Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 06 Aug 2016, at 22:13, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/6/2016 10:12 AM, smitra wrote: On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state, because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring counterfactual inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified with operators specifying the time evolution over one computational step. ?? An algorithm doesn't have have any input or output. An algorithm is just an informal descriptionj of a procedure. With Church thesis, each algorithm has infintely many implementation. The algorithms executed by the UD don't have either. Well, all versions of the UD that I made precise actually dovetail on the program with one input. The one in lisp do dovetail on all one- input programs, and all inputs for each of them.b You are right, computerland is 0-dimensional, by the SMN theorem, and the dovetaling of programs without inputs generates the dovetailing on all inputs, including infinite non computable streams of inputs. That play some role at some points. The FPI might works thanks to some Oracle, the random oracle plays some role, like in the iterated self- duplication. Bruno Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you should end up with a complete set of commuting observable
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 06 Aug 2016, at 19:12, smitra wrote: On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state, because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring counterfactual inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified with operators specifying the time evolution over one computational step. That would only define another universal number. We must just agree on one sigma_1 complete theory (Turing universal) to have the counterfactuals. Here your use of "operators" is ambiguous, as we don't know if it is referred to math or physics. Computation is not just a mathematical notion, it is an arithmetical notion. Physical time should emerge from the FPI (hopefully plural) on an infinities of "digital time", which are just the computation themselves (determined either by two numbers (the program and the inputs) at the base level (arithmetic) or by three numbers (a universal number and its program, and its data), + streams, and oracle (like non computable set of numbers). Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you should end up with a complete set of commuting observables not for some system in the lab, but for whatever the observer is aware of, which is in principle also a quantum mechanical measurement. So, specifying an OM involves a lot more than was assumed, you
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 01:08:15AM +0200, Quentin Anciaux wrote: > 2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : > > > > I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that > > resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to > > me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that > > is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the > > information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on > > making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine > > yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. > > > > > This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has > At least he'd consistent. On page 147 of Theory of Nothing, I have Saibal pegged as an ASSAist! Cheers -- Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/6/2016 10:12 AM, smitra wrote: On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state, because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring counterfactual inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified with operators specifying the time evolution over one computational step. ?? An algorithm doesn't have have any input or output. The algorithms executed by the UD don't have either. Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you should end up with a complete set of commuting observables not for some system in the lab, but for whatever the observer is aware of, which is in principle also a quantum mechanical measurement. A quantum measurement implicitly assumes decoherence into classical results. It's not all clear to me what process is "ending up" there? So, specifying an OM involves a lot more than was assumed, you can build an entire universe around it. This should be possible because that's what we do in physics all the time. All we know at any given moment is never more than information contained in a single OM, but that doesn't stop us from knowing a lot about the universe, the laws of physics etc. etc. What does it mean to know something at a given moment? Does it mean to have an affirmative thought about a proposition expressing
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 05-08-2016 01:08, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has I think in the old debate about RSSA/ASSA things were oversimplified. The main thing that was overlooked was that an observer moment (OM) cannot be specified as a classical state, because an algorithm needs to be specified requiring counterfactual inputs and outputs to be specified. So OMs should be identified with operators specifying the time evolution over one computational step. Now, if we jump ahead to QM, then it should be clear that you should end up with a complete set of commuting observables not for some system in the lab, but for whatever the observer is aware of, which is in principle also a quantum mechanical measurement. So, specifying an OM involves a lot more than was assumed, you can build an entire universe around it. This should be possible because that's what we do in physics all the time. All we know at any given moment is never more than information contained in a single OM, but that doesn't stop us from knowing a lot about the universe, the laws of physics etc. etc. Saibal Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [1]. For more options, visit https://g
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
This bet is akin to believing that there are super civilizations in the galaxy, but we don't know they exist. Could be, but, meh! -Original Message- From: John Clark To: everything-list Sent: Thu, Aug 4, 2016 2:02 pm Subject: Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire A few years ago on this list I made a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to test the Many World's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and as a bonus it'll make you rich too. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the drawing of the winning number is on Saturday at 11pm, now make a simple machine that will pull the trigger on a 44 magnum revolver aimed at your head at exactly 11:00:01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. Your subjective experience can only be that at 11:00:01pm despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point, your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess, it's their problem not yours. Actually I like Many Worlds and think it may very well be right, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
2016-08-04 19:20 GMT+02:00 smitra : > On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: > >> On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: >> >>> On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: >>> On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a >> mistake, >> which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one >> of >> the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those >> copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. >> > > I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with > memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition > everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But > making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, > otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or > consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who > then went on to win it. > > Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal > identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same > person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine > being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking > up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. > That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent >>> >>> We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is >>> temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. >>> >> >> You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of >> yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing >> there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). >> Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday >> AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but >> NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. >> >> The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of >>> having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in >>> another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not >>> winning. >>> >>> The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if >>> you have won. >>> >> >> You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of >> yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some >> Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the >> forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical >> world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in >> the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would >> just have to be a result of the computation. >> > > > I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that > resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to > me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that > is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the > information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on > making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine > yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. > > This is basically ASSA... and it has all the problems ASSA has > Saibal > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/4/2016 12:45 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 21:35, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/4/2016 10:15 AM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 05:48, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Yes, but this is not a problem, this is just an artifact of introducing an unphysical "you". All that really exists are algorithms and they can be identified by the particular computational state that refers to them uniquely. So, your statement reduces to the fact that I, Bruno, and many other persons exist, which is not all that shocking. Right. But it destroys the indicial meaning of "you" so your so your statement that, "... it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch." becomes meaningless. Yes, we need to be careful with precisely defining what we mean. In principle, we can only access information stored in our present moment. Anything that we experience that refers to the past is actually stored inside our present computational state. How can past and future even be defined in that model. To "access" information already implicitly assumes time and a duration of the "present moment". Brent It should therefore always be possible to reformulate all arguments in terms of only present moments, then that leads to convoluted argument. But I think this is a good way to go about things, also in the other thread about Bruno's duplication experiment to eliminate assumptions that are not physical. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 21:35, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/4/2016 10:15 AM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 05:48, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Yes, but this is not a problem, this is just an artifact of introducing an unphysical "you". All that really exists are algorithms and they can be identified by the particular computational state that refers to them uniquely. So, your statement reduces to the fact that I, Bruno, and many other persons exist, which is not all that shocking. Right. But it destroys the indicial meaning of "you" so your so your statement that, "... it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch." becomes meaningless. Yes, we need to be careful with precisely defining what we mean. In principle, we can only access information stored in our present moment. Anything that we experience that refers to the past is actually stored inside our present computational state. It should therefore always be possible to reformulate all arguments in terms of only present moments, then that leads to convoluted argument. But I think this is a good way to go about things, also in the other thread about Bruno's duplication experiment to eliminate assumptions that are not physical. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/4/2016 10:20 AM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. Sure. And you can imagine that God created the world last Thursday. But I see any predictive or explanatory power in such an "imagining". Brent Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/4/2016 10:15 AM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 05:48, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Yes, but this is not a problem, this is just an artifact of introducing an unphysical "you". All that really exists are algorithms and they can be identified by the particular computational state that refers to them uniquely. So, your statement reduces to the fact that I, Bruno, and many other persons exist, which is not all that shocking. Right. But it destroys the indicial meaning of "you" so your so your statement that, "... it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch." becomes meaningless. Brent Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
A few years ago on this list I made a modest proposal, it's a low tech way to test the Many World's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and as a bonus it'll make you rich too. First you buy one Powerball lottery ticket, the drawing of the winning number is on Saturday at 11pm, now make a simple machine that will pull the trigger on a 44 magnum revolver aimed at your head at exactly 11:00:01pm UNLESS yours is the winning ticket. Your subjective experience can only be that at 11:00:01pm despite 80 million to one odds stacked against you a miracle occurs and the gun does not go off and you're rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Of course for every universe you're rich in there are 80 million in which your friends watch your head explode, but that's a minor point, your consciousness no longer exists in any of those worlds so you never have to see the mess, it's their problem not yours. Actually I like Many Worlds and think it may very well be right, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04 Aug 2016, at 05:48, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Fortunately for mechanism, some diophantine equation have no solutions, some programs never stop, and nothing impossible happens at the base level, or we are all gravely inconsistent. But what is interesting is that for any machine, the truth is bigger than its believable/justifiable part, and the exploration is infinite, and can only lead to more surprises and more surprises, and more doubts ... "everything" has no meaning out of the theory of thing that we postulate. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 03:05, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. I've written in the past about an elaborate procedure involving an AI that resets its memory, but I now think that this is not necessary. It seems to me that every moment we experience is a new measurement of our state that is equivalent to forgetting everything and then just reloading all the information. Predictions of outcomes of experiments should not depend on making this assumption. Put differently, at any one time you could imagine yourself as being sampled randomly from the set of all observer moments. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 05:48, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Yes, but this is not a problem, this is just an artifact of introducing an unphysical "you". All that really exists are algorithms and they can be identified by the particular computational state that refers to them uniquely. So, your statement reduces to the fact that I, Bruno, and many other persons exist, which is not all that shocking. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 04:13, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 4/08/2016 11:59 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). Forgetting does not involve complete reversal of a particular brain state, so there will always be traces of the facts that you once knew, but have recently forgotten -- the memories might come flooding back. I don't think the subconscious mind is as simple as you seem to presume. While you were forgetting, the other branches of the wave funtion have evolved away in different diretions, so it is extremely unlikey that there will be another copy identical to you post-forgetting state. If you do another measurement, there is another branching -- you never go back to an earlier state. Decoherence is irreversible. It doesn't matter, because the moment you have forgotten it, the parts of your brain that do contain the information about the lottery are external to you. Otherwise, you would not have forgotten it. That decoherence is irreversible in practice is irrelevant here. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
R: Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
>Messaggio originale >Da: "Bruce Kellett" >Data: 04/08/2016 4.13 >A: >Ogg: Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire > >On 4/08/2016 11:59 am, smitra wrote: >> On 04-08-2016 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: >>> On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: >>>> On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: >>>>> On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a >>>>>>> mistake, >>>>>>> which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one >>>>>>> of >>>>>>> the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those >>>>>>> copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. >>>>>> >>>>>> I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with >>>>>> memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition >>>>>> everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But >>>>>> making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, >>>>>> otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or >>>>>> consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who >>>>>> then went on to win it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal >>>>>> identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same >>>>>> person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine >>>>>> being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking >>>>>> up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. >>>>> >>>>> That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" >>>>> who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if >>>>> "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's >>>>> because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees >>>>> Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. >>>>> >>>>> Brent >>>> >>>> We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory >>>> is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The >>>> branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of >>>> having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the >>>> you in another branch were you did not win where you also have >>>> forgotten about not winning. >>> >>> Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have >>> won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a >>> ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether >>> you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can >>> recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly >>> recorded is nonsense. >> >> There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become >> identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, >> upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. >> If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located >> on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that >> means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information >> about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that >> defines you). > >Forgetting does not involve complete reversal of a particular brain >state, so there will always be traces of the facts that you once knew, >but have recently forgotten -- the memories might come flooding back. I >don't think the subconscious mind is as simple as you seem to presume. >While you were forgetting, the other branches of the wave funtion have >evolved away in different diretions, so it is extremely unlikey that >there will be another copy identical to you post-forgetting state. If >you do another measurement, there is another branching -- you never go >back to an earlier state. Decoherence is irreversible. > >Bruce But, are there differences between "Many Minds I." and "Many Worlds I."? It seems so. http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/Many_Minds.pdf http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/Many_Minds_Replies.pdf Each interpretation has problems (preferred basis, decoherence, recoherence, Born rule, etc.). I think here we are somehow mixing the two interpretation s. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/3/2016 6:59 PM, smitra wrote: Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). And then you'll become Bruno, and then you'll become John Clark, and then you'll become Sherlock Holmes and then you'll become a unicorn and each of them infinitely many times... That's the trouble with "everything thing happens" . Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 4/08/2016 11:59 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). Forgetting does not involve complete reversal of a particular brain state, so there will always be traces of the facts that you once knew, but have recently forgotten -- the memories might come flooding back. I don't think the subconscious mind is as simple as you seem to presume. While you were forgetting, the other branches of the wave funtion have evolved away in different diretions, so it is extremely unlikey that there will be another copy identical to you post-forgetting state. If you do another measurement, there is another branching -- you never go back to an earlier state. Decoherence is irreversible. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. There is no recombination of branches here, it's just that you become identical to another version of you located in another branch. Then, upon a new measurement, you'll spit over the different branches again. If somehow you would not be identical to another copy of you located on a branch where the outcome of the lottery is different, then that means that you actually did not forget the outcome as the information about the outcome is still present in your memory (the algorithm that defines you). Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/3/2016 4:30 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. You mean there are branches of the world in which your memory of yesterday, when the lottery was drawn, is erased (and we're supposing there is no physics, so there is no physical evidence of yesterday?). Then the threads of consciousness constituting Saibal before yesterday AND suffering amnesia about yesterday will merge with each other, but NOT with the threads of Saibal that do remember yesterday. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. You're supposing there's a "procedure" for erasing memory of yesterday? How could there be, there's no physics? So there are some Saibals that forgot yesterday, and whether or not "they" won, but the forgetting wasn't a "procedure" because that would imply a physical world context in which whether on not Saibal won would be evident in the physical world and beyond mere "forgetting". The forgetting would just have to be a result of the computation. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 4 August 2016 at 09:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: > On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: > >> On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: >> >>> On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: >>> >>> On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a > mistake, > which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one > of > the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those > copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. > I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. >>> >>> That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" >>> who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if >>> "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's >>> because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees >>> Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. >>> >>> Brent >>> >> >> We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is >> temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches >> will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the >> branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were >> you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. >> > > Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won > the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that > will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget > anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the > relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. If you win the lottery today there are some branches of the multiverse where you forget you won and all evidence of winning is erased, or you discover you were dreaming or deluded. But I think these possibilities are less likely (smaller in measure) than the ones where you actually have won, which although unlikely is not completely incredible, like realising that you are God or that you have been turned into a frog. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 4/08/2016 9:30 am, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. Actually, there will objective evidence as to whether or not you have won the lottery. There will be a winning number and you will have a ticket that will have this number on it or not, regardless of whether you forget anything or not. The idea that branches in the MWI can recombine after the relevant quantum measurement has been irreversibly recorded is nonsense. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 4 August 2016 at 09:09, smitra wrote: > On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, >> which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of >> the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those >> copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. >> > > I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories > gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the > person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part > of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the > same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who > participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. > You did start your post, "suppose that you won the lottery...". That constitutes a strong condition. A lot more people dream that they win the lottery than actually win the lottery, but usually if you are not dreaming then you can be sure that you are not dreaming, and I assume this is the sort of experience of winning the lottery that you mean. To have such an experience then wake up and realise that you were wrong seems unlikely. If you picked another example, such as realising that you are God, I would agree that you will more likely wake up at some point and realise that it is a dream or delusion. > Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, > we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won > who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not > win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who > did not win it. > For this thought experiment to be meaningful you would have to wake up as someone with a clear recollection of winning and yet not have won. If you wake up as someone who never won and never thought he had won then that is just a statement of what normally happens - people rarely win the lottery. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 01:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent We can turn this into a reverse Bruno-like problem. If your memory is temporarily cleared then copies of different branches merge. The branches will of course be different, but you without a memory of having won in the branch where you did win is the same you as the you in another branch were you did not win where you also have forgotten about not winning. The question is then if it is advisable to go through this procedure if you have won. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [1]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [2] https://groups.google.com/d/optout -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/3/2016 4:09 PM, smitra wrote: On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. That seems to invoke a dualism, such that there's only one real "you" who may be in different branches at different times. I'd say that if "you" wake up as a copy in another branch where "you" didn't win, it's because "you" didn't win. It's the same as saying the man who sees Moscow didn't "wake up" as the man who sees Washington. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 04-08-2016 00:12, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. I'm imagining waking up after a night of heavy drinking with memories gradually returning. Now, you can, of course, condition everything on the person who will find that he won the lottery. But making that a hard part of my identity doesn't make sense to me, otherwise you could not be the same person and forget about it, or consider being the same person who participated in the lottery who then went on to win it. Now,while this boils down to an arbitrary definition of personal identity, we should be consistent about this; you can be the same person as the won who had not yet won it, and you could imagine being a person who did not win it, then you'll likely end up waking up as a copy in another branch who did not win it. Saibal On Thursday, 4 August 2016, smitra wrote: Suppose that you won the lottery, you had a one in a hundred million chance to win, so you got extremely lucky. You party, go to bed and think about planning your trip around the World next morning. In the MWI, things will actually not pan out this way. What will happen is that the next morning you'll wake up as one of your copies who did not win the lottery. This is the flip side of the "anything that can happen will happen" aspect of the MWI. While you have a copy who has won the lottery, in fact there even exists an extremely freak copy who has won every time, it's not true that if you find yourself as one of these copies, you can expect to continue to be one of these copies. If you think of something else and then return your thoughts about your bank balance, then that is a new measurement, and in the MWI the outcome is not fixed, there are only stable correlations. So, if you already know that you have won the lottery, then you'll find a consistent result upon a new measurement. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [1]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout [2]. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [1]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list [2] https://groups.google.com/d/optout -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
On 8/3/2016 3:03 PM, smitra wrote: Suppose that you won the lottery, you had a one in a hundred million chance to win, so you got extremely lucky. You party, go to bed and think about planning your trip around the World next morning. In the MWI, things will actually not pan out this way. What will happen is that the next morning you'll wake up as one of your copies who did not win the lottery. This is the flip side of the "anything that can happen will happen" aspect of the MWI. While you have a copy who has won the lottery, in fact there even exists an extremely freak copy who has won every time, it's not true that if you find yourself as one of these copies, you can expect to continue to be one of these copies. You can if "you" are defined by memories and memories are physically encoded classically in your brain. Brent If you think of something else and then return your thoughts about your bank balance, then that is a new measurement, and in the MWI the outcome is not fixed, there are only stable correlations. So, if you already know that you have won the lottery, then you'll find a consistent result upon a new measurement. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
Only if you wake up and find out winning the lottery was a mistake, which seems less likely than waking up a winner. Waking up as one of the many copies who didn't win is not one of the options - those copies are not continuations of the you who won the lottery. On Thursday, 4 August 2016, smitra wrote: > Suppose that you won the lottery, you had a one in a hundred million > chance to win, so you got extremely lucky. You party, go to bed and think > about planning your trip around the World next morning. > > In the MWI, things will actually not pan out this way. What will happen is > that the next morning you'll wake up as one of your copies who did not win > the lottery. > > This is the flip side of the "anything that can happen will happen" aspect > of the MWI. While you have a copy who has won the lottery, in fact there > even exists an extremely freak copy who has won every time, it's not true > that if you find yourself as one of these copies, you can expect to > continue to be one of these copies. > > If you think of something else and then return your thoughts about your > bank balance, then that is a new measurement, and in the MWI the outcome is > not fixed, there are only stable correlations. So, if you already know that > you have won the lottery, then you'll find a consistent result upon a new > measurement. > > Saibal > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
If you win the lottery, don't expect to live the rest of your life as a millionaire
Suppose that you won the lottery, you had a one in a hundred million chance to win, so you got extremely lucky. You party, go to bed and think about planning your trip around the World next morning. In the MWI, things will actually not pan out this way. What will happen is that the next morning you'll wake up as one of your copies who did not win the lottery. This is the flip side of the "anything that can happen will happen" aspect of the MWI. While you have a copy who has won the lottery, in fact there even exists an extremely freak copy who has won every time, it's not true that if you find yourself as one of these copies, you can expect to continue to be one of these copies. If you think of something else and then return your thoughts about your bank balance, then that is a new measurement, and in the MWI the outcome is not fixed, there are only stable correlations. So, if you already know that you have won the lottery, then you'll find a consistent result upon a new measurement. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.