Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
It seems so obvious to me that 'self' and 'time' are an 'illusion' (i.e not representative of an external reality) that I have barely mentioned it. That's Eastern Philosopy 1.01. Thank you, Robert, for pointing that out. I'd also draw the list's attention to a paragraph in Robert's last post that most members will have missed because they stopped reading much earlier, having developed mystic-fatigue: Again to restate the irony I perceive, the experiment mentioned involving altering memory, is in effect, what mystics do to transcend the physical. They actually train themselves to ignore the memory that binds them to this place, making the free to see what their consciousness perceives constantly, but could not grasp or pick out from the noise. Another example of this is sensory deprivation. This is an interesting point. - Original Message - From: rwas rwas [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James Higgo [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 9:14 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. -- So? This is trivial. We still percieve ourselves as continuous beings, I think you missed it. I interpret what he's saying to mean that I-ness is an illusion. It implies to me that one's perception of time, integral to I-ness is an illusion. So one moves around an expression space depending on viewpoint. The perception of being continuous in time is illusory in my view. We are already all things we can be, except in consciousness. Those bound to temporal thinking lack the consciousness to transcend it. Robert W. __ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
I have a white Rabbit. Your thought does not include a _flying_ rabbit and hence it seems to you that there should be a reason for this. Really, all you are saying is 'why does my thought not include anything I find strange'. I have said this before. - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James Higgo [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 9:33 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? On 03-Mar-01, James Higgo wrote: Your comment, 'an explanation that can explain anything explains nothing.' is very imporatnt, and many people have said it. It is true of any TOE, as you say, and implies that _you_ should stop looking for a TOE as you will always be dissatisfied. I would be satisfied with a TOE that explains everything, but not anything. Some TOE's are inconsistent with white rabbits - i.e. couldn't explain a white rabbit, and hence have some explanatory power. TOE's that start with all observer moments exist don't seem to have even this. Brent Meeker
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
I think I understand your concern. As to how to form a complete theory, I find that kind of thinking outside my form of expression. Finding an all encompassing theory for consciousness I believe will be impossible. I think all we can do is frame the understanding in terms of what we are trying to achieve with it. In my thinking style, I find myself strugling to turn intuitive thoughts and feelings into words. It's a bit easier if I say: I want to design an AI to achieve *this* kind of robotic cooperation. Trying to develop a *complete* theory is something I've never been able to do. It seems to require forming specifics for things lost in the translation to specifics. For me, understanding of AI and consciousness is the kind of thing one interprets, knowing it's only a limited expression. Robert W. --- Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 05-Mar-01, rwas rwas wrote: I think you missed it. I interpret what he's saying to mean that I-ness is an illusion. It implies to me that one's perception of time, integral to I-ness is an illusion. So one moves around an expression space depending on viewpoint. It may be an 'illusion', but it still requires an explanation if the theory is to be anything more than hand waving. Not only does the illusion of personal continuity, but also the 'illusion' of space-time and an external (non-mental) world obeying a fairly specific physics. I can well accept that at some 'fundamental' level the ontology is just thoughts, observer moments, or windowless monads. In fact that seems like a good place to start. That's fine, but when I ask how this explains the things we're interested in - perception, physics, space-time, mathematics - all I hear is, It's just a web of observer moments. which explains nothing because it is consistent with anything. Brent Meeker The perception of being continuous in time is illusory in my view. We are already all things we can be, except in consciousness. Those bound to temporal thinking lack the consciousness to transcend it. Robert W. __ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ Regards __ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
--- rwas rwas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: versions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travel to different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will die within a year. If you could delete the information that you have this particular disease (and also the information that information has been deleted), branches in which you don't have the disease merge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So with very high probability you have traveled to a different branch. I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that I'm not the only person to think of this ;D. As a student of mysticism, I meditate often and explore mind, consciousness, and feeling. Your experiment points to the process of quieting the ego. The framework for I-ness that gives meaning to our existence here. At some point one experiences a complete loss of I and any constraint of consciousness formed by life here. One appears to move through something from here to somewhere else. The strange part is when you are conscious in both places. For the purpose of this convo I'll say alternate universes. I had read in mystic writings that time and space are an illusion. It seems physicists (masters of intellect) are coming to the same conclusion 10,000 years after the masters of the soul and mind had. I offer this comparison not as proof, but mainly to demonstrate the irony I perceive. I grew up with a strong perpensity for intellect and mind. I was attracted to mysticism for some strange reason but found conflict between my understanding of the physical and myself from an intellect's point of view. Melding the two worlds of understanding was and still is difficult. I also have a strong interest in AI and have developed my own theories of synthetic consciousness. Interestingly enough, they seem to point to what I've found through meditation, if not exactly representative of the process. One particular experience involved waking up from sleep after meditating about 3 hours prior. I was aware in a place with no time or dimension. I got up to relieve myself and found myself slipping between two realities. The sensation was that of traveling between two points, but not travel like one expects. It seemed reality was being folded depending on where I went. One or the other by itself was'nt too impressive, but when combined (both points joined) the result was unsettling. The awareness of non-dimension while trying to stand upright is an odd experience. I had no trouble standing up but up had no meaning. It was necessary to keep from falling down but I was not consciously bound to dimension or time. Again, I provide this as an illustration of things that have been discussed in this list found and verified (at least to me) in alternate methods. One important point to emphasize is that in these realms, dimension is useless. This means the classical physics falls down. Without a way to measure something or compare something, one trained in thinking where observables are constrained to things measurable would be lost. Emphasis on characteristics and relationships between characteristics in a completely abstract way are the only way to grasp what is observed. For me, an afterlife is a certainty. I have no doubts that physical science will bridge the gap between *here and there*. The biggest issue I see with the theories I see is that they seem to demand that alternate places behave and act like the physical here. In this place, we are confined to act and perceive with the five senses. We do with our physical body as go-between, between consciousness and the physical. It seems most people proposing theories have no experience effecting outcomes with anything but their physical bodies, so it's not too surprising that they constrain their alternate (theories of) realities to the same limitations found here. I'll provide a mystically influenced frame work to consider... The physical (the apparent in mystic terms) is a place where *things* persist. This is unique to this place. Trying to take something that persists (ie., spacecraft, diagnostic vehicle, etc) else where, would result in the persistent object succoming to in-persistent laws. It would dissolve. The discussions here seem to revolve around consciousness, the laws which it is found in, and methods to delineate consciousness. From my perspective, consciousness is the *only* vehicle in which to transcend the realm of persistence. Again to restate the irony I perceive, the experiment mentioned involving altering memory, is in effect, what mystics do to transcend the physical. They actually train themselves to
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Your comment, 'an explanation that can explain anything explains nothing.' is very imporatnt, and many people have said it. It is true of any TOE, as you say, and implies that _you_ should stop looking for a TOE as you will always be dissatisfied. - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James Higgo [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Michael Rosefield [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 5:40 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? I checked out your website, but it still seems to me there is a big gap between saying all universes with physics that are consistent with the WAP are experienced and saying that all thoughts (observer moments) exists. In the later case there is no explanation for the seeming existence of coherent sequences of thoughts such as 'me', except to say that if all thoughts exist then this sequence must exist too. The trouble with this is that an explanation that can explain anything explains nothing. Brent Meeker Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms, how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
I checked out your website, but it still seems to me there is a big gap between saying all universes with physics that are consistent with the WAP are experienced and saying that all thoughts (observer moments) exists. In the later case there is no explanation for the seeming existence of coherent sequences of thoughts such as 'me', except to say that if all thoughts exist then this sequence must exist too. The trouble with this is that an explanation that can explain anything explains nothing. Brent Meeker Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms, how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Bruno wrote: Saibal Mitra wrote: Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test various versions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travel to different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will die within a year. If you could delete the information that you have this particular disease (and also the information that information has been deleted), branches in which you don't have the disease merge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So with very high probability you have travelled to a different branch. Be careful because in the process you take the risk of losing a friend. More aptly (3 1 switch) a friend risks losing you. Do you agree that at *some* level we do that all the time? Does death works as personal local and relative memory eraser ? Your suggestion is risky, if not egoist, but, is there another way when the rare disease is fatal? Indeed. Death will erase my memory anyway, so why not do it in a controlled way to maximize the probability of some desired outcome. Thought experiment with speculative memory capture raised quickly the interesting question: how many (first) person exists, really. I don't know the answer. One ? Why not an infinite number? In another post Saibal wrote: I think the source of the problem is equation 1 of Jürgens paper. This equation supposedly gives the probability that I am in a particular universe, but it ignores that multiple copies of me might exist in one universe. Let's consider a simple example. The prior probability of universe i (i0) is denoted as P(i), and i copies of me exist in universe i. In this case, Jürgen computes the propability that if you pick a universe at random, sampled with the prior P, you pick universe i. This probability is, of course, P(i). Therefore Jürgen never has to identify how many times I exist in a particular universe, and can ignore what consciousness actually is. Surerly an open univere where an infinite number of copies of me exist is infinitely more likely than a closed universe where I don't have any copies, assuming that the priors are of the same order? Would you agree that a quantum multiverse could play the role of a particular open universe where an infinite number of copies of me exists? I agree that this could be the case. If you agree, would that mean we have anthropic reasons to believe in a quantum-like multiverse? That's an interesting point! Saibal
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
From: James Higgo Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. Hey, I'm still counting it as original! I _did_ come up with it independently And I still can't see anything wrong with it. Thanks for the web-site, though. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. So? This is trivial. We still percieve ourselves as continuous beings, and the qualia is what I'm talking about here. The point is that one will _always_ have observer moments to go to. The illusion of self is maintained. I'm pretty sure at least one of us is misunderstanding the other. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms,how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? Oh Please don't do that. You don't know how I think, and I really don't see why you jumped to this conclusion. The wayI see it now, the observer moment is all we have. I think I may have picked up the followingmetaphor here, but I'll use it nonetheless: did Jack and Jill go up the hill in August? Does it matter? The rhyme leaves it undefined, so it's a meaningless question; they did and they didn't. We belong to all universes that generate this observer moment, and only a sort of statistical Ockham's Razor says which ones we'll perceive ourselves to be in next. What's the problem here? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then. What type of thinking? Please, I don't want to get into a catfight here. I'm on this list, presumably, for the same reasonyou are: to try and see the whole picture.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Oh, as to 'this is trivial - we still perceive ourselves as continuous beings' - I guess as far as you're concerned,the Earth does not move. - Original Message - From: Michael Rosefield To: James Higgo ; Saibal Mitra ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 3:34 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? From: James Higgo Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. Hey, I'm still counting it as original! I _did_ come up with it independently And I still can't see anything wrong with it. Thanks for the web-site, though. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. So? This is trivial. We still percieve ourselves as continuous beings, and the qualia is what I'm talking about here. The point is that one will _always_ have observer moments to go to. The illusion of self is maintained. I'm pretty sure at least one of us is misunderstanding the other. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms,how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? Oh Please don't do that. You don't know how I think, and I really don't see why you jumped to this conclusion. The wayI see it now, the observer moment is all we have. I think I may have picked up the followingmetaphor here, but I'll use it nonetheless: did Jack and Jill go up the hill in August? Does it matter? The rhyme leaves it undefined, so it's a meaningless question; they did and they didn't. We belong to all universes that generate this observer moment, and only a sort of statistical Ockham's Razor says which ones we'll perceive ourselves to be in next. What's the problem here? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then. What type of thinking? Please, I don't want to get into a catfight here. I'm on this list, presumably, for the same reasonyou are: to try and see the whole picture.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
You miss the point. You do not go anywhere. You are this observer moment. No observer moment 'becomes' another OM, or it would be a different OM to begin with. I guess this is extremely hard for people to understand, because it denies that people exist. - Original Message - From: Michael Rosefield To: James Higgo ; Saibal Mitra ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 3:34 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? From: James Higgo Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. Hey, I'm still counting it as original! I _did_ come up with it independently And I still can't see anything wrong with it. Thanks for the web-site, though. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. So? This is trivial. We still percieve ourselves as continuous beings, and the qualia is what I'm talking about here. The point is that one will _always_ have observer moments to go to. The illusion of self is maintained. I'm pretty sure at least one of us is misunderstanding the other. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms,how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? Oh Please don't do that. You don't know how I think, and I really don't see why you jumped to this conclusion. The wayI see it now, the observer moment is all we have. I think I may have picked up the followingmetaphor here, but I'll use it nonetheless: did Jack and Jill go up the hill in August? Does it matter? The rhyme leaves it undefined, so it's a meaningless question; they did and they didn't. We belong to all universes that generate this observer moment, and only a sort of statistical Ockham's Razor says which ones we'll perceive ourselves to be in next. What's the problem here? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then. What type of thinking? Please, I don't want to get into a catfight here. I'm on this list, presumably, for the same reasonyou are: to try and see the whole picture.
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Before I was blind but now I see. I was the one who came up with the expression, 'Quantum Theory of Immortality', and I now see that it's false - and all this stuff in this thread is based on the same mistake. See www.higgo.com/qti , a site dedicated to the idea. There is no 'you'. 'You' don't 'travel'. There are just different observer moments, some including 'I am Micky and I'm, sick'. Even thinking in your passe Newtonian terms,how can a universe in which 'you have a disease' be the same as one in which 'you do not have the disease', just because you don't know it? I see why Jacques gets so irritated by this type of thinking, but it's nice to see him back on the list now then. - Original Message - From: Michael Rosefield To: Saibal Mitra ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 3:30 PM Subject: Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary? *Phew!*; this afternoon I finally got round to reading the 190-odd messages I have received from this list From: Saibal Mitra Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test variousversions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travelto different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will diewithin a year. If you could delete the information that you have thisparticular disease (and also the information that information hasbeen deleted), branches in which you don't have the diseasemerge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So withvery high probability you have travelled to a different branch. I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that I'm not the only person to think of this ;D. http://pub45.ezboard.com/fwastelandofwondersfrm1.showMessage?topicID=353.topicindex=5 I'm guessing this is quite a common idea? Rats, I thought I was so great I_did_ thinkof the following today, though: If you take this sort of thing one step further, an afterlife is inevitable; there will always be systems - however improbable - where the mind lives on. For instance, you could just be the victim of an hallucination, your mind could be downloaded, you could be miraculously cured, and other _much_ more bizzare ones. Since you won't be around to notice the worlds where you did die, they don't count, and you are effectively immortal. Or at least you will perceive yourself to live on, which is the same thing. When I thought of it, it seemed startlingly original and clever. Looking at the posts I have from this list, I'm beginning to suspect it's neither Anyhow, while this sort of wild thinking iswonderfully pure andcathartic, itnever seems to lead anywhere with testable or useful implications. So far, anyway What's the opinion here on which are more fundamental - minds or universes? I'd say they're both definable and hence exist de facto, and that each implies the other. Well,I'm new here. Is there anything I should know about this list? Apart from the fact that everyone's so terribly educated Feel free to go a bit OT ;). Michael Rosefield, Sheffield, England "I'm a Solipsist, and I must say I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- letter to Bertrand Russell
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
*Phew!*; this afternoon I finally got round to reading the 190-odd messages I have received from this list From: Saibal Mitra Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test variousversions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travelto different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will diewithin a year. If you could delete the information that you have thisparticular disease (and also the information that information hasbeen deleted), branches in which you don't have the diseasemerge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So withvery high probability you have travelled to a different branch. I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that I'm not the only person to think of this ;D. http://pub45.ezboard.com/fwastelandofwondersfrm1.showMessage?topicID=353.topicindex=5 I'm guessing this is quite a common idea? Rats, I thought I was so great I_did_ thinkof the following today, though: If you take this sort of thing one step further, an afterlife is inevitable; there will always be systems - however improbable - where the mind lives on. For instance, you could just be the victim of an hallucination, your mind could be downloaded, you could be miraculously cured, and other _much_ more bizzare ones. Since you won't be around to notice the worlds where you did die, they don't count, and you are effectively immortal. Or at least you will perceive yourself to live on, which is the same thing. When I thought of it, it seemed startlingly original and clever. Looking at the posts I have from this list, I'm beginning to suspect it's neither Anyhow, while this sort of wild thinking iswonderfully pure andcathartic, itnever seems to lead anywhere with testable or useful implications. So far, anyway What's the opinion here on which are more fundamental - minds or universes? I'd say they're both definable and hence exist de facto, and that each implies the other. Well,I'm new here. Is there anything I should know about this list? Apart from the fact that everyone's so terribly educated Feel free to go a bit OT ;). Michael Rosefield, Sheffield, England "I'm a Solipsist, and I must say I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- letter to Bertrand Russell
Re: (Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Saibal Mitra wrote: Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test various versions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travel to different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will die within a year. If you could delete the information that you have this particular disease (and also the information that information has been deleted), branches in which you don't have the disease merge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So with very high probability you have travelled to a different branch. Be careful because in the process you take the risk of losing a friend. More aptly (3 1 switch) a friend risks losing you. Do you agree that at *some* level we do that all the time? Does death works as personal local and relative memory eraser ? Your suggestion is risky, if not egoist, but, is there another way when the rare disease is fatal? Thought experiment with speculative memory capture raised quickly the interesting question: how many (first) person exists, really. I don't know the answer. One ? In another post Saibal wrote: I think the source of the problem is equation 1 of Jürgens paper. This equation supposedly gives the probability that I am in a particular universe, but it ignores that multiple copies of me might exist in one universe. Let's consider a simple example. The prior probability of universe i (i0) is denoted as P(i), and i copies of me exist in universe i. In this case, Jürgen computes the propability that if you pick a universe at random, sampled with the prior P, you pick universe i. This probability is, of course, P(i). Therefore Jürgen never has to identify how many times I exist in a particular universe, and can ignore what consciousness actually is. Surerly an open univere where an infinite number of copies of me exist is infinitely more likely than a closed universe where I don't have any copies, assuming that the priors are of the same order? Would you agree that a quantum multiverse could play the role of a particular open universe where an infinite number of copies of me exists? If you agree, would that mean we have anthropic reasons to believe in a quantum-like multiverse? Bruno
(Quantum) suicide not necessary?
Instead of the previously discussed suicide experiments to test variousversions of many-worlds theories, one might consider a different approach. By deleting certain sectors of one's memory one should be able to travelto different branches of the multiverse. Suppose you are diagnosed with a rare disease. You don't have complaints yet, but you will diewithin a year. If you could delete the information that you have thisparticular disease (and also the information that information hasbeen deleted), branches in which you don't have the diseasemerge with the branches in which you do have the disease. So withvery high probability you have travelled to a different branch.
