RE: Torture yet again
Lee Corbin writes: [quoting Stathis Papaioannou] Certainly, this is the objective truth, and I'm very fond of the objective truth. But when we are talking about first person experience, we are not necessarily claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of the world; we are only claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of our first person experience. Objective knowledge of my first person experience, eh? I'll have to ponder that one! Perhaps it will help if I contrast it with subjective knowledge of my first person experience :-) If I say, I feel that man is a crook, that is a subjective statement about a 3rd person fact (the man's honesty), but an objective statement about a 1st person fact (what I feel about the man). If we are to be strictly rational and consistent, it is simplest to go to the extreme of saying that *none* of the instantiations of an individual are actually the same person, which is another way of saying that each observer moment exists only transiently. This would mean that we only live for a moment, to be replaced by a copy who only thinks he has a past and a future. Mike Perry, in his book Forever For All develops these from the idea of day-persons, i.e., the idea that you are not the same person from day to day. But that's certainly not a satisfactory way of extending our usual notions into these bizarre realms; you and I want to live next week because we believe that we are the same persons we'll be then. And the idea that we *are* fuzzy sets in person space permits this. We die all the time, so death is nothing to worry about. On this definition, yes. But this is *such* an impractical approach. We all know that it's bad for your neighbor when he dies, despite us and him totally believing in the MWI. We would like to avoid having to say that we die all the time. Impractical is not the first criticism that comes to mind re this belief. Suppose it were revealed to you that as part of an alien experiment over the past 10,000 years, all Earth organisms with a central nervous system are killed whenever they fall asleep and replaced with an exact copy. (Sleep has actually been introduced by the aliens specifically for this purpose; otherwise, what possible evolutionary advantage could it confer?) Would it make any practical difference to your life? Would your attitude towards friends and family change? Would you take stimulants and try to stay awake as long as possible? Is there anything about how you feel from day to day that could be taken as evidence for or against this revelation? If the aliens offered to stop doing this in your case in exchange for a substantial sum of money, or several years reduction in your (apparent) lifespan, would you take up the offer? My answer to all these questions would be no. --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Over 80,000 jobs across all industries at Australia's #1 job site. http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: Torture yet again
On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 10:42:17PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: No, it's not the same program. What do you mean? I am postulating that it *is* the same sequence of code bytes, the *same* program. Do you know what I mean when I say that program A is the same program as program B? An instantiated program is much more than a sequence of bytes -- it also has state. Most programs do not have much state, but some (AI, specifically) are completely dominated by state. Another example is numerics, say, CFD code (which is simple, in numer of lines of code) computing a large system (which is not, because it contains TBytes of live data). The program is a really bad metaphor to describe intelligent observers. It is cleaner to describe the observer by state, and an engine interatively transforming the state. Whether the engine is mostly code or an ASIC, or a block of molecular circuitry doesn't matter from that perspective. It is this same, identical program that is running in two different places at the same time (pace relativity). Program A at location one is receiving input X and program A at position two is receiving input Y. I can't make it any clearer than that. I understood you perfectly. No, it is not the same program. A chess computer playing two different games are two distinct individuals. Two chess computers playing the same game (down to the clock cycle and single bit of state) are the same program. Assuming the devices don't store state, they boot up into a defined state, and then diverge either from system randomness or user input (abstractly, of course they will immediately diverge from clock skew and I/O with the real world, but it's only an illustration). Formally they're both flashed with HyperChess V3.0.4, and sloppily we can refer to them running the same program version. But these two systems are not identical, unless synchronized. You could say the space between your ears and mine enjoys the same physical laws, though. Both the arrangement of matter and the state of that matter (frozen-frame picture of spikes and gradients, gene activity, etc.etc) are very different. Of course. That's because the Eugen program is quite different from the Lee program. Now, the Eugen 2004 (March 23, 12:00:00) program is also somewhat different from the Eugen 2002 program (March 23, 12:00:00), but they are *very* similar in many, many ways. So many ways that we are justified in asserting that they are for all practical purposes the same person (and the same basic program). Biology doesn't make a clean distinction between software and hardware. I agree there is similiarity/homology between me-former and me-today, but that similiarity is difficult to measure at a low level. Synchronizing spatially separate discrete systems and make measurements on bit vectors is something relatively simple, at least in gedanken. Lee P.S. I had great, great difficulty in understanding anything that you had to say. I was not able to make most of it out. Perhaps you could add some redundancy to your tight prose? Sorry to be so dense, sometimes I have to post under time constraints, in a distracting environment. Will try to mend in future. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Torture yet again
On Sun, Jun 26, 2005 at 10:53:31AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: You can be in two places at the same time, but you can't enjoy two different scenarios, or think individual thoughts. I disagree. Again, you slide back and forth between instantiations and programs, which, as you know, are not the same thing. What you No, a system consists of a state, and iterated transformation upon a state. The physical system human, and physical laws acting upon it. The assembly of bits in a computer, and iterated transformation the computational engine is applying upon it. Whether that engine is software or hardware, is only relevant for implementation reasons. For complex organisms state dominates over the engine in terms of number of bits and complexity of its evolution. have written is true of an instance. Were we to be completely An instance is a process, execution of a static image. Processes are only the same when their trajectory (system evolution over state space) is identical. consistent using your terminology, then we would have to say that you could not think A and then think B, because each instance of you (in time, this time) cannot think more than one thing. How do you measure whether two instances are the same? By comparing each individual frame of the trajectory, bit by bit. If A is a sequence of frames as is B, both belonging to the same system evolving in time, they will not be same, unless forced by external constraints. Panta rhei, I am no longer the person I was yesteryear, etc. You have to look for more abstract homologies, extracting features from the trajectory, and comparing them. Two synchronized systems produce the same trajectory, by definition. A program can run in two different places at the same time, and the program (treated as the pattern) is perfectly capable of receiving input X in one location at the same time that it No, program is the wrong model. You can have identical pieces of a bit pattern (CD-ROM, human zygote), but they diverge when instantiated on different machines, given different input. Even given very homogenous instances (say, one C. elegans and another with very similiar neuranatomy, since genetically determined) they're processing different information, and representing different environments (e.g. sensing a chemical gradient). receives input Y in another. It would then be correct to say that the program was enjoying two different scenarios at the same time. No, it's not the same program. You could say the space between your ears and mine enjoys the same physical laws, though. Both the arrangement of matter and the state of that matter (frozen-frame picture of spikes and gradients, gene activity, etc.etc) are very different. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: More about identity (was Re: Torture yet again)
Eric Cavalcanti writes: But even in a MWI perspective, they are surely very different processes, as someone else argued. Tossing a coin does not increase the number of copies of yourself in the multiverse. Pushing the button does. There is a symmetry between the two versions of yourself in the coin tossing scenario. Clearly there is no reason for one to be preferred to the other, then it is reasonable to believe there is a 50% probability for you to experience each. But there is an asymmetry between you and your copies, and there is some reason to believe that your consciousness cannot experience to be the copies, namely, the argument that you should not experience anything strange if someone scans your body without your knowledge. The argument that the two copies are symmetrical in the MWI and there is no reason to choose one over the other is exactly my point about duplication in one world. For technical reasons, it generally *would* be possible to distinguish a copy from the original if we were using, for example, non-destructive teleportation, but surely this is just a detail. You have aknowledged that all the atoms in your body change over time, replaced by atoms from the environment, and you are still the original you. This is a gradual process, although the turnover in the brain is surprisingly fast (thanks to Jesse Mazer for that reference). Presumably, you would not be worried if the replacement happened all at once rather than gradually. Suppose you are standing still, and to your right is a supply of all the elements that are found in a human body. When you press a button, each atom in your body will move one metre to the left, while at the same time, an appropriate atom from the supply to your right will move into the position vacated by the atom that has just moved. The result is that there are now two copies of you, one metre apart. One copy is in the position you were in originally, but is comprised of different atoms. That shouldn't worry you, because this happens all the time anyway, so this copy could claim to be the original. On the other hand, the copy one metre to the left of where you were originally is no different to what would have occurred if you had just stepped one metre to the left, so this copy could claim to be the original. It seems both have a very good claim to being the original! p.s.: By the way, this remark in the last message also applies to choice C: About choice B (and C), it raises other interesting questions: suppose you know that the copies are going to undergo some sort of plastic surgery a week or so after the experiment, and will look very different from yourself now. They could also undergo some type of slow personality modification (as education), such that they would at any moment agree that they are experiencing a continuity of identity. Would you still choose B? What if this change really isn't slow, but sudden, at the time of creation of the copy? Does it make a difference? Then what is the difference between doing a copy of yourself or a copy of someone else, since any two people could be connected by a series of continuous transformations? Would you still be comforted by the fact that someone, even if very different from you, would be created to replace you? This question applies without copying as well: if you had plastic surgery, then gradual personality change, gradual or sudden memory loss, would you still be you or would you be someone else? It illustrates the fact that there is no obvious or correct answer when it comes to questions of continuity of identity. In the final analysis, the answer has to be arbitrary. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dating? Try Lavalife get 7 days FREE! Sign up NOW. http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19180
RE: Torture yet again
Eugen writes A program can run in two different places at the same time, and the program (treated as the pattern) is perfectly capable of receiving input X in one location at the same time that it No, program is the wrong model. You can have identical pieces of a bit pattern (CD-ROM, human zygote), but they diverge when instantiated on different machines, given different input. Even given very homogenous instances (say, one C. elegans and another with very similar neuranatomy, since genetically determined) they're processing different information, and representing different environments (e.g. sensing a chemical gradient). receives input Y in another. It would then be correct to say that the program was enjoying two different scenarios at the same time. No, it's not the same program. What do you mean? I am postulating that it *is* the same sequence of code bytes, the *same* program. Do you know what I mean when I say that program A is the same program as program B? It is this same, identical program that is running in two different places at the same time (pace relativity). Program A at location one is receiving input X and program A at position two is receiving input Y. I can't make it any clearer than that. You could say the space between your ears and mine enjoys the same physical laws, though. Both the arrangement of matter and the state of that matter (frozen-frame picture of spikes and gradients, gene activity, etc.etc) are very different. Of course. That's because the Eugen program is quite different from the Lee program. Now, the Eugen 2004 (March 23, 12:00:00) program is also somewhat different from the Eugen 2002 program (March 23, 12:00:00), but they are *very* similar in many, many ways. So many ways that we are justified in asserting that they are for all practical purposes the same person (and the same basic program). Lee P.S. I had great, great difficulty in understanding anything that you had to say. I was not able to make most of it out. Perhaps you could add some redundancy to your tight prose?
RE: Torture yet again
Bruno wrote Le 23-juin-05, ? 05:38, Lee Corbin a ?crit : you *can* be in two places at the same time. From a third person pov: OK. From a first person pov: how? Right. From a first person... you cannot be. This further illustrates the limitations of the first person account, its subjectivity, its errors, and its total poverty of thought. The objective view, which brings us much more into alignment with what is actually the case, is, as always, the third-person point of view. A good historical analogy is this: to really understand the planets, moons, and sun, it was necessary to totally abandon the Earth-centric view, and try to see the situation from the bird's eye view. By remaining fixated with appearances, and how it looks *from here*, we could never have advanced to the truth. It is the same here; if you are interested in knowing what the case is, and not merely what the appearances are, then you have to understand that you are a physical process, and it may so happen that you execute in different places, and in different times, and that overlaps are possible. Eugen comments You can be in two places at the same time, but you can't enjoy two different scenarios, or think individual thoughts. I disagree. Again, you slide back and forth between instantiations and programs, which, as you know, are not the same thing. What you have written is true of an instance. Were we to be completely consistent using your terminology, then we would have to say that you could not think A and then think B, because each instance of you (in time, this time) cannot think more than one thing. A program can run in two different places at the same time, and the program (treated as the pattern) is perfectly capable of receiving input X in one location at the same time that it receives input Y in another. It would then be correct to say that the program was enjoying two different scenarios at the same time. Lee
RE: Torture yet again
Lee Corbin writes: The objective view, which brings us much more into alignment with what is actually the case, is, as always, the third-person point of view. A good historical analogy is this: to really understand the planets, moons, and sun, it was necessary to totally abandon the Earth-centric view, and try to see the situation from the bird's eye view. By remaining fixated with appearances, and how it looks *from here*, we could never have advanced to the truth. It is the same here; if you are interested in knowing what the case is, and not merely what the appearances are, then you have to understand that you are a physical process, and it may so happen that you execute in different places, and in different times, and that overlaps are possible. Certainly, this is the objective truth, and I'm very fond of the objective truth. But when we are talking about first person experience, we are not necessarily claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of the world; we are only claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of our first person experience. If I say that I have a headache, and my duplicate says he doesn't have a headache, who can argue with that? In this consists the basis for maintaining that we are two separate people. You say later in your post that if I am to be consistent, I would have to say that we are two different people when we are separated by time as well as space or across parallel universes. What I would say is that my successor tomorrow is potentially me if there is continuity of consciousness between all the intermediates between now and then. The successor of my duplicate with the headache does not satisfy this criterion and is therefore not potentially me. Arbitrary though this criterion for continuity of identity may be, it is the criterion our minds have evolved with, and calling it irrational will not change that fact. If we are to be strictly rational and consistent, it is simplest to go to the extreme of saying that *none* of the instantiations of an individual are actually the same person, which is another way of saying that each observer moment exists only transiently. This would mean that we only live for a moment, to be replaced by a copy who only thinks he has a past and a future. We die all the time, so death is nothing to worry about. I actually believe this extreme view to be closest to the objective truth, but I still make plans for the future and I still don't want to die in the more usual sense of the word. Being rational is completely incapable of making any impact on my biological programming in this case, and as you know, there are people in the world who hold being rational in much lower esteem than the members of this list do. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: Torture yet again
Stathis writes same here; if you are interested in knowing what the case is, and not merely what the appearances are, then you have to understand that you are a physical process, and it may so happen that you execute in different places, and in different times, and that overlaps are possible. Certainly, this is the objective truth, and I'm very fond of the objective truth. But when we are talking about first person experience, we are not necessarily claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of the world; we are only claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of our first person experience. Objective knowledge of my first person experience, eh? I'll have to ponder that one! Perhaps it will help if I contrast it with subjective knowledge of my first person experience :-) I [may] have to say that we are two different people when we are separated by time as well as space or across parallel universes. What I would say is that my successor tomorrow is potentially me if there is continuity of consciousness between all the intermediates between now and then. I'm skeptical of continuity requirements. Now I do not believe in Greg Egan's equations in Permutation City: according to a premise of the story, it order to obtain the you of tomorrow, there is a short-cut alternative to just letting you run. And that is to determine the solutions of an immense number of differential equations that do not in fact emulate your intermediary states. If this were so, then it may be that you could discontinuously skip past all of tonight and tomorrow's experiences, and just start living by directly experiencing the day after that. It's easy to imagine this being possible; when I was a teen and was faced with the loathsome task of mowing the lawn, I wondered if it could be possible for me to just not have that experience at all, but for my life to just magically resume after the chore was completed (somehow). I was aware that what I wanted was not simply memory erasure. The successor of my duplicate with the headache does not satisfy this criterion and is therefore not potentially me. Well, are you sure? What if he takes a memory-erasure pill (that works much more perfectly than Midazolam) and thereby becomes a past state that is identical to one of your past states, and then evolves forward into states that you definitely consider to be your natural successors. After people are uploadable, this could happen without much fuss all the time. The interplay of and algebraic combinatorial possibilities of *memory addition*, *experience*, and *memory erasure* lead back to the notion that one is just a fuzzy set in the collection of all persons or person-states. Arbitrary though this criterion for continuity of identity may be, it is the criterion our minds have evolved with, and calling it irrational will not change that fact. Well, some of this is involuntary, but some of it is not. I've never seen how to shake *anticipation*, for example, and suppose that we're just stuck with it, problems and all. But actually I don't have any problem believing that I *am* my duplicates, even those across the room, who are just me seeing a different perspective of the room (and perhaps having slightly different thoughts). If we are to be strictly rational and consistent, it is simplest to go to the extreme of saying that *none* of the instantiations of an individual are actually the same person, which is another way of saying that each observer moment exists only transiently. This would mean that we only live for a moment, to be replaced by a copy who only thinks he has a past and a future. Mike Perry, in his book Forever For All develops these from the idea of day-persons, i.e., the idea that you are not the same person from day to day. But that's certainly not a satisfactory way of extending our usual notions into these bizarre realms; you and I want to live next week because we believe that we are the same persons we'll be then. And the idea that we *are* fuzzy sets in person space permits this. We die all the time, so death is nothing to worry about. On this definition, yes. But this is *such* an impractical approach. We all know that it's bad for your neighbor when he dies, despite us and him totally believing in the MWI. We would like to avoid having to say that we die all the time. Lee I actually believe this extreme view to be closest to the objective truth, but I still make plans for the future and I still don't want to die in the more usual sense of the word. Being rational is completely incapable of making any impact on my biological programming in this case, and as you know, there are people in the world who hold being rational in much lower esteem than the members of this list do. --Stathis Papaioannou
More about identity (was Re: Torture yet again)
I can see an interesting new problem in this thread. Let me put it in a thought experiment as the praxis in this list requires. You are in the same torture room as before, but now the guy is going to torture you to death. You have three options: A: you flip a coin to decide whether you are going to be tortured; B: you press the copy button 100 times; C: you press the copy button once. What do the people in this list choose? For some people, creating copies increases their 1st person probability of escaping torture. So that at each time they press the button they can associate with that a 50% probability of escape. These would choose B, since then they would have a very near certainty of escaping torture. For others, creating copies does not increase any such probability, and there is ultimately no meaning in talking about 1st person probability. But for some reason they seem to feel a strong connection with the copies, as if they are all the same person. They think it is just as good to offer a good meal to the copies as it is to offer it for themselves. These people should choose C, since in this case they will be comforted by the fact that a copy of themselves would survive and have a good life. They don't really need more than one. Actually, one is much better than many, since they wouldn't have the legal and financial problems associated with having lots of copies around. For others, as myself, creating copies does not increase my 1st person probability of escaping torture. And differently from Lee, I think it is just as good to offer a good meal to my copy as it is to offer it to my family and friends. But it is definitely different from offering it to me. These people would choose A. I cannot really understand choice B. Would anyone really choose that or am I just grossly misunderstanding some opinions in this list? About choice B, it raises other interesting questions: suppose you know that the copies are going to undergo some sort of plastic surgery a week or so after the experiment, and will look very different from yourself now. They could also undergo some type of slow personality modification (as education), such that they would at any moment agree that they are experiencing a continuity of identity. Would you still choose B? What if this change really isn't slow, but sudden, at the time of creation of the copy? Does it make a difference? Then what is the difference between doing a copy of yourself or a copy of someone else, since any two people could be connected by a series of continuous transformations? Would you still be comforted by the fact that someone, even if very different from you, would be created to replace you? Eric
RE: More about identity (was Re: Torture yet again)
Eric Cavalcanti writes: You are in the same torture room as before, but now the guy is going to torture you to death. You have three options: A: you flip a coin to decide whether you are going to be tortured; B: you press the copy button 100 times; C: you press the copy button once. What do the people in this list choose? I would choose B. B is effectively the same as flipping a coin 100 times, with a 50% chance of escaping the torture every time. If you say that every time the button is pressed not only you are copied, but the entire universe is copied sans torture, then this is almost exactly the same as flipping a coin 100 times if MWI is true. Why do you think it's OK to be duplicated as a result of the universe splitting and not OK to be duplicated by pressing a button? --Stathis Papaioannou _ Have fun with your mobile! Ringtones, wallpapers, games and more. http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl
Re: Torture yet again
On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 05:08:39PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 23-juin-05, ? 05:38, Lee Corbin a ?crit : you *can* be in two places at the same time. From a third person pov: OK. From a first person pov: how? You can be in two places at the same time, but you can't enjoy two different scenaries, or think invidividual thoughts. It's a degenerate case, and rather uninteresting (but relevant for High Availability / Failover clusters -- HA, heartbeat, drbd, stonith). -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Torture yet again
Le 24-juin-05, à 17:23, Eugen Leitl a écrit : On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 05:08:39PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 23-juin-05, ? 05:38, Lee Corbin a ?crit : you *can* be in two places at the same time. From a third person pov: OK. From a first person pov: how? You can be in two places at the same time, but you can't enjoy two different scenaries, or think invidividual thoughts. Given the definition of 1-person (the one who enjoys) and the third person (the one you can captured by a picture, description, name, identity card, etc.), you are just saying what I said, or even better: From a third person pov: yes. From a first person pov: no. (I assume the place Lee talks about *are* 1-person distinguishable, of course I am at every undistinguishable places at once, drinking an infinity of coffee cup in all Brussels from all Belgiums from all Europas (well here I am less sure!) from all earths from all milky ways from all universes from all multiverses . from all sets of recoverable conceivable computational histories ... in the only one arithmetical truth). [comp assumed!] Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Torture yet again
Lee Corbin writes: quote-- [quoting Stathis] When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? To me, it's always been a big mistake to employ the language of probability; you *will* be in the room where the torture is and you *will* be in the room where it's not, because you *can* be in two places at the same time. [quoting Jonathan] If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). You may want to read a story, The Pit and the Duplicate that I wrote many years ago, which dwells on the ironies of being duplicates. It's a little like Stathis's point here. http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html --endquote Lee's story linked to above is a good summary of the issues. I fundamentally disagree with Lee and Hal Finney about the status of copies, because I *do* consider that I will only be one person at a time, from a first person perspective. If I am going to be more than one person, it would involve a special process like telepathy or mind-melding, or something. My criterion is that if you stick a pin in someone and I feel it, then that person is me; if I don't feel it, then that person isn't me. There is a reasonable line of argument that says if copying were widespread, then this criterion would change, because people who considered their copies to be as good as self, and worked to increase their number and protect their interests, would eventually come to predominate. However, it would involve a profound and fundamental change in our psychology, so that we would become something like hive insects. Basically, when I look at these thought experiments, I assume that I am me as I am *now*, serving my own selfish interests as they seem to be to me now. If we specify what kind of self-interest is being served in discussing these examples, i.e. whether the traditional human type or that of some post-human ideal, we can avoid misunderstanding. Having said that, there is a real paradox in Jonathan's and Lee's thought experiment, which does not occur in a single world/ probabilistic cosmology: the button-presser will always be the loser. From his point of view, he will never escape, but rather is helping others escape. It isn't others before he presses the button, but it certainly is others the moment after the button is pressed, from the point of the view of the still-and-forever button-presser, since as soon as they are created, the duplicates start to diverge. Psychologically, it is easy to see how the button-presser could decide, against his better judgement, that it is hopeless to keep pressing, and this could happen even if the chance of escape per press is raised arbitrarily close to certainty. The paradox resolves if, at random, all but one of the copies is instantly destroyed the moment they are created, because then the button-presser can be assured that if he presses enough times, the chance of escape will come arbitrarily close to certainty. I suppose this is another situation where *reduction* in total measure can actually be a positive - and this time without even any relative reduvction, on average, of adverse outcomes. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: Torture yet again
Jonathan Colvin writes: You are sitting in a room, with a not very nice man. He gives you two options. 1) He'll toss a coin. Heads he tortures you, tails he doesn't. 2) He's going to start torturing you a minute from now. In the meantime, he shows you a button. If you press it, you will get scanned, and a copy of you will be created in a distant town. You've got a minute to press that button as often as you can, and then you are getting tortured. What are you going to choose (Stathis and Bruno)? Are you *really* going to choose (2), and start pressing that button frantically? Do you really think it will make any difference? I'm just imagining having pressed that button a hundred times. Each time I press it, nothing seems to happen. Meanwhile, the torturer is making his knife nice and dull, and his smile grows ever wider. Cr^%^p, I'm definitely choosing (1). Ok, sure, each time I press it, I also step out of a booth in Moscow, relieved to be pain-free (shortly to be followed by a second me, then a third, each one successively more relieved.) But I'm still choosing (1). Now, the funny thing is, if you replace torture by getting shot in the head, then I will pick (2). That's interesting, isn't it? This is a good question. It reminds me of what patients sometimes say when their doctor confidently explains that the proposed treatment has only a one in a million risk of some terrible complication: yes, but what if I'm that one in a million? In a multiverse model of the universe, the patient *will* be that one in a million, in one millionth of the parallel worlds. This means you can arrange experiments so that the copies generated on the basis of an unlikely outcome are segregated, making it seem to this subset that the improbable is probable or, as in the above example, the contingent is certain. When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? Say you do choose the coin option, and let's allow that you can toss the coin as many times as you want in the minute you have before the torture starts. If the MWI is true, in half of the subsequent worlds the coin comes up heads and the version of you in these worlds can still expect torture; while in the other half, the coin comes up tails and the torturer lets you go. Now, let's add this constraint: suppose that you are the copy for whom the coin always comes up heads, however many times you toss it. After all, in the MWI it is certain that there will be such a copy, however many times the coin is tossed. Should this unfortunate person give up on the coin and try begging for mercy while he still has some time left? Here's another version of the of problem, this time without torture. Suppose you have the opportunity to use a machine which, when you put $2 in a slot, will destructively analyse you and create 10 copies. Of these copies, 9 will each be given $1 million in cash, while the 10th copy will get nothing other than another opportunity to use a similar machine. Suppose you are the copy who keeps putting coins into the machines and not winning anything. How long will it be before you decide you are wasting your money? What these examples all have in common is that the unlucky copies are singled out and, ironically, it is these copies who have control over the process (button, coin) which results in their bad luck. If the experiments were changed so that, in the copying process, only one randomly chosen copy were actually implemented, the apparent probabilities would remain the same but it would not be possible to separate out an unlucky group, and the best choice would not be problematic. This is how probabilities work in a single world model, and our minds have evolved to assume that we live in such a world. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
RE: Torture yet again
Jesse Mazer wrote: Suppose there had already been a copy made, and the two of you were sitting side-by-side, with the torturer giving you the following options: A. He will flip a coin, and one of you two will get tortured B. He points to you and says I'm definitely going to torture the guy sitting there, but while I'm sharpening my knives he can press a button that makes additional copies of him as many times as he can. Would this change your decision in any way? What if you are the copy in this scenario, with a clear memory of having been the original earlier but then pressing a button and finding yourself suddenly standing in the copying chamber--would that make you more likely to choose B? I think this variation points to the major flaw in this thought experiment, which is the implicit assumption that copying is possible yet is not used. In fact, if copying is possible as the thought experiment stipulates, it would tend to be widely used. The world would be full of people who are copies. You would be likely to be an nth-generation copy. There would be no novelty as Jesse's variation suggests in allowing you to experience (presumably for the first time!) being copied. I keep harping on this because copying increases measure. It is different from flipping a coin, which does not increase measure. Your expectations going into a copy are different. To the extent that this language makes sense, I would say that you have a 100% chance of becoming the copy and a 100% chance of remaining the original. This is different from flipping a coin. You may think that it would feel the same way, but you've never tried it. Fundamentally, our perception of the world, our phenomenology, our sense of identity and our concept of future and past selves are not intrinsic, but are useful tools which have *evolved* to allow our minds to achieve the goals of survival and reproduction. In a world where copying is possible, we would evolve different ways of perceiving the world. I believe that in such a world, we would perceive the aftermath of copying very differently than the aftermath of flipping a coin. The effects are different, the evolutionary and survival implications are different. In the world of this thought experiment, if the additional copies are (via special dispensation) going to be treated well and given a good chance to survive and thrive, then yes, most people would press the button like crazy. It's just like today, if a bachelor were given the opportunity to have sex with a dozen beautiful women, he'd jump at the chance. It's not because of any intrinsic value in the act, it's because evolution has programmed him to take this opportunity to increase the measure of his genes. In the same way, pressing the button would increase the measure of your mind, and it would be equally as rewarding. In the spirit of this list, let me offer my own variation. It is like the original, except instead of torture you are offered a 50-50 chance to experience a delicious meal prepared by an expert chef. Or you can press the button to make some copies, in which case you get a 100% chance of having the meal. For me, pressing the button is a win-win situation, assuming the copies will be OK. I certainly don't think that pressing the button reduces the measure of my enjoyment of the food. Hal Finney
RE: Torture yet again
Stathis wrote: When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). Jonathan Colvin
RE: Torture yet again
Jonathan Colvin writes: Stathis wrote: When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). Yes, but do you agree it is the same for any probabilistic experiment in a many worlds cosmology? If you sit down and toss a coin 100 times in a row, there will definitely be one version of you who has obtained 100 heads in a row, just as there will definitely be one version of you (the one still in the torture room) who has nothing to show after pushing the button 100 times. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Single? Start dating at Lavalife. Try our 7 day FREE trial! http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19179
RE: Torture yet again
Hi everyone, I've been in heated discussions about duplicates for 39 years now, and so I just don't have much patience with it any more. I have not read many of the recent posts, but I have always gone along with the viewpoint that more runtime is good, and that it linearly bestows benefit on one. I do notice this email: Jonathan Colvin writes: Stathis wrote: When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? To me, it's always been a big mistake to employ the language of probability; you *will* be in the room where the torture is and you *will* be in the room where it's not, because you *can* be in two places at the same time. If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). You may want to read a story, The Pit and the Duplicate that I wrote many years ago, which dwells on the ironies of being duplicates. It's a little like Stathis's point here. http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html Lee
RE: Torture yet again
Stathis wrote: When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). Yes, but do you agree it is the same for any probabilistic experiment in a many worlds cosmology? If you sit down and toss a coin 100 times in a row, there will definitely be one version of you who has obtained 100 heads in a row, just as there will definitely be one version of you (the one still in the torture room) who has nothing to show after pushing the button 100 times. Yes, I agree. There are always going to be an unfortunate few. I think I know where this is going; if manyworlds is correct, there will be 10sup100 copies of me created in the next instant to which nothing bad happens, and a much smaller measure to whom something nasty happens, quite by chance. Presumably if I choose 50% over 10 copies, I should also choose 50% over 10sup100 copies, so if given the option between the status quo (assuming manyworlds) and a seemingly much higher chance of something nasty happening, I should choose the higher chance of nastiness (if I'm being consistent). There's not much answer to that; probably if I was convinced that manyworlds is correct, and something nasty *is* bound to happen to a small number of me in the next instant, I *would* choose the copies. In our thought experiment the subject knows he's getting tortured; unless we can prove manyworlds the nastiness is only conjecture. If that wasn't where you were heading, forgive the presumption... :) Jonathan Colvin
RE: Torture yet again
I (Jonathan Colvin) wrote: When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain that there will be a copy still in the room, however many times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person choose the coin toss instead? If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be shaken :). Yes, but do you agree it is the same for any probabilistic experiment in a many worlds cosmology? If you sit down and toss a coin 100 times in a row, there will definitely be one version of you who has obtained 100 heads in a row, just as there will definitely be one version of you (the one still in the torture room) who has nothing to show after pushing the button 100 times. Yes, I agree. There are always going to be an unfortunate few. I think I know where this is going; if manyworlds is correct, there will be 10sup100 copies of me created in the next instant to which nothing bad happens, and a much smaller measure to whom something nasty happens, quite by chance. Presumably if I choose 50% over 10 copies, I should also choose 50% over 10sup100 copies, so if given the option between the status quo (assuming manyworlds) and a seemingly much higher chance of something nasty happening, I should choose the higher chance of nastiness (if I'm being consistent). There's not much answer to that; probably if I was convinced that manyworlds is correct, and something nasty *is* bound to happen to a small number of me in the next instant, I *would* choose the copies. In our thought experiment the subject knows he's getting tortured; unless we can prove manyworlds the nastiness is only conjecture. If that wasn't where you were heading, forgive the presumption... :) Ok, you've convinced me (or did I convince myself?). I've joined the ranks of the button pushers (with large number of copies anyway). But the probabilities seem to make a difference. For instance if there's a 50% chance of torture vs. 3 copies with one getting tortured for sure, I'll still choose the 50%. Don't ask me at which number of copies I'll start pushing the button; I dunno. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Torture yet again
On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 04:05:02AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Now, the funny thing is, if you replace torture by getting shot in the head, then I will pick (2). That's interesting, isn't it? Why is that interesting? It's indistinguishable from a teleportation scenario. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Torture yet again
Jonathan Colvin writes: You are sitting in a room, with a not very nice man. He gives you two options. 1) He'll toss a coin. Heads he tortures you, tails he doesn't. 2) He's going to start torturing you a minute from now. In the meantime, he shows you a button. If you press it, you will get scanned, and a copy of you will be created in a distant town. You've got a minute to press that button as often as you can, and then you are getting tortured. I understand that you are trying to challenge this notion of subjective probability with copies. I agree that it is problematic. IMO it is different to make a copy than to flip a coin - different operationally, and different philosophically. What you need to do is to back down from subjective probabilities and just ask it like this: which do you like better, a universe where there is one of you who has a 50-50 chance of being tortured; or a universe where there are a whole lot of you and one of them will be tortured? Try not to think about which one you will be. You will be all of them. Think instead about the longer term: which universe will best serve your needs and desires? There is an inherent inconsistency in this kind of thought experiment if it implicitly assumes that copying technology is cheap, easy and widely available, and that copies have good lives. If that were the case, everyone would use it until there were so many copies that these properties would no longer be true. It is important in such experiments to set up the social background in which the copies will exist. What will their lives be like, good or bad? If copies have good lives, then copying is normally unavailable. In that case, the chance to make copies in this experiment may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That might well make you be willing to accept torture of a person you view as a future self, in exchange for the opportunity to so greatly increase your measure. OTOH if copying is common and most people don't do it because the future copies will be penniless and starve to death, then making copies in this experiment is of little value and you would not accept the greater chance of torture. This analysis is all based on the assumption that copies increase measure, and that in such a world, observers will be trained that increasing measure is good, just as our genes quickly learned that lesson in a world where they can be copied. Hal Finney
Re: Torture yet again
Le 21-juin-05, à 13:05, Jonathan Colvin a écrit : Sorry, I can't let go of this one. I'm trying to understand it psychologically. Here's another thought experiment which is roughly equivalent to our original scenario. You are sitting in a room, with a not very nice man. He gives you two options. 1) He'll toss a coin. Heads he tortures you, tails he doesn't. 2) He's going to start torturing you a minute from now. In the meantime, he shows you a button. If you press it, you will get scanned, and a copy of you will be created in a distant town. You've got a minute to press that button as often as you can, and then you are getting tortured. What are you going to choose (Stathis and Bruno)? Are you *really* going to choose (2), and start pressing that button frantically? Do you really think it will make any difference? I will choose 2, and most probably start pressing the button frantically. Let us imagine that I press on the button 64 times. The one who will be tortured is rather unlucky, he has 1/2^64 chance to stay in front of you. He will probably even infer the falsity of comp, but then you will kill him! The 63 other brunos will infer comp is true, and send 63 more arguments for it to the list, including the argument based on having survive your experiment! OK with the number? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
