marchal will see that only one of the two has been  
realized,


Yes, from his point of view he will only have proof that half of the  
prediction is true and it will remain that way until he receives a  
fax from the other Bruno Marchal definitively proving in black and  
white that the entire prediction was 100% correct.


Yes. The half. The question was bearing on the experience only. Yes,  
he learn later intellectually that the other has been successfully  
reconstituted, but that fact will not change the P=1/2.
Likewise, in the 1/2^n iterated self-duplication, the fact that you  
hear about the John Clark who saw the Monty Python movie, will change  
anything in the way the vast majority of John Clarks will predict the  
next outcomes if repeated.






 When the W-John Clark and the M-John Clark will look at their  
diaries and see the two predictions,


Yes.

They will understand that only one of the two prediction has been  
verified, from their first person point of view,


No. I've read my diary and I've read the fax



OK. By the very definition I gave, the diary relate the first person  
experience, and the fax make available a third person datum only.
Learning that the other is there will not make you suddenly being that  
one. In dependence with your psychology you can treat the other as a  
stranger, or as a brother, but not as you in the first person sense,  
that here-and-now. Unless you bring non Turing emulable telepathy,  
but then we go out of our working hypothesis.





from the other John and from my first person point of view I know  
that all the predictions made have been verified, and the other John  
agrees, and so does any third party.


Because you have restricted your prediction on the third person view  
on the 1-views. But that is just not answering the question asked.






 If they redo the experience, they know that the prediction bears  
on the future unique first person experience. Which one cannot be  
predicted in advance for obvious logical reason.


In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is  
clear,


This meaning is terribly debated since its inception. You contradict  
the whole literature. The collapse of the wave is still in the  
curriculum. Everett is still not really read. And I just put Everett  
logics one (logical) step further.






in this universe we can't know the position and momentum of  
something with unlimited accuracy, perhaps in another universe you  
can but not in this one. I can imagine a experiment that would prove  
physical indeterminacy is untrue, that's why it's meaningful, but  
when you talk about first person indeterminacy I don't understand  
what would satisfy you that it is untrue.


Even a zombie can fake to not understand the difference between the 1- 
view and the 3-view. If you want to see that all this leads to  
verifiable statement, read more cautiously the definition and go to  
step 4, etc.





It seems to me you are trying to find something profound from the  
fact that the Washington man will not see Moscow because if he did  
then he would not be the Washington man, he'd be the Moscow man.


The profound thing is that in Helsinki he does not know which one he  
will feel to be, so he is confronted with an indeterminacy, and he can  
try to quantify it, by using computer science, for example. See the  
other steps for more and more interesting protocols.






Even if it's not possible I can imagine what the desire to have a  
magic way to know the exact momentum and position of something would  
mean, but I don't know what  overcoming first person indeterminacy  
would look like in this universe or any other. I don't know what you  
think is missing in the prediction.


You did not predict the relative first person experience that you can  
live. You described the correct 3-view of the experiences, including  
charitably the 1-views, but still not listening to them.

Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote

  silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno Marchal


  That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of
 computationalism.


So you've proved that if  computationalism is true then there can be only
one Bruno Marchal, but for the proof to work you've got to start with the
assumption that there can be only one Bruno Marchal. Seems like a lot of
wasted effort to me.

 After the duplication and differentiation, there is only one Bruno
 Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.


And assuming they are logical all the Bruno Marchals would agree with each
other on that point, and I the third party observer agree too.

 You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions.


And that's twice as good if both predictions turn out to be true, and they
do.

 If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was wrong.


How on earth will they know it was wrong when every word that was predicted
to be written in those diaries was in fact written? It's interesting,
you're the one who introduced the idea of the people in the experiment
using diaries so it could be a real scientific experiment, but now you
don't like that idea.

 You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your diary
 I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


  Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow.


For God's sake, you know you're not the one in Moscow because you're not
the one in Moscow!  X is not Y because if it were Y would be X; Where is
the cosmic significance in that?

 1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have
 predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock solid
proof that you DID predict that outcome. Maybe you made other predictions
too, one about some fellow in Moscow, and maybe you made a prediction about
the rain probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant,
it doesn't effect you because you're in Washington.


  2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have predicted
 that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock solid
proof that you DID predict that outcome. Maybe you made other predictions
too, one about some fellow in Washington, and maybe you made a prediction
about the rain probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's
irrelevant, it doesn't effect you because you're in Moscow.

 you keep describing the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of listening to
 each reconstituted person


I am listening to them, and introducing the diaries into this was your idea
not mine.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:

  After Bruno has been copied each copy must be in precisely the
 first-person position you describe.


And one nanosecond after the copying when one receives sensory impulses
that originated in Moscow and the other   receives sensory impulses that
originated in Washington neither would be in precisely the first-person
position they were in before.

Got it now?


Nope.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 July 2012 17:50, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

*And one nanosecond after the copying when one receives sensory impulses
that originated in Moscow and the other   receives sensory impulses that
originated in Washington neither would be in precisely the first-person
position they were in before.*

What does that have to do with anything?  Is it credible that after all
this verbiage you have failed to grasp the difference between the
first-person position of each copy and a third-person description of both
copies together?  Congratulations, John - you really have succeeded in
elevating the straw man argument to a level hitherto unsuspected.

David

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Jul 2012, at 18:41, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote

  silly assumptions like there can be only one Bruno Marchal

 That is not a silly assumptions. It is a consequence of  
computationalism.


So you've proved that if  computationalism is true then there can  
be only one Bruno Marchal,


I will ask you not to use bruno marchal for that can be confusing.

You only forget that the question bears on the first person point of  
view, which, by the given definition and protocols is obviously  
unique, from their own pov, as your own description 1) and 2)  
already recognizes.




but for the proof to work you've got to start with the assumption  
that there can be only one Bruno Marchal. Seems like a lot of wasted  
effort to me.


 After the duplication and differentiation, there is only one Bruno  
Marchal from the points of view of all Bruno Marchal.


And assuming they are logical all the Bruno Marchals would agree  
with each other on that point, and I the third party observer agree  
too.


So they will all agree having different views, and that the question  
was thus meaningful. They all agree that they could not have predicted  
the particular experience they are living. Such an a prediction  
algorithm is simply nonsensical.





 You don't give a prediction. You gave two predictions.

And that's twice as good if both predictions turn out to be true,  
and they do.


Of course not. The one in M and the one in W have different  
incompatible experience. In one diary we see Well I am in Moscow  
now, and in the other diary well I am in Washington now, and the  
question was bearing on that. Not on where the copies are, but where  
the copies feel to be individually.







 If 1) + 2) means 1) AND 2): both will know the prediction was  
wrong.


How on earth will they know it was wrong when every word that was  
predicted to be written in those diaries was in fact written? It's  
interesting, you're the one who introduced the idea of the people in  
the experiment using diaries so it could be a real scientific  
experiment, but now you don't like that idea.


If you predicted 1)and 2), you are wrong at the start, because the  
question was on the 1-pov, and 1)-and-2) is not a possible 1-pov.
Or it means that you predicted the 3-view on the 1-view. In that case  
your prediction is correct but does not address the question asked.


Now you are only in W (resp. M), and your prediction fails to predict  
that special happening, which is obvious for you can't experience, in  
the usual cognitive sense of experience, both happening at once.







 You, Bruno Marchal,  are now in Washington and you write in your  
diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Washington and only Washington.


 Yes. And I know I am not the one in Moscow.

For God's sake, you know you're not the one in Moscow because you're  
not the one in Moscow!
X is not Y because if it were Y would be X; Where is the cosmic  
significance in that?


The question is asked in Helsinki. Here you seem to be be deliberately  
rhetorically oversimplifying a sentence taken out of the context.






 1) I find myself in Washington, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock  
solid proof that you DID predict that outcome.


Then I can predict the winning lotery ticket. It is enough to write
1) ticket 00
2) ticket 01
3) ticket 02
...
100) ticket 99.

Wow. You are quite clairvoyant!



Maybe you made other predictions too, one about some fellow in  
Moscow, and maybe you made a prediction about the rain probability  
in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant, it doesn't  
effect you because you're in Washington.


 2) I find myself in Moscow, and realize that I could not have  
predicted that particular outcome,


And yet by looking in the diary that you had written you find rock  
solid proof that you DID predict that outcome.


Not if I find both 1) and 2), given that here I am living only 2)  
and not 1). So if this means that your prediction is successful, it  
means that you believe you have a mean to predict the winning lottery  
ticket.




Maybe you made other predictions too, one about some fellow in  
Washington, and maybe you made a prediction about the rain  
probability in Duluth Minnesota too,  but all that's irrelevant, it  
doesn't effect you because you're in Moscow.


 you keep describing the 3-view on the 1-views, instead of  
listening to each reconstituted person


I am listening to them, and introducing the diaries into this was  
your idea not mine.


To give two outcomes when you see only one is not what is called  
prediction.


There is one outcome, not because there is only one John Clark, but  
because for all possible John Clarks, there is only one 1-pov, from  
their 1-pov view, and that the question was bearing on which one you  
can predict to be

Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-02 Thread Craig Weinberg

Stephen,

Right, this is all about wholeness. I suggest that 

1. Wholeness can never be 100% independent of context. 

2. Since consciousness is materially related in any definition of wholeness, I 
reason that...

3. There is not necessarily any possible method of extracting, teleporting, 
simulating, or duplicating conscious entities since...

4. Consciousness may always be the top-most 'cream' of any given system. This 
makes sense to me from a statistical mechanics perspective. Awareness can be 
defined as the perpetually least likely possibility in all universes. It is the 
'floating superlative'; like the highest mountain peak in any geographic frame, 
consciousness is the 'peakness' itself - defining the form of the mountain by 
doing nothing more than just not being underneath any other part of itself.

You correctly understood what I was getting at. Brent correctly picked out a 
flaw in my use of teleportation rather than duplication but didn't care that 
it's really irrelevant.

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Re: Autonomy?

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012  PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 The profound thing is that in Helsinki he does not know which one he will
 feel to be, so he is confronted with an indeterminacy


Suppose I send the same identical Email to both you and to Craig at the
same identical time, you look at your copy and think  when John hit the
send button on his computer he could not have predicted that I would get
this copy of the Email and not the one Craig got, so it's a example of
indeterminacy and all sorts of profound conclusions can be drawn from that
fact. What makes this ridiculous is that the 2 Emails are identical and
thus completely interchangeable. In the same way the man sent to Washington
and the man sent to Moscow are also identical and thus completely
interchangeable, and they will remain that way until the environments of
Washington and Moscow, being different, change the two so they are
different and no longer interchangeable. So first person indeterminacy is
just the result of the unpredictable nature of what goes on in Washington
and Moscow.

 Learning that the other is there will not make you suddenly being that
 one.


Why would I need to suddenly become that other fellow for a logical man to
conclude that the predictions written in that diary was 100% correct??

  you have restricted your prediction on the third person view on the
 1-views.


I am in Washington and feel like I'm in Washington and only in Washington
and that is just what I predicted would happen. If that's not a 1-view
what is?

 But that is just not answering the question asked.


The answer is 42 but I can't figure out what the question is or why what
was written in that diary is not a successful prediction.

 In physics we say there is indeterminacy and the meaning of that is clear


  This meaning is terribly debated since its inception.


That is entirely incorrect. The meaning of physical indeterminacy has
always been crystal clear, it's the truth or falsehood of it that has been
debated; but when you say first person indeterminacy I don't even know
what you're talking about.

  John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

On 30 Jun 2012, at 19:28, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

As I said before if you really had complete information then you
could make 2 predictions:
1) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in
Washington and only Washington.
2) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in
Moscow and only Moscow.

Afterwards both diaries can be shown to anyone who is interested
proving that there was no indeterminacy and the prediction is
confirmed to be completely correct.

But from the 1-pov, we know in advance that those two prediction
are incompatible.

There are incompatible from the 1-pov ONLY if you assume there can
be only one Bruno Marchal

1-pov means 1-pov from the 1-pov view. There is only one. Even if
I am duplicated into 10^100, all of them will have a unique pov. The
probability question bears on those unique pov (from their unique pov
view).

and there is no logical reason for making that assumption, therefore
I at this 1-pov will not do so.

Things become paradoxical only if you make the assumption that
there can only be one Bruno Marchal, therefore the assumption must
be untrue.

you confuse 1 pov and 3 pov,

You keep repeating that over and over like a mantra, but there is a
possibility it is you that is confused.

Things become paradoxical only if you make the assumption that
there can only be one Bruno Marchal, therefore the assumption must
be untrue.

all those Bruno Marchal, whoever they are will still each feel to
be only one of them.

Yes, and there is rock solid proof that is exactly precisely what
was predicted to happen,

Correct, but the question is on the content of the 1-pov. And the
theory predict that those content will be exlcuive and non compatible,
as you write correctly above.

if you doubt this just look and see what was written in the diary
before the experiment started, it's right there clear as a bell in
black and white. So where is this spectral first person
indeterminacy you keep talking about?

The incompatible experience I feel to be in M and I feel to be in
W. After the experience we can interview the two copies, and they
will confirm it.

we agree that there are both bruno marchal

Exactly.

and so the prediction was wrong.

WHAT?? He could have also written in his diary the Bruno Marchal
who calls himself I and sees Washington will not be the Bruno
Marchal who calls himself I who does NOT see Washington. He could
have added that to his official prediction, but I think writing
something so thunderously obvious would be a waste of ink.

No. It helps to understand that from the 1-pov, the experience was not
predictible. Your move consists in looking all the time from the 3-pov
on the 1-pov, but the question bears on the 1-pov from the 1-pov.
It is simoilar as what happens when you look at up+down in an {up,
down} analyser. QM predicts you will be in the superposition state,
but comp explain you will feel only one branch.

Bruno

John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?

On 30 Jun 2012, at 21:57, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/30/2012 12:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Jun 2012, at 21:20, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

You said yourself that the first person cannot be defined. How
could we verify that prediction? Except by feeling to be one of
the W and M reconstituted person. And from their points of viex,
the prediction of being in both place is simply refuted.

Refuted?? As I said before if you really had complete information
then you could make 2 predictions:

1) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now
in Washington and only Washington.

2) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now
in Moscow and only Moscow.

Afterwards both diaries can be shown to anyone who is interested
proving that there was no indeterminacy and the prediction is
confirmed to be completely correct.

But from the 1-pov, we know in advance that those two prediction
are incompatible. So you can make one more which is 1) OR 2).

I think it's 1) AND 2).

We asked on what will be the future 1-pov. As 1-pov, 1) and 2) are
incompatible, unless you suppose some telepathy between the two copies
(but with comp this would mean the level was not right, or that comp
is inconsistent).
John gave two predictions, which is not a prediction. To predict that
the market will crash + to predict that the market will not crash is
not a prediction. If I ask what is the chance that it will rain, I
will not be happy with an answer like it 1) it will rain + 2) it will
not rain. Still less with it will rain and it will not rain.

Things become paradoxical only if you make the assumption that
there can only be one Bruno Marchal, therefore the assumption must
be untrue.

Things become contradictory when you confuse 1 pov and 3 pov,
leading to 1) and 2) which is non sense.
The assumption is not that there is only one Bruno Marchal, but
that all those Bruno Marchal, whoever they are will still each feel
to be only one of them. Oh I am the one in Moscow, and not the one
in Washington, and I was unable to predict that fact, unless using
a or.

Suppose you predict I will be in Washinton. Then the Bruno in
Washington will be right and the Bruno is Moscow will say, Oh, I
was wrong.

Exactly, and with comp we have to listen to both. If not, in the MWI,
I can predict that the up+down electron, that I will measure in the
{up, down} base, is always up.

Bruno

You have a machine with some button, and you are asked to make a
prediction on the immediate personal outcome of a simple experiment.

Right, and the prediction is easy to make and it is perfect.

1) or 2). But that leads to the indeterminacy.

you sill confuse 1 and 3 views.

You keep repeating that over and over like a mantra, but there is
a possibility it is you that is confused.

It is up to you to show this, but, here again, you deny that after
the duplication, whoever you will be, will recognize that he was
not able top have predicted with certainty the particular outcome.
This can only be I will be in such city, and this will be refuted
by the one in the other city. With comp, we agree that there are
both bruno marchal, and so the prediction was wrong. It was a
selection in disguise.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Autonomy?



On 30 Jun 2012, at 23:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:

It seems to me that with functionalism a human identity cannot  
necessarily be different from a any sufficiently complex functional  
interaction. Something like a war, for instance involves lots of  
dynamic i/o, 'processing', etc.


My question then is: Can you teleport the American Civil War to the  
Moon?


Yes. In principle. Assuming comp. Just find the right state of all  
americans at the beginning of the war, and a pretty precise  
description of America, and implement all this on a very powerful  
computer on the moon.


There is provably (assuming comp) infinitely many implementation of  
the American civil war in arithmetic. And that is very easy to prove.  
Again the hard part is to get the relative measure right.
Of course in arithmetic, UDA shows that the measure exists, or has to  
exist, because if it does not exist, then comp has to be wrong. I  
don't pretend that this is obvious.





Can you move Gettysburg to Moscow?


If comp is correct, you can emulate Gettysburg where you want.





Do you see what I am getting at? Human identity is not made of only  
matter.


Well, if human identity is made of matter (what would that mean?),  
then comp is wrong (whatever ùade of matter means).



It is made partly of unique interactions of unique events. Even  
without first person fragmentation (which brain conjoined twins  
suggest is not a problem - I can be spread out beyond an  
individual body), there is nothing to suggest that the event  
specific entanglement-momentum of any system can be reproduced  
independently of context. If you duplicate Bruno's body, you get a  
newborn baby in an adult body.


This will depend on the level of duplication.



If you duplicate Gettysburg you get a bunch of confused amnesiac  
babies in uniforms. Each neuron has to discover its own connections  
for the first time, recapitulating the experience of the individuals  
or historic events as a whole as they struggle to cohere like a mass  
of fibrillating cardiac cells unable to synch.


In your materialist non-comp theory, that is conceivable. But is such  
primitive matter conceivable? I have no clue what that could mean. But  
I know it means nothing if comp is assumed to be correct.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-07-01 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 3:57 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Suppose you predict I will be in Washinton.


But if he was smart and knowledgeable of the situation (and the thought
experiment would be useless if he was not) that would NOT be his
prediction, instead he would make 2 predictions:

1) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in
Washington and only Washington.
2) I Bruno Marchal will write in my diary I Bruno Marchal am now in Moscow
and only Moscow.

 Then the Bruno in Washington will be right and the Bruno is Moscow will
 say, Oh, I was wrong.


No, after the copying Bruno Washington and Bruno Moscow will both look at
their identical diary entries and both will conclude I was right. And
you, the third party outside observer, will look at the behavior of both
Bruno Washington and Bruno Moscow and you will agree with the first person
perspective of both of them that the accuracy of their predictions was
indeed perfect. There will be no indeterminacy and no confusion between
1-pov and 3-pov and everybody will agree on what has occurred, unless
of course somebody makes the illogical assumption that there can be only
one Bruno Marchal

 John K Clark

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Re: Autonomy?