Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 11 Jun 2012, at 15:09, David Nyman wrote: On 11 June 2012 13:04, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. Yes, but the expression from the current state of any universal machine (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes* the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a particular machine. But is that not the result of the fact that each machine has only access to its own configuration? Hoyle on the other hand is considering a *universal state of attention* and hence needs to make such isolation of particulars *explicit*. The beam stands for the unique, momentary isolation in experience of that single state from the class of all possible states (of all possible machines). Why could not each machine do the same? Consider the WM-duplication. The body reconstituted in Moscow has access only to the memory reimplemented in M, + the further new change, which includes the feeling Oh I am the one in Moscow. From the point of view of the universal person this is only a particular windows, and both are lived, but not (at this stage at least) from the point of view of the subject in M. I am not sure a beam has to focus on him, for making his experience more genuine. Would the beam have to dovetail on the two reconstitution, making recurrently one of a them into a zombie? It seems to me that the beam introduces only supplementary difficulties. The reason why we feel disconnected is related to our self-identification with our most recent memories, which become disconnected in the differentiation of consciousness. We are all the same person, in a sense similar to the W-guy and the M- guy are the same Helsinki-guy, just with different futures, and by work, they can understand the significance of this, or even experience it through some induced amnesia. The beam is like to reintroduce a sort of conscious selection on some conscious order, which seems to me made unnecessary by the use of indexicals (self-reference being what theoretical computer science handles the best). Thus, momentarily, the *single* universal knower can be in possession of a *single* focus of attention, to the exclusion of all others. He always focus on the whole experience of consciousness, which might be the same for similar creature, and the *relative* truth differentiate by themselves. He lives them out of time, and time +personal differentiation is the fate of those machine which individuates themselves to such personal memories. It is useful when doing shopping or any concrete things locally. No doubt evolution has put some pressure, and every day life pushes a bit in that direction, but eventually your first person identity remains a private matter, and there is matter of choice. This is the only intelligible meaning of mutually-exclusive, considered at the *universal level*. I don't see this. It looks like adding something which seems to me precisely made unnecessary with comp. If you remove such a principle of isolation, how can the state of knowledge of the universal knower ever be anything other than a sum over all experiences, which can never be the state of any single mind? Hmm... You don't know that! Jouvet, others, including myself in my dream diary notes, have described (experimented) the possibility of awakening from two simultaneous dreams. I can conceive this easily for any finite number of experiences, and less easily for an infinite numbers. The implementation is simple, just connect the memories so that the common person in all different experiences awaken in a state having all those memories personally accessible. For the two experiences/dreams case, Jouvet suggested that it might be provoked by the paralysis of the corpus callosum, indeed, in some REM sleep. And the UD generates all possible type of corpus callosum *possible (consistent)*. In such a state we might be able to relativize more the difference, and build on more universal things, and then differentiate again. Sure, the states are all there at once, but what principle allows you, in the person of the universal knower, to restrict your attention to any one of them? He looks at all of them, from out of time (arithmetic). It is only from each particular perspective that it looks like it is disconnected from the others. That is, with comp, just an illusion, easily explainable by the locally disconnected memories of machines sharing computations/dreams. It seems to me that, if one wants to make sense of the notion of a *universal* locus of experience, with personal
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 11 Jun 2012, at 17:44, Stephen P. King wrote: On 6/11/2012 8:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Jun 2012, at 22:57, David Nyman wrote: On 10 June 2012 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. I agree with almost everything you say. I would say also that the moments of experience, considered as a class, are themselves out of time. What it takes to create (experiential) time - the notorious illusion - is whatever is held to be responsible for the irreducible mutual-exclusivity of such moments, from the perspective of the (universal) knower. Hoyle does us the service of making this mutual-exclusivity explicit by invoking his light beam to illuminate the pigeon holes at hazard; those who conclude that this function is redundant, and that the structure of pigeon holes itself somehow does the work of creating personal history, owe us an alternative explanation of the role of Hoyle's beam. I understand, of course, that these are just ways of thinking about a state of affairs that is ultimately not finitely conceivable, but all the same, I think there is something that cries out for explanation here and Hoyle is one of the few to have explicitly attempted to address it. David, I can't see the role of Hoyles' beam. The reason of the mutual exclusivity of moments seems to me to be explained (in comp) by the fact that a machine cannot address the memory of another machine, or of itself at another moment (except trough memory). Hoyles' beam seem to reintroduce a sort of external reality, which does not solve anything, it seems to me, and introduces more complex events in the picture. Dear Bruno, Here we seem to be synchronized in our ideas! This cannot access the memory of another machine and (cannot access memory ) of itself at another moment is exactly the way that the concurrency problem of computer science is related to space and time! I don't think so. With comp you have to distinguish completely the easy concurrency problem, from the harder physical concurrency problem. It is easy to emulate interacting program in the sense I have to use to explain that a machine cannot access the meory of another machine. And obviously the UD or arithmetic implements ad nauseam such kind of interactions. But then the physical laws emerge from the statistics on *all* computation, and all such interaction, and from this we must justify physics, including the physical logic of interaction. But that is a separate problem, and the Z and X logic suggest how to proceed by already given a reasonable arithmetical quantization (it shows also that it is technically difficult to progress). But now I am confused as you seem to recognize that a machine has and needs the resource of memory; This is quite typical in computer science. Most machines have memories. Like they have often read and write intructions to handle those memories. it was my (mis)understanding that machines are purely immaterial, existing a a priori given strings of integers. You were right. This has nothing to do that the program i in the list of the phi_i, can have memories. A large part of computer science can be entirely arithmetized. You might think to study a good book on theoretical computer science to swallow definitely that fact. All proposition on machine are either arithmetical statements, or arithmetically related statements. I work both in comp, and in arithmetic. How does memory non-access become encoded in a string? Why would we need to encode the non access. It is enough that the numbers involved have no access. The computation phi_i(j)^k has no access to the computation phi'(j')^k, if i ≠ i' and j ≠ j', for example. But non-access can be implemented in various ways. It is just not relevant. Is it the non-existence of a particular Godelization within a particular string that would relate to some other portion of a string? It is more simple. See above. Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. How is the index establish a form of sameness? It seems to me that one needs at least bisimilarity to establish the connectivity. Of course, the idea that some time exists is very deep in us, and I understand that the big comp picture is very counter-intuitive, but in this case, it is a kind of difficulty already present in any atemporal static view of everything,
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 12 June 2012 17:36, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Yes, but the expression from the current state of any universal machine (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes* the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a particular machine. But is that not the result of the fact that each machine has only access to its own configuration? That's too quick for me. To say that each machine has only access to its own configuration, is still merely to generalise; to go from this to *some particular machine* requires one instance to be discriminated from the whole class. So what, you may retort, your states just discriminate themselves as you. The problem to my mind, with looking at things in this way, is that for there to be a *universal* knower, each state must * primarily* belong to you qua that knower (which is what makes it universal) and only secondarily to you qua some local specification. If this be so, it is circular to invoke those secondary characteristics, which become definite only after discrimination, to justify the discrimination in the first place. ISTM that the two of us must actually be thinking of something rather different when we conceive a universal person or knower. For you, IIUC, this idea is consistent with many different states of consciousness obtaining all together; consequently the viewpoint of this species of universal person can never be reducible to any particular single perspective. I'm unsatisfied with this (as presumably was Hoyle) because it leaves me with no way of justifying why am I David that isn't circular. I can of course say that I'm David because the given state (here, now) happens to be one of David's states of mind, but the problem in this view is that this is completely consistent, mutatis mutandis, with Bruno's saying exactly the same. By contrast, Hoyle's heuristic allows me to say I'm David because a state of David happens momentarily to be the *unique perspective* of the whole. As Schrödinger puts it, not a *piece* of the whole, but in a *certain sense* the whole; Hoyle's heuristic makes explicit that certain sense. I suspect that the difference between us is that it is not your intention to justify the feeling of change directly from your mathematical treatment, but rather to demonstrate the existence of an eternal structure from which that experience could be recovered extra-mathematically. You often refer to the inside view of numbers in this rather inexplicit manner (forgive me if I have inadvertently missed your making the details explicit elsewhere). Hoyle however seemed to be directly concerned with rationalising this feeling by associating it with a unique dynamic process operating over the system as whole. That's the difference, I think, and it may be irreconcilable. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 10 Jun 2012, at 22:57, David Nyman wrote: On 10 June 2012 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. I agree with almost everything you say. I would say also that the moments of experience, considered as a class, are themselves out of time. What it takes to create (experiential) time - the notorious illusion - is whatever is held to be responsible for the irreducible mutual-exclusivity of such moments, from the perspective of the (universal) knower. Hoyle does us the service of making this mutual-exclusivity explicit by invoking his light beam to illuminate the pigeon holes at hazard; those who conclude that this function is redundant, and that the structure of pigeon holes itself somehow does the work of creating personal history, owe us an alternative explanation of the role of Hoyle's beam. I understand, of course, that these are just ways of thinking about a state of affairs that is ultimately not finitely conceivable, but all the same, I think there is something that cries out for explanation here and Hoyle is one of the few to have explicitly attempted to address it. David, I can't see the role of Hoyles' beam. The reason of the mutual exclusivity of moments seems to me to be explained (in comp) by the fact that a machine cannot address the memory of another machine, or of itself at another moment (except trough memory). Hoyles' beam seem to reintroduce a sort of external reality, which does not solve anything, it seems to me, and introduces more complex events in the picture. Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. Of course, the idea that some time exists is very deep in us, and I understand that the big comp picture is very counter-intuitive, but in this case, it is a kind of difficulty already present in any atemporal static view of everything, which already appears with general relativity for example. It is a bit subtle. To be conscious here and now is not an illusion. To be conscious of here and now is an illusion. The here and now is part of the brain (actually the infinities of arithmetical relations) construction. Feel free to criticize my perhaps too much simple mind view on this, I might miss your point, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 6/11/2012 6:09 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 11 June 2012 13:04, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. Yes, but the expression from the current state of any universal machine (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes* the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a particular machine. Hoyle on the other hand is considering a *universal state of attention* and hence needs to make such isolation of particulars *explicit*. The beam stands for the unique, momentary isolation in experience of that single state from the class of all possible states (of all possible machines). Thus, momentarily, the *single* universal knower can be in possession of a *single* focus of attention, to the exclusion of all others. This is the only intelligible meaning of mutually-exclusive, considered at the *universal level*. If you remove such a principle of isolation, how can the state of knowledge of the universal knower ever be anything other than a sum over all experiences, which can never be the state of any single mind? Sure, the states are all there at once, but what principle allows you, in the person of the universal knower, to restrict your attention to any one of them? That seems confused. The theory is that 'you' are some set of those states. If you introduce an external 'knower' you've lost the explanatory function of the theory. Brent It seems to me that, if one wants to make sense of the notion of a *universal* locus of experience, with personal identity emerging only as a secondary phenomenon, you are bound in the first place to consider matters from that universal point of view. And then you must not forget that this point of view, *as a knower*, is also *your* point of view. Hence to the extent that you, *as a merely subsidiary characteristic of such a universal point of view*, are restricted to one place, one time, so must it be equally restricted. Do remember that I accept that this is a heuristic, or way of thinking; I do not know how, or if, it corresponds to any fundamental principle of reality. But I think that if one purges one's mind of the implicit assumptions I mention above, one can see that the notions of a single universal point of view and everything considered together are actually mutually exclusive. So pick one or the other, but not both together. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 6/11/2012 8:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Jun 2012, at 22:57, David Nyman wrote: On 10 June 2012 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. I agree with almost everything you say. I would say also that the moments of experience, considered as a class, are themselves out of time. What it takes to create (experiential) time - the notorious illusion - is whatever is held to be responsible for the irreducible mutual-exclusivity of such moments, from the perspective of the (universal) knower. Hoyle does us the service of making this mutual-exclusivity explicit by invoking his light beam to illuminate the pigeon holes at hazard; those who conclude that this function is redundant, and that the structure of pigeon holes itself somehow does the work of creating personal history, owe us an alternative explanation of the role of Hoyle's beam. I understand, of course, that these are just ways of thinking about a state of affairs that is ultimately not finitely conceivable, but all the same, I think there is something that cries out for explanation here and Hoyle is one of the few to have explicitly attempted to address it. David, I can't see the role of Hoyles' beam. The reason of the mutual exclusivity of moments seems to me to be explained (in comp) by the fact that a machine cannot address the memory of another machine, or of itself at another moment (except trough memory). Hoyles' beam seem to reintroduce a sort of external reality, which does not solve anything, it seems to me, and introduces more complex events in the picture. Dear Bruno, Here we seem to be synchronized in our ideas! This cannot access the memory of another machine and (cannot access memory ) of itself at another moment is exactly the way that the concurrency problem of computer science is related to space and time! But now I am confused as you seem to recognize that a machine has and needs the resource of memory; it was my (mis)understanding that machines are purely immaterial, existing a a priori given strings of integers. How does memory non-access become encoded in a string? Is it the non-existence of a particular Godelization within a particular string that would relate to some other portion of a string? Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. How is the index establish a form of sameness? It seems to me that one needs at least bisimilarity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisimulation to establish the connectivity. Of course, the idea that some time exists is very deep in us, and I understand that the big comp picture is very counter-intuitive, but in this case, it is a kind of difficulty already present in any atemporal static view of everything, which already appears with general relativity for example. It is a bit subtle. To be conscious here and now is not an illusion. To be conscious of here and now is an illusion. The here and now is part of the brain (actually the infinities of arithmetical relations) construction. The content of to be conscious here and now is exactly what Craig is discussing with sense! I see it as a form of fixed point considered in a computational sense, similar to what Wolfram pointed out in his Computational Intractibility in physics: the best possible simulation of a physical system is the system itself. You seem to say that this is a relation between an infinite number of arithmetical relations. Could you elaborate more on this? Feel free to criticize my perhaps too much simple mind view on this, I might miss your point, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 11 June 2012 16:27, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: That seems confused. The theory is that 'you' are some set of those states. If you introduce an external 'knower' you've lost the explanatory function of the theory. Well, I'm referring to Hoyle's idea, which explicitly introduces such a knower. But in any case it is a metaphor for the consciousness that supervenes on those states, as opposed to being, in an eliminative sense, merely identical with them. As to losing the explanatory power of the theory, the argument, assuming it has any cogency, is designed precisely to test the limits of the explanatory adequacy of the theory in its bare form. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 09 Jun 2012, at 15:42, David Nyman wrote: On 9 June 2012 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Such a backtracking (proposed once by Saibal Mitra on this list) can also be used to defend the idea that there is only one person, and that personal identity is a relative illusory notion. We might be a God playing a trick to himself, notably by becoming amnesic on who and what he is. We seem to agree on this, at least some of the time! If we entertain such notions, the question then presents itself - assuming one doesn't accept, with Hoyle, that this similarly entails only one multiplexed stream of consciousness - how only one person can be conceived as being the subject of every experience simultaneously? Probably because the experience of consciousness itself is not temporal. But from each fist person picture, as everything physical become an indexical (technically defined with the logic of self- reference) we get deluded in both personal identity (I),present moment (now), and present place (here). The same person get the illusion of being different person at different times and in different places, but those are the things which depends only on the atemporal relations between relative universal numbers states (assuming comp). Just that as seen from the (arithmetically, atemporally) implemented *knower* (first person) it looks physically and temporally structured, as the machine might already tell us, in the case of the ideally self- refetentially correct machine. I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. Think perhaps to the WM duplication with delay: it shows notably that the subjective time is not connected causally to the physical time (assuming one), the belief in a past of a subject is an arithmetical construction, and it makes sense, quasi-tautologically, along the computations which satisfies or not the beliefs. The universal person might be the knower associated to any universal machine, or any sigma_1 complete believer (provably equivalent with respect of computability). If you recognize yourself in that person, your are obviously immortal. Here, it would be like accepting a 8K computer for the brain, leading to a version of yourself *quite* amnesic. But again that 8K and bigger system but equivalent, or extending them, pullulate in arithmetic. Consciousness' differentiation seems unavoidable there too. Does this put some light on the question? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 10 June 2012 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. I agree with almost everything you say. I would say also that the moments of experience, considered as a class, are themselves out of time. What it takes to create (experiential) time - the notorious illusion - is whatever is held to be responsible for the irreducible mutual-exclusivity of such moments, from the perspective of the (universal) knower. Hoyle does us the service of making this mutual-exclusivity explicit by invoking his light beam to illuminate the pigeon holes at hazard; those who conclude that this function is redundant, and that the structure of pigeon holes itself somehow does the work of creating personal history, owe us an alternative explanation of the role of Hoyle's beam. I understand, of course, that these are just ways of thinking about a state of affairs that is ultimately not finitely conceivable, but all the same, I think there is something that cries out for explanation here and Hoyle is one of the few to have explicitly attempted to address it. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 08 Jun 2012, at 19:30, Johnathan Corgan wrote: On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? I think this is actually the point--calculations of expected future experiences based on now being in the neighborhood of D (which result in torment) should instead be calculated based on now being in the neighborhood of the transition from C-U, as D and U are indistinguishable. Calculating expectation on this basis results in much better anticipated outcomes, according to the paper. OK, that makes sense (in comp). I will look at the paper, when I found the time ... (exam period!). Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs The changes you note may be minimal in the macro sense (small delta concentrations of receptor ligands in the synaptic cleft), but result in profoundly different trajectories of firing patterns at the systemic level. That might be a reason to expect such deep jump in the very actual conscious experience, when near death. Such experiences occur also at sleep where we can easily jump from normal mundane state of consciousness to quite altered one, and this seems most plausible for possible consistent continuations in extreme situation. That might have evolutionary advantage also, like the ability to continue some fight after big injuries, and there are evidences for this. The brain is more than a neural net, it is a sophisticated chemical drug factory. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On Saturday, June 9, 2012 12:27:43 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 6/8/2012 7:02 PM, Pierz wrote: I don't know, somehow this whole argument is not something I could take seriously enough to get worked up over - too many what ifs piled up on other what ifs. But I think I see a couple of flaws in this argument. Firstly, I am not sure about the equation of unconsciousness with death. Why should coma be any different from deep sleep - i.e. a state of minimal consciousness which one cannot remember in retrospect but which nevertheless is a legitimate 1p view? One does not miraculously avoid sleep each night (well, come to think of it, I do, but that's another story!). I think this is the point Bruno is making. But there's a deeper problem I think with the idea of avoiding the 'vicinity' of death. QI says you can never end up on a branch in which you are dead. That's clear enough - so long as you grant that death is 'no-point-of-view', i.e., there is no no afterlife. But *someone* ends up on all the branches, so long as there is a point of view associated wi th them. Even if there is a cul-de-sac branch in which the probability of death is 100%, some version of you goes down that track. So right up until the very brink of death, you should expect your experience to follow the probabilities given by normal physics and statistical expectations. You can't, by QI, 'foresee' that a branch is a cul-de-sac in advance and so trim it out of your possible futures. But because there is always a finite, if vanishingly small, probability of not dying, one might expect that one will always find oneself 'sliding along the edge of death' so to speak, always just barely avoiding oblivion. But this is reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. How can one's experience follow normal statistical rules right up until a certain limit, then diverge from them to an ever greater, more improbable extent? QI is another of the absurd paradoxes that arises when trying to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. I think we'd be better adopting something analogous to Einst ein's assumption with regard to speed - namely that the laws of physics appear the same to us regardless of our velocity. By the same type of reasoning, we should assume that the laws of statistical probability (physics) will continue to apply at every point of our experience, even at liminal points like death. I personally favour the idea of primary consciousness, so I'm quite happy with the idea that 1p experience bridges death. If you don't swallow that, I suppose the onus is on you to explain away the paradox by some other means. Even if computation is fundamental and physics is derivative, that still leaves consciousness as derivative too and possibly derivative from physics. I don't see how comp allows consciousness to be derived from physics, since comp assumes consciousness supervenes on computations that Bruno shows must be defined purely mathematically. But that aside, I'm not entirely sold on comp. Logic won't prove it - I think we all accept that - so while I can't refute comp, neither do I see myself forced to accept it. I remain agnostic on ontological questions, but I incline to a view of consciousness (not arithmetic) as primary. The gulf between the subjective and the objective remains mysterious and unbridged - what does qualia are what computations feel like from the inside really mean? Why is there an inside at all? To me, it's all just a little too neat - a simple package that seals up the universe inside it and declares it solved, but in a way that amounts to little more than saying everything happens - a supremely permissive explanatory context! But anyway, that's all a well-eaten can of worms. The point I'm making above is about the logic of the cited paper and is talking about MWI not comp. If 'you' is identified with certain computations, some of which constitute your consciousness it is still the case that there are a great many threads of computation that are *not* you, so it is possible that all those threads that are 'you' stop being you, e.g. you're dead. Of course it may be that the threads constituting 'you' approach some simple state so that the closest continuation is the simple computational thread of a lizard, bacterium, or fetus. So you now can think of 'you' as continuing in this way - although it becomes rather arbitrary which lizard you will be. Sure. In comp, the cessation of 'you' is merely an abrupt change in the state of certain computational threads. Identity is merely the continuity of self reference, and there are many ways, death being one of them (possibly), in which such continuity might be disrupted. It's one solution to the paradox I mention. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 08 Jun 2012, at 20:52, Nick Prince wrote: On Jun 8, 8:45 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? I've drawn the branches so that they represent a 3p viewpoint of someone observing us over time - i.e. we are schrodingers cat! So U means observer sees us as unconsciouss and D means observer sees us as dead. The ist person view that we see would always be C according to the branches I've drawn, provided that you discard all branches that have death D preceded by U. I wish I could draw it but I'm limited on this user interface. ist branch is C - U or C then from the U of this branch, we get U or D or C I'm bothered by the fact that the observer would end up seeing zombies! If you have a C-U or C and then if the new branch from the U is U - D or U or C then 1p (cat) would see only C as expected. His route woud be C-C because the whole second branch is deleted. However the observer that goes down the U branch would see the cat go into some sort of scenario resulting in U or C or D. If it turns out that C occurs then the cat is seen as consciouss and yet it is disjoint from the conscioussness of the original cat. I'll have to really think about this one in terms of the early steps of your UDA. OK. In my opinion, based on the post, I would say that U and D are equivalent. There are no zombies, nor absolute bodies. Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. What do you mean by backtracking? Imagine that you decide to kill yourself with an atomic bomb, so as to maximize your annihilation probability. Then it might be that your probability of surviving in a world where you are just not deciding to kill yourself is bigger than surviving from some quantum tunnel effect through the bomb's released energy. In that sense, the effect of the bomb makes you backtrack up to a reality where you are just not using the bomb. To solve this is really a question of comparing the measure on the computational histories, including the one with partial amnesia (which makes things more difficult, but already more quantum like, because amnesia might explain the fusion of computations, from the first person point of view). Reports of dreams and drug experiences involving partial momentary amnesia suggest that such a backtracking is highly plausible, imo. And the existence of quantum erasing suggests that our first person plural sharable computations allows such a backtracking to occur in nature. Such a backtracking (proposed once by Saibal Mitra on this list) can also be used to defend the idea that there is only one person, and that personal identity is a relative illusory notion. We might be a God playing a trick to himself, notably by becoming amnesic on who and what he is. Bruno What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably (Aurobindo) Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 9 June 2012 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Such a backtracking (proposed once by Saibal Mitra on this list) can also be used to defend the idea that there is only one person, and that personal identity is a relative illusory notion. We might be a God playing a trick to himself, notably by becoming amnesic on who and what he is. We seem to agree on this, at least some of the time! If we entertain such notions, the question then presents itself - assuming one doesn't accept, with Hoyle, that this similarly entails only one multiplexed stream of consciousness - how only one person can be conceived as being the subject of every experience simultaneously? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 6/9/2012 3:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Imagine that you decide to kill yourself with an atomic bomb, so as to maximize your annihilation probability. Then it might be that your probability of surviving in a world where you are just not deciding to kill yourself is bigger than surviving from some quantum tunnel effect through the bomb's released energy. In that sense, the effect of the bomb makes you backtrack up to a reality where you are just not using the bomb. Or if you died of a heart attack you might backtrack to when you ate that cheeseburger in 1965. But with such large discontinuities in memory it emphasizes the point that since comp implies the possibility of duplication and forking, there is no well defined 'you'. It is at best a working approximation. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On Jun 9, 11:17 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 08 Jun 2012, at 20:52, Nick Prince wrote: On Jun 8, 8:45 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? I've drawn the branches so that they represent a 3p viewpoint of someone observing us over time - i.e. we are schrodingers cat! So U means observer sees us as unconsciouss and D means observer sees us as dead. The ist person view that we see would always be C according to the branches I've drawn, provided that you discard all branches that have death D preceded by U. I wish I could draw it but I'm limited on this user interface. ist branch is C - U or C then from the U of this branch, we get U or D or C I'm bothered by the fact that the observer would end up seeing zombies! If you have a C-U or C and then if the new branch from the U is U - D or U or C then 1p (cat) would see only C as expected. His route woud be C-C because the whole second branch is deleted. However the observer that goes down the U branch would see the cat go into some sort of scenario resulting in U or C or D. If it turns out that C occurs then the cat is seen as consciouss and yet it is disjoint from the conscioussness of the original cat. I'll have to really think about this one in terms of the early steps of your UDA. OK. In my opinion, based on the post, I would say that U and D are equivalent. There are no zombies, nor absolute bodies. Hi Bruno Yes I've re thought this one through and I agree - no zombies. Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. What do you mean by backtracking? Imagine that you decide to kill yourself with an atomic bomb, so as to maximize your annihilation probability. Then it might be that your probability of surviving in a world where you are just not deciding to kill yourself is bigger than surviving from some quantum tunnel effect through the bomb's released energy. In that sense, the effect of the bomb makes you backtrack up to a reality where you are just not using the bomb. Ok I'll look into this - I got a copy of Saibal's paper Can we change the past by forgetting I'll try to get round to reading it. I'm not sure whether this involves abandoning causality as we know it though? If such backtracking occurred though could we really be aware of it? To solve this is really a question of comparing the measure on the computational histories, including the one with partial amnesia (which makes things more difficult, but already more quantum like, because amnesia might explain the fusion of computations, from the first person point of view). Reports of dreams and drug experiences involving partial momentary amnesia suggest that such a backtracking is highly plausible, imo. And the existence of quantum erasing suggests that our first person plural sharable computations allows such a backtracking to occur in nature. Such a backtracking (proposed once by Saibal Mitra on this list) can also be used to defend the idea that there is only one person, and that personal identity is a relative illusory notion. We might be a God playing a trick to himself, notably by becoming amnesic on who and what he is. Bruno What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably (Aurobindo) Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we
Re: QTI and eternal torment
Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On Jun 8, 8:45 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Nick, This is a bit unclear. How is U and D distinguished from the (absence of) first person view? I've drawn the branches so that they represent a 3p viewpoint of someone observing us over time - i.e. we are schrodingers cat! So U means observer sees us as unconsciouss and D means observer sees us as dead. The ist person view that we see would always be C according to the branches I've drawn, provided that you discard all branches that have death D preceded by U. I wish I could draw it but I'm limited on this user interface. ist branch is C - U or C then from the U of this branch, we get U or D or C I'm bothered by the fact that the observer would end up seeing zombies! If you have a C-U or C and then if the new branch from the U is U - D or U or C then 1p (cat) would see only C as expected. His route woud be C-C because the whole second branch is deleted. However the observer that goes down the U branch would see the cat go into some sort of scenario resulting in U or C or D. If it turns out that C occurs then the cat is seen as consciouss and yet it is disjoint from the conscioussness of the original cat. I'll have to really think about this one in terms of the early steps of your UDA. Given that very minimal change in the brain seems to be able to send someone in the amnesic arithmetical heaven, as illustrated by some drugs, I am not sure we should worry about QM immortality, which arises itself from the comp immortality. It illustrates also that backtracking might be more probable. Technically this is difficult to compute, and if QM is true yet comp false, I would worry more on this. I do appreciate that people are aware that notions of after-life makes sense, and are hard to avoid with current theories. Yet, without handling the whole theology, and not just its physical aspects, we can come easily to weird conclusions. With comp there are too much open problems to decide on this in any quick way. Of course we can speculate. It is a fascinating subject. What do you mean by backtracking? Bruno On 08 Jun 2012, at 01:11, Nick Prince wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt %20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
I don't know, somehow this whole argument is not something I could take seriously enough to get worked up over - too many what ifs piled up on other what ifs. But I think I see a couple of flaws in this argument. Firstly, I am not sure about the equation of unconsciousness with death. Why should coma be any different from deep sleep - i.e. a state of minimal consciousness which one cannot remember in retrospect but which nevertheless is a legitimate 1p view? One does not miraculously avoid sleep each night (well, come to think of it, I do, but that's another story!). I think this is the point Bruno is making. But there's a deeper problem I think with the idea of avoiding the 'vicinity' of death. QI says you can never end up on a branch in which you are dead. That's clear enough - so long as you grant that death is 'no-point-of-view', i.e., there is no no afterlife. But *someone* ends up on all the branches, so long as there is a point of view associated with them. Even if there is a cul-de-sac branch in which the probability of death is 100%, some version of you goes down that track. So right up until the very brink of death, you should expect your experience to follow the probabilities given by normal physics and statistical expectations. You can't, by QI, 'foresee' that a branch is a cul-de-sac in advance and so trim it out of your possible futures. But because there is always a finite, if vanishingly small, probability of not dying, one might expect that one will always find oneself 'sliding along the edge of death' so to speak, always just barely avoiding oblivion. But this is reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. How can one's experience follow normal statistical rules right up until a certain limit, then diverge from them to an ever greater, more improbable extent? QI is another of the absurd paradoxes that arises when trying to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. I think we'd be better adopting something analogous to Einstein's assumption with regard to speed - namely that the laws of physics appear the same to us regardless of our velocity. By the same type of reasoning, we should assume that the laws of statistical probability (physics) will continue to apply at every point of our experience, even at liminal points like death. I personally favour the idea of primary consciousness, so I'm quite happy with the idea that 1p experience bridges death. If you don't swallow that, I suppose the onus is on you to explain away the paradox by some other means. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Y0X4SnVyTkQJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 6/8/2012 7:02 PM, Pierz wrote: I don't know, somehow this whole argument is not something I could take seriously enough to get worked up over - too many what ifs piled up on other what ifs. But I think I see a couple of flaws in this argument. Firstly, I am not sure about the equation of unconsciousness with death. Why should coma be any different from deep sleep - i.e. a state of minimal consciousness which one cannot remember in retrospect but which nevertheless is a legitimate 1p view? One does not miraculously avoid sleep each night (well, come to think of it, I do, but that's another story!). I think this is the point Bruno is making. But there's a deeper problem I think with the idea of avoiding the 'vicinity' of death. QI says you can never end up on a branch in which you are dead. That's clear enough - so long as you grant that death is 'no-point-of-view', i.e., there is no no afterlife. But *someone* ends up on all the branches, so long as there is a point of view associated with them. Even if there is a cul-de-sac branch in which the probability of death is 100%, some version of you goes down that track. So right up until the very brink of death, you should expect your experience to follow the probabilities given by normal physics and statistical expectations. You can't, by QI, 'foresee' that a branch is a cul-de-sac in advance and so trim it out of your possible futures. But because there is always a finite, if vanishingly small, probability of not dying, one might expect that one will always find oneself 'sliding along the edge of death' so to speak, always just barely avoiding oblivion. But this is reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. How can one's experience follow normal statistical rules right up until a certain limit, then diverge from them to an ever greater, more improbable extent? QI is another of the absurd paradoxes that arises when trying to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. I think we'd be better adopting something analogous to Einstein's assumption with regard to speed - namely that the laws of physics appear the same to us regardless of our velocity. By the same type of reasoning, we should assume that the laws of statistical probability (physics) will continue to apply at every point of our experience, even at liminal points like death. I personally favour the idea of primary consciousness, so I'm quite happy with the idea that 1p experience bridges death. If you don't swallow that, I suppose the onus is on you to explain away the paradox by some other means. Even if computation is fundamental and physics is derivative, that still leaves consciousness as derivative too and possibly derivative from physics. If 'you' is identified with certain computations, some of which constitute your consciousness it is still the case that there are a great many threads of computation that are *not* you, so it is possible that all those threads that are 'you' stop being you, e.g. you're dead. Of course it may be that the threads constituting 'you' approach some simple state so that the closest continuation is the simple computational thread of a lizard, bacterium, or fetus. So you now can think of 'you' as continuing in this way - although it becomes rather arbitrary which lizard you will be. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
QTI and eternal torment
I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt%20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
Oops - so the new branching diagrams came out wrong. OK they should read U to U or D or C and C to C or U. On Jun 8, 12:11 am, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@gmail.com wrote: I’ve just read the following paper : http://istvanaranyosi.net/resources/Should%20we%20fear%20qt%20final.pdf which argues that it is possible to avoid the descent into decrepitude that seems to follow from the quantum theory of immortality (QTI). Aranyosi argues that this is plausible on the grounds that any death branch would be preceded by an unconsciousness branch. Under normal QTI circumstances, if we were Schrödinger’s cat we would come across the (3p) node (L= Lives, D= Dies): DD LLL LLL To see the cat’s (1p), view we discard the branch, but we will more than likely be harmed at each branch and therefore become more decrepit. If I understand it correctly, and keeping things simple, Aranyosi seems to be arguing that, by assuming that unconsciousness precedes a death branch, then for 3p we have two types of branching: (where C=Conscious, U = unconscious). First a triple branch: D DDDX U..UU C CCC And also a double branch: C UUU Any combinations of these can be put together by matching U’s or C’s to make a tree. A 1p subjective experience comes by discarding all branches that have death D preceded by U. Hence the first type of diagram would never be experienced and the cat sees only the C to C/U branching. You can join two of the second type of diagram – a CUC route simply being sleep or fainting or anaesthetic etc. I would argue though that U can still occur if one suffers significant physical damage and hence decrepitude still follows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di...
On Nov 15, 12:11 am, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: In principle, yes. What you are talking about is quantum erasure. It should even be possible to do it without forgetting the current worldline (in which case one is really finding a consistent continuation of the current worldline that happens to be very similar to the destination worldline). This would be rather similar to teleportation type scenarios where instead of just teleporting through space, one teleports through time. How this might be arranged practically seems even more removed than than the space case, but theoretically it should be similar. I'm not at all sure how you might refute QTI using this, but please elaborate. Cheers Hi Russell Is teleportation through (space)time not just the same as Bruno's UDA argument where a delay in the reconstitution takes place? If we were to be sure that the universe was just a level 1 type but was infinite in space and time, would you not think that a consistent continuation through time for any of our observer moments would be necessary since eventually some worldine which could act as such a consistent continuation will occur. This seems to support QTI not refute it. Kind regards -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di...
In principle, yes. What you are talking about is quantum erasure. It should even be possible to do it without forgetting the current worldline (in which case one is really finding a consistent continuation of the current worldline that happens to be very similar to the destination worldline). This would be rather similar to teleportation type scenarios where instead of just teleporting through space, one teleports through time. How this might be arranged practically seems even more removed than than the space case, but theoretically it should be similar. I'm not at all sure how you might refute QTI using this, but please elaborate. Cheers On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 03:11:59PM -0500, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: This may be off-topic, but taking on a fanciful, notion; is there a means, in principle, for somebody biologically alive, to physically go into other world-lines? I am using the Hugh Everett the 3rd's conception of other worlds/universes. I am, just as a thought, trying to negate the Quantum Theory of Immortality, just to see if anyone can imagine how crossing world lines, without death, might be possible. Or rather, what it might look like? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di...
Hello, Professor Standish, by the way I do have your book, The Theory of Nothing (softcover) and enjoyed it, immensely. My question is obviously, something that must be rooted in fantasy, as it appears to have little basis in physics or math. I was trying to see, if it was possible to be a tourist, when concerning the Everett-Wheeler-DeWitt conjecture; of other worlds/universes. There is a significant amount of scifi and fantasy, regarding this. Looks as it will remain a fantasy, inndeed. Much, Thanks! Mitch -Original Message- From: Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Nov 16, 2011 3:41 am Subject: Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di... In principle, yes. What you are talking about is quantum erasure. It hould even be possible to do it without forgetting the current orldline (in which case one is really finding a consistent ontinuation of the current worldline that happens to be very similar to he destination worldline). This would be rather similar to eleportation type scenarios where instead of just teleporting through pace, one teleports through time. How this might be arranged ractically seems even more removed than than the space case, but heoretically it should be similar. I'm not at all sure how you might refute QTI using this, but please elaborate. Cheers On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 03:11:59PM -0500, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: This may be off-topic, but taking on a fanciful, notion; is there a means, in principle, for somebody biologically alive, to physically go into other world-lines? I am using the Hugh Everett the 3rd's conception of other worlds/universes. I am, just as a thought, trying to negate the Quantum Theory of Immortality, just to see if anyone can imagine how crossing world lines, without death, might be possible. Or rather, what it might look like? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- rof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) rincipal, High Performance Coders isiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au niversity of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au --- -- ou received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. o post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. o unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. or more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di...
On 14 Nov 2011, at 21:11, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: This may be off-topic, but taking on a fanciful, notion; is there a means, in principle, for somebody biologically alive, to physically go into other world-lines? With the QM theory: no. But Steven Weinberg has shown that if QM is slightly false (slightly less linear, with the Schroedinger equation becoming an approximation), then we can physically go in the other branch of the quantum multiverse. But then thermodynamic, electromagnetism and relativity become wrong, and this makes such reasoning into a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that QM could be slightly false. From a paper by Plaga, years ago, I convince myself that if QM is slightly non linear, we could build infinitely solid and elastic object, but then nothing could be moving in a relativistic universe. The contraction of length would be blocked. I am using the Hugh Everett the 3rd's conception of other worlds/ universes. I am, just as a thought, trying to negate the Quantum Theory of Immortality, just to see if anyone can imagine how crossing world lines, without death, might be possible. Or rather, what it might look like? The best we could do would be to construct artificial quantum brain, according to an idea of Deutsch. This would allow us to be aware of being in many universes at once, but we would still have to forget what we see in each universe to re-fuse in one universe. Still we could remember having seen different things, but being not able to tell them precisely. Basically the same already occurs with arithmetic (instead of quantum mechanics), except that *a priori*, the realities does not evolve linearly. Well, we can hope they do, if not, mechanism is wrong, or current physics is wrong. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
On 07 Nov 2011, at 23:08, John Mikes wrote: To Qentin: DEATH an excellent vaiation for immoprtality. I always emphasize that ETERNITY is NOT a time indicator, can most likely be timeless (POOF it is over). To Bruno: we wrote already about your 2c question WHO ARE WE? and you answered something like Gods. That may be a cheap shot, but unidentifiable are both. (Philosophical Goedelism: you cannot identify yourself from within yourself). For sure we are not what WE think we are. Computer science: a consistent digital machine cannot prove to be any consistent machine. Computer science: if we accept Theaetetus' definition of knowledge, a sound machine can be said to be NOT able to NOT identify herself with something she can NOT even name. We might perhaps be ONLY what WE think we are. Alas, we cannot know for sure who or what WE are or do the thinking. Bruno John M On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and di...
This may be off-topic, but taking on a fanciful, notion; is there a means, in principle, for somebody biologically alive, to physically go into other world-lines? I am using the Hugh Everett the 3rd's conception of other worlds/universes. I am, just as a thought, trying to negate the Quantum Theory of Immortality, just to see if anyone can imagine how crossing world lines, without death, might be possible. Or rather, what it might look like? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 08 Nov 2011, at 20:56, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: I would rather call this consciousness. Indeed I agree with Dan that it is quite accurate to say that there is no person in the sense that experience is not personal, it doesn't belong to anyone (but it is very intimate with itself nontheless). I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. I see this as the confusion between the little ego and the higher self. The first one is a person which identifies itself with the body and memories, the second one identifies itself with its source. By doing so, it dissociate himself with every contingent realities. In my view this confusion is rooted in thinking that the little ego is actual more than a relative identity (like in a roleplay). If taken as reality it becomes the experiental ego; the sense of personal responsibility (not a courageous responsibility, but a sense of responsibility rooted in guilt and authority and dogma), of seperateness, of doership (I am doing something with my body and with my world). Actually the first one is also a sort of dissociation. It is the dissociation from actual experience and Self to an idea of experience and Self. Also the second one is association with the timeless and undisturbable peaceful reality of consciousness, and the freshness of present experience. Really there is just the source, and whatever else there is, is an expression of the source and not an other to the source. Bruno Marchal wrote: We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. I agree with you. I just call person the conscious being. Ah, OK. We just have to be careful here that we are extending the use of person to something which is not normally considered to be a person. But why not, we can extend the use of words, and in this case I can see the meaning in that. I think it is reasonable to consider consciousness an attribute of a person. Still, we should be aware that this person might indeed by nothing else than consciousness itself, I don't think this makes sense. I don't see what would be the meaning of consciousness is conscious. It makes consciousness into a person, and as I said, it seems to me to be an attribute of a person (concrete, abstract, real, fictive, whatever). and has nothing to do with something that is bound by body, mind, space, time, etc... I do agree with this. In the mechanist theory, we could say that consciousness is bounded by (arithmetical, analytical, psychological, theological, ...) truth. It is not really a bound because truth, even arithmetical truth, have no (effective) bounds. I know you don't like that theory very much despite this, sorry. And it might be useful to realize that actually we can't find the experiencer apart from the experience. They are one, even though we can make relative distinction (the experiencer is what is beyond *particular* experiences, but not experience as such, which would be the same as the experiencer). It might depend on the type of consciousness (normal, altered, etc.) Bruno Marchal wrote: It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. Yes. It is the same type of fear than the fear of freedom, and of knowledge. It is also the root of the fear of other people. There is also a fear that an understanding of the mystery would make the world into a very cold and inhuman place, but this comes from some reductionist idea on the mystery itself. Some people also fears that if the other cease to fear the Unknown, they will become non controllable (which is partially true). Some religion insists that we have to fear God, like some parents, and teachers, confuse fear and respect. Really I think that ultimately fear is not even fear of something in particular. It is (especially in humans) mostly the reaction to the mere possibility of treat, which comes with the feeling of there being an other (which might have bad intentions). We project that fear on everything, so we fear freedom, but also bondage, we fear knowledge, but also ignorance, we fear mystery, but also ordinariness, we fear the bad, but we also fear the good, we fear God, but we also fear the devil, we fear everything, but also nothingness. No wonder we are suffering if everything becomes a reason to be fearful. The only solution is to discover directly that there is *nothing* that ever could threaten what we really are, and so fear becomes just a tool to sense whether there is an actually imminent danger, not something that is constantly (whether obviously or subtly) determining the way we live our lifes. I think fear is a great ally in local survival. Basically there is the little fear (the fear of not being able to eat),
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
you don't act like it is something which you could safely ignore until it becomes obvious by itself (which will be felt as suffering). With light pressure I mean that we can confront people with deep things, even if they are not immediatly thankful for it (like daring to question deeply ingrained and cherished beliefs, which are subtly destructive). Ultimately, I have no worries about anybody. It might be a very long and rough ride until they realize it, but it really is nothing compared to the reward of finally being free (and recognizing it). benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32813776.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
meekerdb wrote: On 11/7/2011 9:50 AM, benjayk wrote: meekerdb wrote: How great was that? I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep. But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, So what's your evidence that there is *any* experience of being a fetus. I don't know, it is just a guess. Actually giving evidence that there is any experience of being XYZ is hard, or even impossible, because there is no scientific/objective reason for there to be any experience of being a particular thing, or even any experience at all. Experience is simply beyond science - which doesn't mean that science can't say anything about experience at all, there is just always an aspect that is totally beyond science, and beyond any attempt to analzye or objectify it. I think that the aspect of what experiences exist at all is not answerable by science. Through science we can just find patterns in experience, which is useful for building tools and for insight into the nature of experience. There is no objective evidence that you are conscious, or that I am conscious, or that a fetus is conscious. It is not measurable, but it is still there, even if some materialist tend to deny that (which shows how far we are removed from ourselves and reality, we actually ignore that which is undoubtably and obviously true). benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32802791.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
meekerdb wrote: On 11/7/2011 12:02 PM, benjayk wrote: I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. Have you ever been unconscious? When you were unconscious, who was experiencing unconsciousness? I as a person have been unconscious, of course. I as consciousness, no. Unconsciousness is not really an experience. When we say we were unconscious, we mean that we lacked an experience that could be assigned to the time during which we were unconscious, and that we noticed a discontinuity in experience. That doesn't mean consciousness ceased to exist, just that it experienced some inconsistency in experience (I experience falling asleep, and dreaming, and waking up, but I am not sure how this was connected, exactly; it wasn't a smooth experience). So unconsciousness never means that consciousness (the absolute I) was unconscious. This doesn't even make sense, just like water can't get dry. When we use (relative) consciousness as something that can be assigned to people and time, we can say that, relatively speaking, I lacked consciousness at a certain time, because there was no content of consciousness that corresponded to that person at that time. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32802801.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 07 Nov 2011, at 21:02, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, But this contradicts immediately my present consciousness feeling. I am currently in the state of wanting to drink water, so I am pretty sure that there exist right now at least one person, which is the one who wants to drink water. I might be able to conceive that such a person is deluded on the *content* of that experience (may be he really want to smoke a cigarette instead), but in that case a person still remains: the one who is deluded. Why does there have to be a person in order for there to be experience? An experience is always an experience of someone, or some ONE. If there is a feeling of wanting to drink water, this only shows that there is a feeling of wanting to drink water and the ability to experience that. I use the term person in a large sense. All living creature are person (perhaps the same). Wanting, feeling, and drinking are lived personal experiences. But why would that ability to experience be equivalent to personhood? It rather seems it is something that transcends persons, as it is shared by different people, and can occur in the absence of experience of personality, like you yourself experienced during meditative states. As far as I can communicate the experience, it has been lived by a person, it seems to me. This might just be a vocabulary issue, but why would one call something that is beyond body, rational mind, individuality, etc... a person? You might say what is most essential to a person is her experience, and here I would agree, but it seems a step to far to identify person and experience. The experience is not a person, but is experienced by a person. A person is almost definable by the subject of the experience. It is not necessarily a terrestrial ego, a human person, an individual with a body, etc. usually I tend to identify a person with a first person. A third person describable body can only be a pointer to some person. Universal numbers are person's relative bodies. I would rather call this consciousness. Indeed I agree with Dan that it is quite accurate to say that there is no person in the sense that experience is not personal, it doesn't belong to anyone (but it is very intimate with itself nontheless). I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. I see this as the confusion between the little ego and the higher self. The first one is a person which identifies itself with the body and memories, the second one identifies itself with its source. By doing so, it dissociate himself with every contingent realities. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. I agree with you. I just call person the conscious being. Probably we are just so used to that state of consciousness, that we can't conceive of consciousness in another state than that. Yes. It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. Yes. It is the same type of fear than the fear of freedom, and of knowledge. It is also the root of the fear of other people. There is also a fear that an understanding of the mystery would make the world into a very cold and inhuman place, but this comes from some reductionist idea on the mystery itself. Some people also fears that if the other cease to fear the Unknown, they will become non controllable (which is partially true). Some religion insists that we have to fear God, like some parents, and teachers, confuse fear and respect. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Bruno Marchal wrote: I would rather call this consciousness. Indeed I agree with Dan that it is quite accurate to say that there is no person in the sense that experience is not personal, it doesn't belong to anyone (but it is very intimate with itself nontheless). I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. I see this as the confusion between the little ego and the higher self. The first one is a person which identifies itself with the body and memories, the second one identifies itself with its source. By doing so, it dissociate himself with every contingent realities. In my view this confusion is rooted in thinking that the little ego is actual more than a relative identity (like in a roleplay). If taken as reality it becomes the experiental ego; the sense of personal responsibility (not a courageous responsibility, but a sense of responsibility rooted in guilt and authority and dogma), of seperateness, of doership (I am doing something with my body and with my world). Actually the first one is also a sort of dissociation. It is the dissociation from actual experience and Self to an idea of experience and Self. Also the second one is association with the timeless and undisturbable peaceful reality of consciousness, and the freshness of present experience. Really there is just the source, and whatever else there is, is an expression of the source and not an other to the source. Bruno Marchal wrote: We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. I agree with you. I just call person the conscious being. Ah, OK. We just have to be careful here that we are extending the use of person to something which is not normally considered to be a person. But why not, we can extend the use of words, and in this case I can see the meaning in that. Still, we should be aware that this person might indeed by nothing else than consciousness itself, and has nothing to do with something that is bound by body, mind, space, time, etc... And it might be useful to realize that actually we can't find the experiencer apart from the experience. They are one, even though we can make relative distinction (the experiencer is what is beyond *particular* experiences, but not experience as such, which would be the same as the experiencer). Bruno Marchal wrote: It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. Yes. It is the same type of fear than the fear of freedom, and of knowledge. It is also the root of the fear of other people. There is also a fear that an understanding of the mystery would make the world into a very cold and inhuman place, but this comes from some reductionist idea on the mystery itself. Some people also fears that if the other cease to fear the Unknown, they will become non controllable (which is partially true). Some religion insists that we have to fear God, like some parents, and teachers, confuse fear and respect. Really I think that ultimately fear is not even fear of something in particular. It is (especially in humans) mostly the reaction to the mere possibility of treat, which comes with the feeling of there being an other (which might have bad intentions). We project that fear on everything, so we fear freedom, but also bondage, we fear knowledge, but also ignorance, we fear mystery, but also ordinariness, we fear the bad, but we also fear the good, we fear God, but we also fear the devil, we fear everything, but also nothingness. No wonder we are suffering if everything becomes a reason to be fearful. The only solution is to discover directly that there is *nothing* that ever could threaten what we really are, and so fear becomes just a tool to sense whether there is an actually imminent danger, not something that is constantly (whether obviously or subtly) determining the way we live our lifes. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32805417.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. But is is not true that nothing is preserved. I already gave an example that even without explicit memory something more essential than memory can be conserved. No your example is wrong. Taking it to the limit, you never have memories, because at no point do you remember everything. The point is that you can remember your own memories. If you don't care, you are just being superficial with regards to what you are. I don't thing so, what is important to me is me in the event of dying. I don't care if a not me stays. OK, you are just insisting on the dogma that all one could be is a me. If you presuppose that, than further discussion doesn't lead anywhere. It is just that this assumption is not verified through experience. Which/what experience ? Don't say drugs... this comparison is invalid. Fundamentally, every experience. There is no ownership tag in experience that says: There has to be a me here!. The me is simply a certain mode of experience, which can be there, but doesn't have to be here. There is a lot of evidence for that. During meditation, flow, extraordinary states of consciousness induced by sleep or drugs it is quite a common experience that there is experience without a me. Enlightenment consists of realizing that there is no I (and the realization that there is only consciousness) in a way that is stable. These people report that there is no feeling of seperation, no sense of doership, no feeling of fundamental otherness (which make up the I) and still they live quite normally. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Actually there is just experience, no me that experiences that ??? What's hard to understand about that? Just look at your experience. There is experiencing, but there is no entity that has this experience. Yes, the feeling of an I having the experience appears in the experience, but since this I is just a part of the experience, it can't have it (it just imagines that it has it). Just like a window can't have a house, and a leg can't have a body. If anything, metaphorically speaking, the experience has a me. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: , apart from the feeling of me (which is just another feeling). There is no need for a self for consciousness to be there. But it exists... that's what demand explanation, that's what lead to the envy of immortality. It is no big mystery that a self seems to exist. Consciousness experiences itself through a body and a mind, which is, in terms of superficial things, the main invariant of human experience. So, as long as consciousness is not conscious enough to experience the absolute invariant of itself (which is more subtle than the body/mind), it will identify with this relative invariant. With this there comes a sense of self (as opposed to other), since what it identifies itself with is seperate from an other (my body is not your body, my mind is not your mind). But we can transcend this indentity (even though the I can't). If we directly see ourselves as consciousness itself, the appearance of being a seperate individual, a me, can dissolve. If this process is complete, it usually comes with a great sense of liberation, freedom and peace (this is also known as enlightenment, liberation, nirvana, moksha,...). If you don't believe you are a body that can be hurt and die, a mind that can be ignorant of the solutions the most important problems, a person that can lack love,etc... a great burden is lifted from you. Unfortunately this realization is rare, since it requires one to not buy into the dominant collective delusion and deeply ingrained feelings of fear towards death of self. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Neither experientally, nor logically or scientifically. You say so... What's your evidence? In experience, the I is merely a mode of experience, like sleep is, and there are modes of experiences where there is no I. There is no logical contradiction between being conscious and not feeling to be a seperate individual (an I). In science, we never have found any such thing as an I. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788734.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
meekerdb wrote: You picture consciousness as something inherently personal. But you can be conscious without there being any sense of personhood, or any experience related to a particular person (like in meditation). So that assumption doesn't seems to be true. Also you think that memory has to be conserved in order for the experience to continue consistently. This is also not true, we can experience things that are totally disconnected from all memories we have, yet still it is the I (not the I) that experiences it. For example on a drug trip, you can literally forget every trace of what your life was like, in terms of any concretely retrievable memory (you can even forget you are human or an animal). So why can't we lose any *concrete* memory after death and experience still continues consistently (and if it does you have to surive in some way - it makes no sense to have a continuous experience while you totally die). You also don't remember being an infant (probably), yet you were that infant and are still here. Saying that we are the sum of our memory is very simplistic and just isn't true in terms of how we experience (you remember almost nothing of what you have experienced). But in what sense did you experience when you were an infant? You can't really see anything until your brain organizes to process the visual signals from your eyes. So your visual experiences were different and limited as a new born that at a few months of age. Yes, this is probably true. I don't know what it is like to be an infant, and probably I won't know as long as I am alive. meekerdb wrote: Nobody remembers how they learned to see (or hear or walk) but that kind of memory is essential to having experiences. I think it is a mistake to think of a person as some core soul. The person grows and is created by interaction of the genetic provided body and the environment. We tend to overlook this because most of the growth occurs early in life before we have developed episodic memories I agree. You actually strenghten my point. meekerdb wrote: and the inner narrative we call consciousness. Consciousness is not a inner narrative. Consciousness is the sense of being. The inner narrative is the sense of personhood. We can be conscious without an inner narrative, like in meditation. meekerdb wrote: So if you say it is death, you only refer to a superficial aspect of the person, namely their body and explicit memory. Sure, we tend to indentify with that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something much more important. The particular person may just be an expression of something deeper, which is conserved, and is the real essence of the person, and really all beings: Their ability to consciously, consistently experience. We tend to find that scary, as it makes us part of something so much greater that all our attachments, possesions, achievements, memory, beliefs and security are hardly worth anything at all, in the big picture. But if they aren't, what are we then? Since most of us have not yet looked deeper into ourselves than these things, we feel immensly treatened by the idea that this is not at all what is important about us. It (apparently) reduces us to nothing. But isn't it, when we face it from a more open perspective, tremendously liberating and exciting? By confronting that, we can free us from all these superficial baggage like things and relations and identity (freeing mentally speaking, of course), and see the true greatness of what we are which is beyond all of this. Were you beyond it all when you were a fetus? We are beyond time, so clearly we were beyond it all at this time. Yet the fetus is not beyond it all, since he is just a limited object (a quite amazing object, to be sure). Strictly speaking, I was not a fetus, I experienced myself as a fetus, which doesn't change what I am. Note that here I am using I as the absolute I (I -am-ness) not the relative I of personhood (I versus you). meekerdb wrote: How great was that? I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep. But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, since what we are is beyond particular experiences (it is experiencing itself). Even when I feel absolutely terrible I still am beyond all, I just don't realize it. The very fact that the experience passes shows that I am beyond it (clearly when it is over I am beyond it). But even during very horrible circumstances it seems that it is possible to feel being untouched by it. Like the yogis that bear horrible pain without any visible sign of disturbance. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788736.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/7/2011 9:50 AM, benjayk wrote: meekerdb wrote: How great was that? I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep. But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, So what's your evidence that there is *any* experience of being a fetus. Brent since what we are is beyond particular experiences (it is experiencing itself). Even when I feel absolutely terrible I still am beyond all, I just don't realize it. The very fact that the experience passes shows that I am beyond it (clearly when it is over I am beyond it). But even during very horrible circumstances it seems that it is possible to feel being untouched by it. Like the yogis that bear horrible pain without any visible sign of disturbance. benjayk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Bruno Marchal wrote: But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, But this contradicts immediately my present consciousness feeling. I am currently in the state of wanting to drink water, so I am pretty sure that there exist right now at least one person, which is the one who wants to drink water. I might be able to conceive that such a person is deluded on the *content* of that experience (may be he really want to smoke a cigarette instead), but in that case a person still remains: the one who is deluded. Why does there have to be a person in order for there to be experience? If there is a feeling of wanting to drink water, this only shows that there is a feeling of wanting to drink water and the ability to experience that. But why would that ability to experience be equivalent to personhood? It rather seems it is something that transcends persons, as it is shared by different people, and can occur in the absence of experience of personality, like you yourself experienced during meditative states. This might just be a vocabulary issue, but why would one call something that is beyond body, rational mind, individuality, etc... a person? You might say what is most essential to a person is her experience, and here I would agree, but it seems a step to far to identify person and experience. I would rather call this consciousness. Indeed I agree with Dan that it is quite accurate to say that there is no person in the sense that experience is not personal, it doesn't belong to anyone (but it is very intimate with itself nontheless). I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. Probably we are just so used to that state of consciousness, that we can't conceive of consciousness in another state than that. It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788744.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/7/2011 12:02 PM, benjayk wrote: I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. Have you ever been unconscious? When you were unconscious, who was experiencing unconsciousness? Brent Probably we are just so used to that state of consciousness, that we can't conceive of consciousness in another state than that. It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. benjayk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
To Qentin: DEATH an excellent vaiation for immoprtality. I always emphasize that ETERNITY is NOT a time indicator, can most likely be timeless (POOF it is over). To Bruno: we wrote already about your 2c question WHO ARE WE? and you answered something like Gods. That may be a cheap shot, but unidentifiable are both. (Philosophical Goedelism: you cannot identify yourself from within yourself). For sure we are not what WE think we are. John M On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
2011/11/6 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? Yes, but and I can accept that as a form of continuation of my life *but* contrary to benjayk example... you *remember* that life even as a dream. I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Sure but if there are no memories left, there is nothing left for immortality. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. Without them anybody is anybody, and it's meaningless to talk about immortality in that context. Quentin. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
On 06 Nov 2011, at 12:29, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2011/11/6 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? Yes, but and I can accept that as a form of continuation of my life *but* contrary to benjayk example... you *remember* that life even as a dream. OK. But then you might be able to dissociate yourself from the hero of the dream, which can help to realize that the content of memories might not be so important for the identity. Forgetting a dream is no death, just a special form of amnesia. To be sure, I do agree with you, in your conversation with benjayk, that consciousness needs a self, but the self might be more like a general computer control structure than a collection of memories. That is why we might have superficial little ego (quite crucial in everyday- life decision) and deeper selves, more related to what is invariant in our experiences. Peano arithmetic has very few memories, if any in the usual sense, yet it has already a quite sophisticated self (obeying to G, G*, etc.). I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Sure but if there are no memories left, there is nothing left for immortality. I am not entirely sure of that. We tend to put a lot of price in our memories, but then many put a lot of price in the mundane objects as well. It is partially natural to do that, but concerning identity, in the long run, it might be less important than what we are programmed or accustomed (by evolution) to believe. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. Without them anybody is anybody, and it's meaningless to talk about immortality in that context. Unless the abstract self discovers it has a personality of its own. This helps to recognize oneself in the other, and even to selfishly hope for the happiness of others. Memories can also be like a bullet, preventing you to see a bigger part of the picture. The brain already use a lot of energy to classify and erase (or make less accessible) many memories; it might be a matter of choice to give them some importance or not. New events can shift the emphasis of previous event memories. Many memories have some role in our present life, but might appear as useless, if not handicapping, with respect to new and different type of experiences. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Hi Dan, On 03 Nov 2011, at 03:08, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Hey there, I don't often post on this board, but I follow it quite frequently, and perhaps I might inject a 'fresh voice' to rescue this thread of a cul-de-sac of its own. It's essentially buddhist in nature rather than mathematical or computational, so forgive me if I appear presumptuous, or off topic, or whatever. It is this: If you believe that there are persons, then the persons you believe in will certainly die. Thanks for the news! But I am not sure. I suspect a possible vocabulary problem, here. If you take yourself to be a person, then by implication, you too will die. (That whole Man is mortal; Socrates is a man; Socrates is mortal thing). But how do you know that Man is mortal? By distinguishing the first person (the person, the soul, the owner of the subjective experience) from the third person (the body, the Gödel number, the code of the program, ...) two theories discussed on this list (digital mechanism, and quantum mechanics without wave-collapse) illustrate that the contrary might be true: it might be impossible to die, from the first person experience view. And this in many modalities, according to the amount of possible amnesia that might be acceptable for survival. But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, But this contradicts immediately my present consciousness feeling. I am currently in the state of wanting to drink water, so I am pretty sure that there exist right now at least one person, which is the one who wants to drink water. I might be able to conceive that such a person is deluded on the *content* of that experience (may be he really want to smoke a cigarette instead), but in that case a person still remains: the one who is deluded. then your fears of death must evaporate, for what has never come into existence surely can never go out of it. Fear of death is easy to be cured, but the usual side effect is a renewal and deepening of the fear of life, indeed the fear of everlasting life. But then, working on fundamental question should not be based on wishful thinking, anyway. What does it mean to be a person? Really, literally, from the inside, 1p viewpoint? Yes, we can talk about it -- in terms of the things we see, the mental states we are in, the sensations we are having at the moment, and the meanings of those sensations, but is there really a person there after this analysis is complete? Indeed, can the analysis ever be completed? No it cannot. This points on the debate between Quentin and Benjayk, which really looks like an internal Löbian dialog between Bp and Bp p, or between the rational believer (who has a name/body) and the inner knower (no name). You might confuse person and personal identity. Personal identity is relative. I is an indexical, like now and here. I can understand it can be considered as a perspective illusion. But the person herself? I am not sure if it is not the most fundamental thing. Person needs respect and recognizance. It could even be a necessary ingredient for a still, but elusive, death. We don't know, even in the machine case. Bruno Dan On Nov 2, 9:38 pm, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: On 1 November 2011 21:07, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:07:31PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Just a note on terminological confusion. Superposition, AFAIK, just means a linear combination of states. Therefore, two full decohered universes are still in superposition, just no longer coherent. Am I getting this wrong? No I think it's me, I should have said are no longer in a coherent superposition thanks please do pick me up on anything I get wrong, my QM is a bit shaky. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
your memory. That's beside the point. What's important is that we can experience total memory loss, while still being there. Why would it be important whether you later concretely remember something or not? That seem irrelevant to the continuity of experience. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: A person who would forget everything... it's the same thing as she had died. Only for an external person. For the subject, it may rather feel like just being born. Yes, it is true that all of which superficially makes the person this person vanishes, but there is no need to reduce the subject to the superficial expression of a particular personality. You take for granted that the way we think about ourselves is true to what we really are. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32773084.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
where this distinction makes little or no sense, like when we die or when we are in objectless and perceptionless meditation. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: what is *preserved* ? Continuity of consciousness. There is no continuity without self. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. But is is not true that nothing is preserved. I already gave an example that even without explicit memory something more essential than memory can be conserved. No your example is wrong. Taking it to the limit, you never have memories, because at no point do you remember everything. The point is that you can remember your own memories. If you don't care, you are just being superficial with regards to what you are. I don't thing so, what is important to me is me in the event of dying. I don't care if a not me stays. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: When you take drug and forget... you then remember when the effects stop, proving you still have your memory. That's beside the point. What's important is that we can experience total memory loss, while still being there. Why would it be important whether you later concretely remember something or not? That seem irrelevant to the continuity of experience. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: A person who would forget everything... it's the same thing as she had died. Only for an external person. For the subject, it may rather feel like just being born. Yes, it is true that all of which superficially makes the person this person vanishes, but there is no need to reduce the subject to the superficial expression of a particular personality. You take for granted that the way we think about ourselves is true to what we really are. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32773084.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
of consciousness and another particular expression. But this is a relative distinction, and there are contexts where this distinction makes little or no sense, like when we die or when we are in objectless and perceptionless meditation. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: what is *preserved* ? Continuity of consciousness. There is no continuity without self. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. But is is not true that nothing is preserved. I already gave an example that even without explicit memory something more essential than memory can be conserved. No your example is wrong. Taking it to the limit, you never have memories, because at no point do you remember everything. The point is that you can remember your own memories. If you don't care, you are just being superficial with regards to what you are. I don't thing so, what is important to me is me in the event of dying. I don't care if a not me stays. OK, you are just insisting on the dogma that all one could be is a me. If you presuppose that, than further discussion doesn't lead anywhere. It is just that this assumption is not verified through experience. Actually there is just experience, no me that experiences that, apart from the feeling of me (which is just another feeling). There is no need for a self for consciousness to be there. Neither experientally, nor logically or scientifically. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32773421.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
, not that they have another consciousness. There is no evidence for this at all. We can speak of your consciousness and my consciousness on a relative level, meaning one particular expression of consciousness and another particular expression. But this is a relative distinction, and there are contexts where this distinction makes little or no sense, like when we die or when we are in objectless and perceptionless meditation. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: what is *preserved* ? Continuity of consciousness. There is no continuity without self. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. But is is not true that nothing is preserved. I already gave an example that even without explicit memory something more essential than memory can be conserved. No your example is wrong. Taking it to the limit, you never have memories, because at no point do you remember everything. The point is that you can remember your own memories. If you don't care, you are just being superficial with regards to what you are. I don't thing so, what is important to me is me in the event of dying. I don't care if a not me stays. OK, you are just insisting on the dogma that all one could be is a me. If you presuppose that, than further discussion doesn't lead anywhere. It is just that this assumption is not verified through experience. Which/what experience ? Don't say drugs... this comparison is invalid. Actually there is just experience, no me that experiences that ??? , apart from the feeling of me (which is just another feeling). There is no need for a self for consciousness to be there. But it exists... that's what demand explanation, that's what lead to the envy of immortality. Neither experientally, nor logically or scientifically. You say so... benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32773421.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/3/2011 7:07 AM, benjayk wrote: There is no difference, as there is no your and mine consciousness. Consciousness can not be owned, and can not be divided into pieces. There is just consciousness. It is very easily experientally confirmable: Do you ever experience anything other than this consciousness? An interesting question whose answer is not so obvious. Of course you can *define* experience to be just conscious experience, i.e. that which we can put into words or otherwise describe. But in fact we are aware of a lot of things we are not conscious of in that sense, i.e. we react to them and learn from them, develop skills and habits, even prove mathematical theorems (c.f. Poincare'). Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
or concepts Why would you restrict it only to the human experience of death? Because if you want to define mouse to mean dog, it's fine, but the mouse stays a mouse. You picture consciousness as something inherently personal. But you can be conscious without there being any sense of personhood, or any experience related to a particular person (like in meditation). So that assumption doesn't seems to be true. Also you think that memory has to be conserved in order for the experience to continue consistently. This is also not true, we can experience things that are totally disconnected from all memories we have, yet still it is the I (not the I) that experiences it. For example on a drug trip, you can literally forget every trace of what your life was like, in terms of any concretely retrievable memory (you can even forget you are human or an animal). So why can't we lose any *concrete* memory after death and experience still continues consistently (and if it does you have to surive in some way - it makes no sense to have a continuous experience while you totally die). You also don't remember being an infant (probably), yet you were that infant and are still here. Saying that we are the sum of our memory is very simplistic and just isn't true in terms of how we experience (you remember almost nothing of what you have experienced). So if you say it is death, you only refer to a superficial aspect of the person, namely their body and explicit memory. Sure, we tend to indentify with that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something much more important. The particular person may just be an expression of something deeper, which is conserved, and is the real essence of the person, and really all beings: Their ability to consciously, consistently experience. We tend to find that scary, as it makes us part of something so much greater that all our attachments, possesions, achievements, memory, beliefs and security are hardly worth anything at all, in the big picture. But if they aren't, what are we then? Since most of us have not yet looked deeper into ourselves than these things, we feel immensly treatened by the idea that this is not at all what is important about us. It (apparently) reduces us to nothing. But isn't it, when we face it from a more open perspective, tremendously liberating and exciting? By confronting that, we can free us from all these superficial baggage like things and relations and identity (freeing mentally speaking, of course), and see the true greatness of what we are which is beyond all of this. And this is immortal, with death merely being a relative end, just like sleeping. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32767885.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
) —*adj* 1. not subject to death or decay; having perpetual life 2. having everlasting fame; remembered throughout time 3. everlasting; perpetual; constant 4. of or relating to immortal beings or concepts Why would you restrict it only to the human experience of death? Because if you want to define mouse to mean dog, it's fine, but the mouse stays a mouse. You picture consciousness as something inherently personal. But you can be conscious without there being any sense of personhood, or any experience related to a particular person (like in meditation). So that assumption doesn't seems to be true. Also you think that memory has to be conserved in order for the experience to continue consistently. This is also not true, we can experience things that are totally disconnected from all memories we have, yet still it is the I (not the I) that experiences it. For example on a drug trip, you can literally forget every trace of what your life was like, in terms of any concretely retrievable memory (you can even forget you are human or an animal). So why can't we lose any *concrete* memory after death and experience still continues consistently (and if it does you have to surive in some way - it makes no sense to have a continuous experience while you totally die). You also don't remember being an infant (probably), yet you were that infant and are still here. Saying that we are the sum of our memory is very simplistic and just isn't true in terms of how we experience (you remember almost nothing of what you have experienced). So if you say it is death, you only refer to a superficial aspect of the person, namely their body and explicit memory. Sure, we tend to indentify with that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something much more important. The particular person may just be an expression of something deeper, which is conserved, and is the real essence of the person, and really all beings: Their ability to consciously, consistently experience. We tend to find that scary, as it makes us part of something so much greater that all our attachments, possesions, achievements, memory, beliefs and security are hardly worth anything at all, in the big picture. But if they aren't, what are we then? Since most of us have not yet looked deeper into ourselves than these things, we feel immensly treatened by the idea that this is not at all what is important about us. It (apparently) reduces us to nothing. But isn't it, when we face it from a more open perspective, tremendously liberating and exciting? By confronting that, we can free us from all these superficial baggage like things and relations and identity (freeing mentally speaking, of course), and see the true greatness of what we are which is beyond all of this. And this is immortal, with death merely being a relative end, just like sleeping. benjayk Well if immortality is something which do not preseve the person... then it is death. If not, what is the difference between your consciousness and mine or any other... what is *preserved* ? Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. When you take drug and forget... you then remember when the effects stop, proving you still have your memory. A person who would forget everything... it's the same thing as she had died. Quentin -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32767885.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/2/2011 11:45 AM, benjayk wrote: Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/11/1 benjaykbenjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjaykbenjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjaykbenjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. You would call eternal existence of consciousness death? What do you mean by consciousness ? I don't care about eternal not me... it's the *same* thing as death. When talking about dying, what's important is the person who die, if something is left who doesn't know that it was that person... what does it means that its consciousness still exists ? For me, it is just a vocabulary trick to not employ the word death where what you mean is death. Immortality means immortality, not death, not resurection. A person is the sum of her memories, without memories, there is nothing left. This seems quite strange and narrow to me. Not to me, just read in a dictionary. *immortal* (ɪˈmɔːtəl) —*adj* 1. not subject to death or decay; having perpetual life 2. having everlasting fame; remembered throughout time 3. everlasting; perpetual; constant 4. of or relating to immortal beings or concepts Why would you restrict it only to the human experience of death? Because if you want to define mouse to mean dog, it's fine, but the mouse stays a mouse. You picture consciousness as something
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 27, 12:10 am, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 04:00:56PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. I'm persona non grata on FOR, so must respond on the everything-list. In section 8.1.3 of my book, I characterised David Deutsch's position as a single tracks through the multiverse. Namely that there is a fact of which future history you will have (preordained as it were), even if it is impossible to know it. There has been quite a bit of discussion of fungibility recently, and I'm now up to the section of BoI where David discusses this. I'm inclined to think that the concept of fungibility really changes the picture - namely one should think of the single tracks through the multiverse as being fungible up until the point where they differentiate. Being fungible, would entail the supervention of consciousness on all fungible histories, and the full force of the QTI conclusion. It would be interesting to hear (from David, or other people) whether: a) What David's position is now (are our futures determined or not?) b) Was my characterisation of David's position was ever valid? c) If so, and David's position has changed, what persuaded him to change? Cheers Hi Russell I’ve just read through the multiverse chapter in BOI and found it hard to get a handle on some of the concepts. I changed over to thinking in terms of differentiation rather than splitting worlds (of De Witt and Price's FAQ) when I read FOR quite a while ago but your book and this list helped me understand it better (I think?). I’m not sure that my understanding of fungibility is the same as DD’s now either - in fact I'm now confused. Neither am I sure about the nature of determinism in the interpretation. I started to read some of the earlier posts on fungibility on the BOI list and found the opinions so contradictory that I got lost. If you or anyone can give a concise definition of this term then I would be grateful. My own view was that a “bundle” of completely identical universes are fungible. If however I (who am in all these universes) send an electron with spin in the |X+ into a SG device aligned in the Z+ direction, then, after this procedure, the universes will no longer be fungible with respect to the original bundle. Because roughly half of these universe will now contain an electron with spin Zup that is in a different state to the other half containing the electron with spin Zdown. However, each of these two new bundles will be fungible internally with respect to themselves in that each of the bundles will have identical universes in them. Hence identical universes in the multiverse are fungible up until the point where they differentiate into newly, internally fungible bundles. Have I got this right? DD talks in his book about universes that are identical, symmetrical and deterministic which would never become differentiated unless they were fungible. He points out that the processes which allow these differentiations are due to QM as in the SG case above. So, I read this to mean that it is the indeterminism (within universes) of QM that is at the root of fungibility! Have I got this right? (I didn't think it was the transporter anyway :) I agree that the Multiverse as a whole, and, because of linearity, individual universe instantiations would be deterministic (follow the SE eqn.) - but not from the ist person point of view of those within the universes. Maybe that is what he means but I have misread it? Also on p453 of BOI, I think DD says his guess regarding the (required additional) assumption underlying QSuicide survival is that it is false. Kind regards Nick PS I sent a version of this post to the BOI list too -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 1 November 2011 21:07, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:07:31PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Just a note on terminological confusion. Superposition, AFAIK, just means a linear combination of states. Therefore, two full decohered universes are still in superposition, just no longer coherent. Am I getting this wrong? No I think it's me, I should have said are no longer in a coherent superposition thanks please do pick me up on anything I get wrong, my QM is a bit shaky. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Hey there, I don't often post on this board, but I follow it quite frequently, and perhaps I might inject a 'fresh voice' to rescue this thread of a cul-de-sac of its own. It's essentially buddhist in nature rather than mathematical or computational, so forgive me if I appear presumptuous, or off topic, or whatever. It is this: If you believe that there are persons, then the persons you believe in will certainly die. If you take yourself to be a person, then by implication, you too will die. (That whole Man is mortal; Socrates is a man; Socrates is mortal thing). But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, then your fears of death must evaporate, for what has never come into existence surely can never go out of it. What does it mean to be a person? Really, literally, from the inside, 1p viewpoint? Yes, we can talk about it -- in terms of the things we see, the mental states we are in, the sensations we are having at the moment, and the meanings of those sensations, but is there really a person there after this analysis is complete? Indeed, can the analysis ever be completed? Please, consider this. Dan On Nov 2, 9:38 pm, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: On 1 November 2011 21:07, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:07:31PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Just a note on terminological confusion. Superposition, AFAIK, just means a linear combination of states. Therefore, two full decohered universes are still in superposition, just no longer coherent. Am I getting this wrong? No I think it's me, I should have said are no longer in a coherent superposition thanks please do pick me up on anything I get wrong, my QM is a bit shaky. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/2/2011 7:08 PM, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Hey there, I don't often post on this board, but I follow it quite frequently, and perhaps I might inject a 'fresh voice' to rescue this thread of a cul-de-sac of its own. It's essentially buddhist in nature rather than mathematical or computational, so forgive me if I appear presumptuous, or off topic, or whatever. It is this: If you believe that there are persons, then the persons you believe in will certainly die. If you take yourself to be a person, then by implication, you too will die. (That whole Man is mortal; Socrates is a man; Socrates is mortal thing). But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, then your fears of death must evaporate, for what has never come into existence surely can never go out of it. What does it mean to be a person? Really, literally, from the inside, 1p viewpoint? Yes, we can talk about it -- in terms of the things we see, the mental states we are in, the sensations we are having at the moment, and the meanings of those sensations, but is there really a person there after this analysis is complete? Indeed, can the analysis ever be completed? That's why it seems that we are essentially associated with our memory. Each human starts without memories and develops into a person by acquiring memories, in the most general sense both conscious and unconscious. Brent The person I was when I was five years old is dead. Too much information was added to his mind. --- S. Mitra -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 31 Oct 2011, at 23:56, meekerdb wrote: On 10/31/2011 11:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Why? Everett shows convincingly that, being a memory machine, when we measure a superposition state, we just entangle ourself with the superposition state, but this differentiate the consciousness/ memory of the machine, and she can feel the split. I don't feel the split. Do you? I just experience one outcome. Sorry, for my style, and spelling mistakes, and other mistake as well. I meant she can't feel the split. So we agree. The theory of consciousness used in Everett QM is simple mechanism. It is the major interest of Everett. I don't think it is so simple because, like decoherence, it assumes that there is something that picks out the classical view of the world and that's what consciousness supervenes on, rather than supervening on linear combinations of classical states. If you have some reason that the pointer-states are canonical, then Everett explains why you split in such a way that you don't experience a mixture. But within QM there doesn't seem to be any good explanation for why the classical world, the pointer states, are picked out. Zeh and Zurek made an interesting proposal. Once position is favorized by one type of organism, it becomes the main observation basis. It is just natural selection of measuring apparatus. There is no conceptually more important basis, but once one is selected, there is no change for the next generation. And Zurek explains why position can be naturally selected. The only good proposals I've heard are that it is only by limiting perception to particular bases that life and intelligence can arise. Yes. And this is made obligatory by quantum mechanics. You cannot develop without choosing some measuring apparatus on your environment. Personally I consider MW to be just QM with a literal interpretation done by the creatures inside. It is exactly the same idea that we can exploit in arithmetic through digital mechanism. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. You would call eternal existence of consciousness death? This seems quite strange and narrow to me. Why would you restrict it only to the human experience of death? Isn't that extremely antrophocentric/egocentric? Yes, of course death is an important aspect - realization of eternal consciousness means death of seperate identity - but it certainly isn't all that there is to it. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32760389.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[BM] I don't think I understand it any better than you do. But ISTM we need a quantum theory of consciousness in order to write eqns like (3) above. In the standard theory it implies that there is some experience of both system states at the same time. A change of basis changes the labelling of 1 and 2. In other words, if the brain is in a superposition then there is *a* conscious experience of *both* states. If you deny this and postulate that consciousness must be unique (i.e. classical), as we directly experience it, then it seems you have gotten back to the theory that consciousness collapses the wave function. To me, decoherence offers a better explanation, i.e. that the off diagonal terms in the density matrix become practically zero already at the brain level; or more accurately at the level of the detector of the particle that initiates breaking the vial. This explanation still has a problem though in that there must be some canonical pointer states in which the off diagonal terms become zero. I think it may be possible to justify a pointer basis; but it hasn't been found yet. Brent [NP] Hi Brent This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:07:31PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Just a note on terminological confusion. Superposition, AFAIK, just means a linear combination of states. Therefore, two full decohered universes are still in superposition, just no longer coherent. Am I getting this wrong? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
of death? Because if you want to define mouse to mean dog, it's fine, but the mouse stays a mouse. Quentin Isn't that extremely antrophocentric/egocentric? Yes, of course death is an important aspect - realization of eternal consciousness means death of seperate identity - but it certainly isn't all that there is to it. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32760389.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/1/2011 1:07 PM, Nick Prince wrote: [BM] I don't think I understand it any better than you do. But ISTM we need a quantum theory of consciousness in order to write eqns like (3) above. In the standard theory it implies that there is some experience of both system states at the same time. A change of basis changes the labelling of 1 and 2. In other words, if the brain is in a superposition then there is *a* conscious experience of *both* states. If you deny this and postulate that consciousness must be unique (i.e. classical), as we directly experience it, then it seems you have gotten back to the theory that consciousness collapses the wave function. To me, decoherence offers a better explanation, i.e. that the off diagonal terms in the density matrix become practically zero already at the brain level; or more accurately at the level of the detector of the particle that initiates breaking the vial. This explanation still has a problem though in that there must be some canonical pointer states in which the off diagonal terms become zero. I think it may be possible to justify a pointer basis; but it hasn't been found yet. Brent [NP] Hi Brent This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). But would we notice if it were slow? What would it mean to notice a coherent superposition? So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. But the world of our perception is quasi-classical. The states have decohered *in our basis* before we perceive them, even independent of whether we perceive them. But only in a particular basis. Rotate the basis in Hilbert space and they are still mixed in that basis. That's why I think realizing Everett's idea depends on a theory of consciousness that selects a canonical basis. Brent We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/1/2011 2:07 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:07:31PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: This is where I am coming from: I accept decoherence as the mechanism for suppressing interference between universes and that this happens very quickly (no time for us to notice). So assuming the everett interpretation, there is no collapse and there are two consciousnesses in equations like (3) representing my consciousness in two separate [infinite] bundles of universes). However they are no longer in a superposition (i.e. there is no interference between them going on, or as you say, off diagonal terms in the density matrix are virtually gone). So at each differentiation me and my different consciousnesses diverge. We have the same history (memories) but different futures. Just a note on terminological confusion. Superposition, AFAIK, just means a linear combination of states. Therefore, two full decohered universes are still in superposition, just no longer coherent. Am I getting this wrong? Unitary evolution implies that they are never fully decohered. They are just decohered FAPP (unless there is some non-unitary process) in the bases we're interested in (and can measure/manipulate). Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/1/2011 3:40 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: What do you mean by consciousness ? I don't care about eternal not me... it's the *same* thing as death. When talking about dying, what's important is the person who die, if something is left who doesn't know that it was that person... what does it means that its consciousness still exists ? For me, it is just a vocabulary trick to not employ the word death where what you mean is death. Immortality means immortality, not death, not resurection. A person is the sum of her memories, without memories, there is nothing left. This seems quite strange and narrow to me. Not to me, just read in a dictionary. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying. --- Woody Allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/11/1 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. You would call eternal existence of consciousness death? What do you mean by consciousness ? I don't care about eternal not me... it's the *same* thing as death. When talking about dying, what's important is the person who die, if something is left who doesn't know that it was that person... what does it means that its consciousness still exists ? For me, it is just a vocabulary trick to not employ the word death where what you mean is death. Immortality means immortality, not death, not resurection. A person is the sum of her memories, without memories, there is nothing left. This seems quite strange and narrow to me. Not to me, just read in a dictionary. *immortal* (ɪˈmɔːtəl) —*adj* 1. not subject to death or decay; having perpetual life 2. having everlasting fame; remembered throughout time 3. everlasting; perpetual; constant 4. of or
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 31 Oct 2011, at 06:30, meekerdb wrote: On 10/30/2011 5:13 PM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick Right. In Everett's interpretation Nick's consciousness exists in many superpositions and there must be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience. That is just memory of the experiencer. It is not conceptually different than the mechanist first person indeterminacy. I agree that in Everett everything evolve unitarily. This would be the same mechanism that collapses the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation - something like decoherence except that when the cross terms become sufficiently small they become exactly zero. Decoherence is just entanglement, as see from a chosen basis. This would be a small non-unitary step. But it requires that there be distinguished variables in which the density matrix becomes diagonal - the pointer basis. If reality is discrete. If, not matrix might never become diagonal, and in that case QTI follows, and first person, from their first person view cannot be annihilated. With mechanism, it is trivial that only this happen (no first person annihilation) and mechanism favor the existence of some continuous (real) observable. I think. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 31, 5:30 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/30/2011 5:13 PM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick Right. In Everett's interpretation Nick's consciousness exists in many superpositions and there must be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience. This would be the same mechanism that collapses the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation - something like decoherence except that when the cross terms become sufficiently small they become exactly zero. This would be a small non-unitary step. But it requires that there be distinguished variables in which the density matrix becomes diagonal - the pointer basis. Brent Hi Brent Ok, after I'd posted the line above I thought again and wondered if my misunderstanding of Russell's answer was that he was indicating that a measurement made would cause the click which is essentally due to an hermitian non unitary operator. Yet in many accounts of the measurement procedure they follow my resoning that the apparatus doing the measuring, and the object being measured interact for some time via a unitary operation i.e. obey the SE. So I got confused. I understand that unitary operators are not observable operators yet they do describe the evolution of a state from one to another (as does the action of an observable operator) how do these accounts of the measurement process end up being consistent with each other? My understanding of QM must be lacking here. I read your answer but can't quite connect with it. Why must there be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience? In two branches of the multiverse can my consciousness not be at the end of the superposition that I put in the original post. exp(-iHt/hbar) (|s0|a0|Cons_0 = exp(-iHt/hbar) (c1|s1|a0|Cons_0 + c2|s2|a0|Cons_0) (3) = (c1|s1|a1|Cons_1 + c2|s2|a2|Cons_2) |s = system, |a = apparatus states |Cons_i standing for conscious state of observer of the measurement. This accounts for 3p viewponts. I thought that 1p viewponts in any branch just change according to some U(t) such that U(t) |cons_i(0) = |cons_i(t). Can you (anyone) help me to understand? Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 31 Oct 2011, at 06:20, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/30/2011 5:09 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
A common response to the idea of QTI is, Why should I care if I die
and someone else in another world who thinks he is me survives? But
this objection shows a lack of understanding of consciousness works
if there are multiple instantiations.
But multiple instantiations is exactly what we do not experience.
So the existence of other people who think they are me is purely a
speculative inference. According the theory they aren't me, they
just share some past history. Bruno emphasizes that his experience
with Salvia implies that he exists independent of his history.
But this he is still not multiple. I haven't used Salvia, but I
suspect that experience still requires at least short histories.
Hmm... let me try to restate what I tried to convey. In fact I have
always thought that consciousness always relate to time or a time
quale. So I was very happy that the simplest definition of first
person, given by the Theatetus' notion of knower (Bp p) leads both
to a logic of knowledge (S4) and of time (S4Grz = (roughly) a temporal
logic with a notion of irreversiblity). In that way the knower is a
time builder, and it explains why consciousness/knowledge is
intrinsically related to time. It consolidate also the relation
between the first person and the intuitionist conception of the
conscious subject (Brouwer).
I mentioned the salvia experience as providing a very curious
hallucination looking like a counter-example to this.
It seems indeed possible to be conscious without any feeling of time-
duration. This is absolutely unimaginable. Even a color qualia seems
to be conceivable only through some duration. Yet, under salvia, it
happens that we can get a state of consciousness which seems to be
completely atemporal. In reports, some describe this as a form of
eternity, but this is because, I think, we have just no word for that
type of consciousness, because it does not refer to something lasting
an infinite time, nor a short time, just no time at all. It is just
not lasting at all. This makes me doubt that the knower is the
originator of consciousness, and that consciousness might be deeper
than we can think from the simple knower theory related to the
mechanist hypothesis. Unfortunately such intuition are impossible to
convey (and indeed altered state consciousness can only refute a
theory, or inspire a theory, but cannot be taken as communicable data).
Now, I am not sure that any of this is relevant for criticizing
Stathis' comment. In a quantum differentiation, like when we observe,
with a {up, down} discriminating apparatus, a particle in a state like
1/sqrt(2)(up + down), as well as in a digital mechanist
differentiation, like when we are annihilated in some place and
reconstituted in two different places, consciousness remains singular
by virtue of having the whole mechanist brain made into two (could
be two infinities with similar measure) brains. Without introducing
some telepathic powers, each brain can only refer to itself (or to the
person corresponding to that brain), for the same reason that if you
play chess with a machine, you can copy its state, and play two
different ends-game from that. You would find supernatural that, when
playing a second end-game, the machine could refer to the first end-
game (that would be magical). In other words, personal identity is an
illusion which is very simple to explain (by the connexity used for
memory and self-reference). Consciousness is harder to explain, and is
hardly an illusion.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 30 Oct 2011, at 10:34, benjayk wrote: Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/ while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. Sure. I would say that's the one exploited by nature, and that's the reason why we do children, and why we might be tented to be angry when the children looks of behave to much differently than us. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). That's something like a total individualistic illusion, which might be less common that we might think, as people easily dies for their (good or bad) ideas or values. There are bad forces in play in the sense that a form of marketing encourage some abuse in the little ego values, and some politics disencourage solid and valid education, to even more control that marketing issue (and that leads to harmful paradoxes (like alcohol encouraged (see almost any movies) and cannabis illegal, just for one typical example). people care more about values than the actual political world does reflect (due to a lot of complex historical partially contingent factors). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, In my opinion, the singularity is the discovery of the universal machine. Church's thesis if you want. The rest is a sequence of deeper echoes. and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I sort of agree with this. But I'm not sure if this is communicable, or need to be communicated. I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, I think that if you do that properly, you realize that all people does that. The *moment* when they do that is irrelevant from that *moment* perspective. That's one reason more to let people doing as they do, which does not mean accepting they coerce against different personal ways. as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Mechanism is really a many-immortality theory. There is a plethora of path. Some are short and provide shortcuts to the Nirvana, say. Others are more like sequence of multiple incarnations and reincarnations, and they prolonged the Samsara. Bruno What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably (Aurobindo) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/31/2011 6:01 AM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 31, 5:30 am, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/30/2011 5:13 PM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.auwrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick Right. In Everett's interpretation Nick's consciousness exists in many superpositions and there must be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience. This would be the same mechanism that collapses the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation - something like decoherence except that when the cross terms become sufficiently small they become exactly zero. This would be a small non-unitary step. But it requires that there be distinguished variables in which the density matrix becomes diagonal - the pointer basis. Brent Hi Brent Ok, after I'd posted the line above I thought again and wondered if my misunderstanding of Russell's answer was that he was indicating that a measurement made would cause the click which is essentally due to an hermitian non unitary operator. Yet in many accounts of the measurement procedure they follow my resoning that the apparatus doing the measuring, and the object being measured interact for some time via a unitary operation i.e. obey the SE. So I got confused. I understand that unitary operators are not observable operators yet they do describe the evolution of a state from one to another (as does the action of an observable operator) how do these accounts of the measurement process end up being consistent with each other? My understanding of QM must be lacking here. I read your answer but can't quite connect with it. Why must there be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience? In two branches of the multiverse can my consciousness not be at the end of the superposition that I put in the original post. exp(-iHt/hbar) (|s0|a0|Cons_0 = exp(-iHt/hbar) (c1|s1|a0|Cons_0 + c2|s2|a0|Cons_0) (3) = (c1|s1|a1|Cons_1 + c2|s2|a2|Cons_2) |s = system, |a = apparatus states |Cons_i standing for conscious state of observer of the measurement. This accounts for 3p viewponts. I thought that 1p viewponts in any branch just change according to some U(t) such that U(t) |cons_i(0) = |cons_i(t). Can you (anyone) help me to understand? I don't think I understand it any better than you do. But ISTM we need a quantum theory of consciousness in order to write eqns like (3) above. In the standard theory it implies that there is some experience of both system states at the same time. A change of basis changes the labelling of 1 and 2. In other words, if the brain is in a superposition then there is *a* conscious experience of *both* states. If you deny this and postulate that consciousness must be unique (i.e. classical), as we directly experience it, then it seems you have gotten back to the theory that consciousness collapses the wave function. To me, decoherence offers a better explanation, i.e. that the off diagonal terms in the density matrix become practically zero already at the brain level; or more accurately at the level of the detector of the particle that initiates breaking the vial. This explanation still has a problem though in that there must be some canonical pointer states in which the off diagonal terms become zero. I think it may be possible to justify a pointer basis; but it hasn't been found yet. Brent Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 31 Oct 2011, at 18:13, meekerdb wrote: On 10/31/2011 6:01 AM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 31, 5:30 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/30/2011 5:13 PM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick Right. In Everett's interpretation Nick's consciousness exists in many superpositions and there must be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience. This would be the same mechanism that collapses the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation - something like decoherence except that when the cross terms become sufficiently small they become exactly zero. This would be a small non-unitary step. But it requires that there be distinguished variables in which the density matrix becomes diagonal - the pointer basis. Brent Hi Brent Ok, after I'd posted the line above I thought again and wondered if my misunderstanding of Russell's answer was that he was indicating that a measurement made would cause the click which is essentally due to an hermitian non unitary operator. Yet in many accounts of the measurement procedure they follow my resoning that the apparatus doing the measuring, and the object being measured interact for some time via a unitary operation i.e. obey the SE. So I got confused. I understand that unitary operators are not observable operators yet they do describe the evolution of a state from one to another (as does the action of an observable operator) how do these accounts of the measurement process end up being consistent with each other? My understanding of QM must be lacking here. I read your answer but can't quite connect with it. Why must there be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience? In two branches of the multiverse can my consciousness not be at the end of the superposition that I put in the original post. exp(-iHt/hbar) (|s0|a0|Cons_0 = exp(-iHt/hbar) (c1|s1|a0|Cons_0 + c2|s2|a0|Cons_0) (3) = (c1|s1|a1|Cons_1 + c2|s2|a2|Cons_2) |s = system, |a = apparatus states |Cons_i standing for conscious state of observer of the measurement. This accounts for 3p viewponts. I thought that 1p viewponts in any branch just change according to some U(t) such that U(t) |cons_i(0) = |cons_i(t). Can you (anyone) help me to understand? I don't think I understand it any better than you do. But ISTM we need a quantum theory of consciousness in order to write eqns like (3) above. In the standard theory it implies that there is some experience of both system states at the same time. A change of basis changes the labelling of 1 and 2. In other words, if the brain is in a superposition then there is a conscious experience of both states. Why? Everett shows convincingly that, being a memory machine, when we measure a superposition state, we just entangle ourself with the superposition state, but this differentiate the consciousness/memory of the machine, and she can feel the split. The theory of consciousness used in Everett QM is simple mechanism. It is the major interest of Everett. If you deny this and postulate that consciousness must be unique (i.e. classical), as we directly experience it, then it seems you have gotten back to the theory that consciousness collapses the wave function. ? On the contrary. Everett QM applies the unitarity and the linearity to each branch of the superposition, and the memory mechanism of the machines reveals, from each machine points of view, a classical state. To me, decoherence offers a better explanation, i.e. that the off diagonal terms in the density matrix become practically zero already at the brain level; or more accurately at the level of the detector of the particle that initiates breaking the vial. This explanation still has a problem though in that there must be some canonical pointer states in which the off diagonal terms become zero. I think it may be possible to justify a pointer basis; but it hasn't been found yet. Decoherence is unitary. Decoherence is many worlds. The diagonal terms get close to zero, but this does only mean that macroscopic quantum erasing of memory is technically not doable, so that the branch of realities diverge irreversibly (FAPP) and it is impossible to macroscopically self-interfere. David Deutsch suggests that we might do it with a possibly future quantum brain, though. Bruno Brent Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/31/2011 11:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Why? Everett shows convincingly that, being a memory machine, when we measure a superposition state, we just entangle ourself with the superposition state, but this differentiate the consciousness/memory of the machine, and she can feel the split. I don't feel the split. Do you? I just experience one outcome. The theory of consciousness used in Everett QM is simple mechanism. It is the major interest of Everett. I don't think it is so simple because, like decoherence, it assumes that there is something that picks out the classical view of the world and that's what consciousness supervenes on, rather than supervening on linear combinations of classical states. If you have some reason that the pointer-states are canonical, then Everett explains why you split in such a way that you don't experience a mixture. But within QM there doesn't seem to be any good explanation for why the classical world, the pointer states, are picked out. The only good proposals I've heard are that it is only by limiting perception to particular bases that life and intelligence can arise. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 03:44:46PM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: [NP] Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. [RS] Why do you think there are conscious moments during the unitary evolution between Mdev and Mc? Surely the evolution between successive observer moments must be nonunitary. Unitary evolution is essentially unobservable. [NP] Perhaps I should have said between Msg and Mdev (although the argument is still similar) that U(t) |moves up= |moves up over the period t. i.e. once the electron interacted with the SG device it took a while to reach the detector but the state of the system did not change in an important way. I know that perhaps I should have put some position representation in there but I don't think that's what your getting at? I'm assuming that there is no collapse of the wavefunction so my experiences are all experienced because states evolve unitarily. I understand that the unitary operator is not an observable operator but I can observe the consequences of its action on a system because I measure observables that give different eigenvalues each time I look (experience things - my experiencing is a form of measurement). Are you saying that during an OM there is no change i.e. it is a static picture? Are you thinking that unitary evolution goes on in between the static pictures? Surely the t in the exponential means that the system evolves over that t. As a ist person I can observe things changing over this t. Can you help me to see if I am making an error of thinking? Nick The question is - when did the cat become aware of which way the electron was spinning as it left the Stern-Gerlach apparatus? I would say it was when it discovered the vial didn't smash, and it was still alive. The other question, from the DD perspective, is when did the sphere of differentiation propagate from the SG apparatus to include the cat. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32746424.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. Quentin -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[RS] The question is - when did the cat become aware of which way the electron was spinning as it left the Stern-Gerlach apparatus? I would say it was when it discovered the vial didn't smash, and it was still alive. The other question, from the DD perspective, is when did the sphere of differentiation propagate from the SG apparatus to include the cat. [NP] Well suppose the device triggers the flask smashing part of the detector apparatus depending on whether the electron is moving up and spinning up or vice versa as in my analysis. Also say it does this on recieiving a click from one of two geiger counters, one in the upper area and one which picks up electrons in the lower area. The cat (or a human in the cat's place even) can hear a click whichever area the electron ends up in. Moreover if it takes a while for the hammer to fall and hit the flask and this is all in full view of the cat (there inevitably must be some length time for the device to work which is why I pointed out the locally causal requirement) then the cat will know that it will die if it sees the hammer start to fall. It must die because as I have said all devices are assumed in the ideal system to work properly so the cat is in a cul de sac from the time it sees the hammer start to fall to the time it chokes on the gas - and it knows it! (or a substituted human would) . If you replace the ideal apparatus with non ideal systems then you can use something like the alternate evolutions to model the situation exp(-iHt/hbar)(|s1|a0)=|s1(a|a0 + b|a1 + c|a2) exp(-iHt/hbar)(|s2|a0)=|s2(a|a0 + c|a1 + b|a2) which I gave originally. with these forms the cat can't know whether it will survive or not but by standard QTI it always will from 1st p. so QTI requires imperfect devices. As far as DD's differentiation is concerned I think the differentiation propagate from the SG apparatus to include the cat. during the time Msg operates. So assuming a causally functioning ideally working system, then we can write: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn ( Msg) |moves to right (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn(1/sqrt2) [|moves up|Zu+|moves down|Zd] during *this* time the differentiation into two bundles occurs but the cat is still alive in both bundles (nervously watching the hammer). However, the cul de sac is there!! because all devices including killing machines will work properly. =(Mc) |Ca (1/sqrt2) [|Du|moves up|Zu+Dd|moves down|Zd] at this stage the cat will watch the hammer fall (or )not and know the worst (or not) but at the moment it's still alive in both bundles and there's no further differentiation - all of that is done with now. But the cul de sac is there and now the cats from the original bundle will be finding out which of the new bundles they are in. = (1/sqrt2) [|Cd|Du|moves up|Zu+|Ca|Dd|moves down|Zd] During Mc's effect the killing or sparing occurs depending on which bundle you (the cat) are in - still no more differentiation just separate types of evolution as the effects of the original differentiation are propogated causally in each bundle. If I'm making an error of thinking here then please let me know what you think. To account for any time gap we could always assume the operators (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) operate consecutively with no time gaps in between. My understanding of DD's differentiation is more inferred than concrete and I'm still trying to wade through BOI on the run . I was also puzzled about your comments regarding the unitarity of what was going on and am concerned I'm not thinking correctly in some way. Best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 29 Oct 2011, at 20:07, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 29, 6:44 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 30, 2011, at 3:17 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. This has to be true for both ist and 3person points of view because there is nowhere for the consciousness to go. If you are going to include the other types of multiverse then yes, all sorts of possibilities open up. Indeed dreaming cats would be included too. Moreover, it seems to me from Bruno's Sane papers that ist person indeterminacy is non local in space and in time so, I guess in principle it's possible according to that reasoning, that the cat could find a contiuation of its consciousness in some other cat far off in the future in some universe. If we restrict ourselves to level 3 type QM branching of fungible universes then perfect functioning flask gassing mechanisms would provide cul de sacs. I was hoping that this might give a start to some form of extra support (although not a proof )of the no cul de sac conjecture because in the limit as the number of degrees of freedom in the devices introduce more and more branches due to evolutions of the form (4) (which could possibly be infinite linear combinations), then perhaps once the environment was included as well, the limit would ensure that the cul de sacs were avoided. If we factor in other level 1 and 2 type universes then this only helps the argument. I didn't think that level 1 and 2 multiverses were any richer in their variety than level 3. -- Stathis Papaioannou- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I'm not sure whether they are or not. What matters is where will my next observer moment come from? For now let's say it's just from type 3 QM unitary evolutions. Then in this case with the perfect interaction prescription usually used to describe measurement/ interactions then you can have cul de sacs. With loop gravity, I can imagine that it might be possible, although I'm not sure. But with classical QM, even putting the cat near an atomic bomb will not prevent the unitary evolution to have a branch where the cat will survive. This uses continuous position and impulsion observable, and so is rather theoretical, I agree. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 05:10:34AM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: Well suppose the device triggers the flask smashing part of the detector apparatus depending on whether the electron is moving up and spinning up or vice versa as in my analysis. Also say it does this on recieiving a click from one of two geiger counters, one in the upper area and one which picks up electrons in the lower area. The cat (or a human in the cat's place even) can hear a click whichever area the electron ends up in. Moreover if it takes a while for the hammer to fall and hit the flask and this is all in full view of the cat (there inevitably must be some length time for the device to work which is why I pointed out the locally causal requirement) then the cat will know that it will die if it sees the hammer start to fall. It must die because as I have said all devices are assumed in the ideal system to work properly so the cat is in a cul de sac from the time it sees the hammer start to fall to the time it chokes on the gas - and it knows it! (or a substituted human would) . If you replace the ideal apparatus with non ideal systems then you can use something like the alternate evolutions to model the situation OK, this is different from the usual thought experiment. You have engineered a cul de sac here. A QTI enthusiast will point out that macroscopic devices working perfectly is impossible, of course. Just because you hear the vial smash, does not entail you will die the next second, just rather likely to! BTW - this same impossibility of perfect devices really prevents you from exploiting QTI to get rich from winning the lottery. My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Actually eternal youth seems closer to eternal life to me than eternally growing old, which would be more properly termed eternal existing or not-quite-mortality. If we are cut off from experiencing the undeveloped innocent freshness of children - not knowing who you are - we miss something that is absolutely essential to life. It is not by chance that children are generally more open and happy, and learn faster, than adults. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32748927.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: 2011/10/30 benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com Nick Prince-2 wrote: This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. This is not even required. The decaying brain can become no brain, and consciousness proceeds from no brain. Of course this means that some continuity of consciousness needs to be preserved outside of brains. Theoretically this doesn't even require that structures other than brains can be conscious, since we know from our experience that even when/while a structure is unconscious it can preserve continuity (we awake from deep sleep and experience a coherent history). The continuity may be preserved simply through similarity of structure. Like our continuity of personhood is preserved through the similarity of our brains states (even though the brain changes vastly from childhood until old age), continuity of human consciousness may be preserved through similarity of brains (even though brains have big differences is structure). So this could even be a materialist sort of non-technological immortality. It's just that most materialists firmly identify with the person, so they mostly won't care much about it (What's it worth that consciousness survives, when *I* don't survive.). If they like the idea of immortality, they will rather hope for the singularity. But impersonal immortality seems more in accord with our observations than a pipe dream of personal immortality through a technological singularity, and also much more elegant (surviving through forgetting seems much simpler than surviving through acquiring abitrarily much memory and personal identity). I wonder why less people consider this possiblity of immortality, as it both fits more with our intuition (does it really seem probable that all persons grow abitrarily old?) and with observation (people do actually die) than other forms of immortality. Simply because it is just using immortality for meaning death . Immortality means the 'I' survive... if it's not the case then it is simply plain old death. OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Actually eternal youth seems closer to eternal life to me than eternally growing old, which would be more properly termed eternal existing or not-quite-mortality. If we are cut off from experiencing the undeveloped innocent freshness of children - not knowing who you are - we miss something that is absolutely essential to life. It is not by chance that children are generally more open and happy, and learn faster, than adults. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32748927.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 31, 2011, at 8:15 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: OK, I can see that this a possible perspective on that. Indeed most of the time immortality is used to refer to personal immortality (especially in the west). I agree with materialists there is no good reason to suppose that this exists. Quantum immortality rests on the premise that the supposed continuations that exist in the MWs of quantum mechanics are lived as real for the person that dies, while we have no clue how these possibilities are actually lived. It is much more plausible - and consistent with our experience and observation - that the other possibilities are merely dreams, imagination, or - if more consistent - are lived by other persons (which, for example, didn't get into the deadly situation in the first place). A common response to the idea of QTI is, Why should I care if I die and someone else in another world who thinks he is me survives? But this objection shows a lack of understanding of consciousness works if there are multiple instantiations. On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Actually eternal youth seems closer to eternal life to me than eternally growing old, which would be more properly termed eternal existing or not-quite-mortality. If we are cut off from experiencing the undeveloped innocent freshness of children - not knowing who you are - we miss something that is absolutely essential to life. It is not by chance that children are generally more open and happy, and learn faster, than adults. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32748927.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/30/2011 5:09 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: A common response to the idea of QTI is, Why should I care if I die and someone else in another world who thinks he is me survives? But this objection shows a lack of understanding of consciousness works if there are multiple instantiations. But multiple instantiations is exactly what we do not experience. So the existence of other people who think they are me is purely a speculative inference. According the theory they aren't me, they just share some past history. Bruno emphasizes that his experience with Salvia implies that he exists independent of his history. But this he is still not multiple. I haven't used Salvia, but I suspect that experience still requires at least short histories. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/30/2011 5:13 PM, Nick Prince wrote: On Oct 30, 8:56 pm, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: My point about the unitary evolution was that the clicking of the Geiger counter is not a unitary process - and until you hear it, you remain in superposition. - Show quoted text - I thought that in the everett interpretation everything was unitary? best wishes Nick Right. In Everett's interpretation Nick's consciousness exists in many superpositions and there must be some additional mechanism of consciousness that accounts for the separation of these conscious streams of experience. This would be the same mechanism that collapses the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation - something like decoherence except that when the cross terms become sufficiently small they become exactly zero. This would be a small non-unitary step. But it requires that there be distinguished variables in which the density matrix becomes diagonal - the pointer basis. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 26, 2011, at 10:00 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. I’ve entered this on both the FOR and the Everything list because I hope it is relevant to both Forums. Firstly I am adopting the position that consciousness supervenes on all identical worldlines and where the multiverse differentiates, the first person experience is indeterminate. Secondly I assume local causality applies. Thirdly (to begin with anyway) I assume that all “measuring” systems function as they should do to obtain “correct measurements/outcomes” (I’ll drop this part later though). Now suppose a SINGLE electron is prepared so that its spin is aligned in the x - right direction ( |Xr – for x spin in the right direction) is sent through a SG device and that, whether the electron comes out spinning up in the z direction or down determines the triggering of a device which breaks the flask of gas – (let’s say it is the electron with spin up and moving upwards which is the lethal combination) which kills the cat. On the other hand, an electron emerging with spin down, and moving down in the z direction leaves the measuring device triggered in the down state but this does nothing to the flask) So there is a 50% chance of the cat being killed for each electron fired through. This means there would be interaction Hamiltonians which would make up unitary evolution operators of the form M = exp(-iHt/hbar) which would act on states as follows: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr Msg = stern gerlach interaction evolution operator Mdev = triggering and flask breaking evolution operator Mc = cat /poisonous gas evolution operator. |Dn = neutral detector state |Ca = alive cat state etc. Now standard QM gives |Xr = (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) Notice how I have put operators in time order so that the rightmost operator is implied to operate earlier than those to the left. The order of the state vectors reflects this too. Msg is the unitary operator which causes an evolution from |moves to right to either moves up |moves up or moves down |moves down. Mdev allows evolution of the detector device plus flask smashing mechanism which, if it causes evolution to |Du, breaks open the flask of poisonous gas. |Dd leaves the flask intact. Finally the interaction of the gas with the cat due to the evolution operator Mc leaves the cat either dead |Cd or alive |Ca. Now, assuming a causally functioning system, then we can write: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn ( Msg) |moves to right (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn(1/sqrt2) [|moves up|Zu+|moves down|Zd] =(Mc) |Ca (1/sqrt2) [|Du|moves up|Zu+Dd|moves down|Zd] = (1/sqrt2) [|Cd|Du|moves up|Zu+|Ca|Dd|moves down|Zd] All this is just the standard Schrödinger’s cat problem. However note that if one thinks in terms of a differentiated multiverse we begin with an infinite number of identical experiments in identical universes. By the end of the first evolution due to Msg, the infinite bundle of universes has partitioned into two bundles i.e. one bundle of universes that have a Z spin up electron moving upwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat, and another bundle of universes that have a Z spin down electron moving downwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat. As time progresses the partition is communicated through the system and by the end of the period during which operator Md operates we have two bundles that are even more differentiated because the strands (universes) now are those that have either a Z spin up electron which moved upwards causing a detector to smash the flask but with an, (as yet) still alive cat in one of them and another bundle of universes that had a Z spin down electron which moved downwards, which triggered the detector in a way which did not smash the flask and thus, as yet still also has an alive cat. Finally by the time the last (Mc) operator’s effect has finished its evolutionary action, the cat lays dead (or alive) and thus the final bundles are now partitioned into either a Z spin up electron that moved upwards with a detector that smashed the flask that killed the cat; or, a Z spin down electron that moved downwards with a detector reading that triggered no flask smashing and left the cat alive. There’s nothing new in any of this. It is just the standard paradox normally used to illustrate the problem of collapse. However I have highlighted the fact that the experiment takes time
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 29, 1:53 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 26, 2011, at 10:00 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. I’ve entered this on both the FOR and the Everything list because I hope it is relevant to both Forums. Firstly I am adopting the position that consciousness supervenes on all identical worldlines and where the multiverse differentiates, the first person experience is indeterminate. Secondly I assume local causality applies. Thirdly (to begin with anyway) I assume that all “measuring” systems function as they should do to obtain “correct measurements/outcomes” (I’ll drop this part later though). Now suppose a SINGLE electron is prepared so that its spin is aligned in the x - right direction ( |Xr – for x spin in the right direction) is sent through a SG device and that, whether the electron comes out spinning up in the z direction or down determines the triggering of a device which breaks the flask of gas – (let’s say it is the electron with spin up and moving upwards which is the lethal combination) which kills the cat. On the other hand, an electron emerging with spin down, and moving down in the z direction leaves the measuring device triggered in the down state but this does nothing to the flask) So there is a 50% chance of the cat being killed for each electron fired through. This means there would be interaction Hamiltonians which would make up unitary evolution operators of the form M = exp(-iHt/hbar) which would act on states as follows: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr Msg = stern gerlach interaction evolution operator Mdev = triggering and flask breaking evolution operator Mc = cat /poisonous gas evolution operator. |Dn = neutral detector state |Ca = alive cat state etc. Now standard QM gives |Xr = (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) Notice how I have put operators in time order so that the rightmost operator is implied to operate earlier than those to the left. The order of the state vectors reflects this too. Msg is the unitary operator which causes an evolution from |moves to right to either moves up |moves up or moves down |moves down. Mdev allows evolution of the detector device plus flask smashing mechanism which, if it causes evolution to |Du, breaks open the flask of poisonous gas. |Dd leaves the flask intact. Finally the interaction of the gas with the cat due to the evolution operator Mc leaves the cat either dead |Cd or alive |Ca. Now, assuming a causally functioning system, then we can write: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn ( Msg) |moves to right (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn(1/sqrt2) [|moves up|Zu+|moves down|Zd] =(Mc) |Ca (1/sqrt2) [|Du|moves up|Zu+Dd|moves down|Zd] = (1/sqrt2) [|Cd|Du|moves up|Zu+|Ca|Dd|moves down|Zd] All this is just the standard Schrödinger’s cat problem. However note that if one thinks in terms of a differentiated multiverse we begin with an infinite number of identical experiments in identical universes. By the end of the first evolution due to Msg, the infinite bundle of universes has partitioned into two bundles i.e. one bundle of universes that have a Z spin up electron moving upwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat, and another bundle of universes that have a Z spin down electron moving downwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat. As time progresses the partition is communicated through the system and by the end of the period during which operator Md operates we have two bundles that are even more differentiated because the strands (universes) now are those that have either a Z spin up electron which moved upwards causing a detector to smash the flask but with an, (as yet) still alive cat in one of them and another bundle of universes that had a Z spin down electron which moved downwards, which triggered the detector in a way which did not smash the flask and thus, as yet still also has an alive cat. Finally by the time the last (Mc) operator’s effect has finished its evolutionary action, the cat lays dead (or alive) and thus the final bundles are now partitioned into either a Z spin up electron that moved upwards with a detector that smashed the flask that killed the cat; or, a Z spin down electron that moved downwards with a detector reading that triggered no flask smashing and left the cat alive. There’s nothing new in any of this. It is just the standard
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 30, 2011, at 3:17 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. This has to be true for both ist and 3person points of view because there is nowhere for the consciousness to go. If you are going to include the other types of multiverse then yes, all sorts of possibilities open up. Indeed dreaming cats would be included too. Moreover, it seems to me from Bruno's Sane papers that ist person indeterminacy is non local in space and in time so, I guess in principle it's possible according to that reasoning, that the cat could find a contiuation of its consciousness in some other cat far off in the future in some universe. If we restrict ourselves to level 3 type QM branching of fungible universes then perfect functioning flask gassing mechanisms would provide cul de sacs. I was hoping that this might give a start to some form of extra support (although not a proof )of the no cul de sac conjecture because in the limit as the number of degrees of freedom in the devices introduce more and more branches due to evolutions of the form (4) (which could possibly be infinite linear combinations), then perhaps once the environment was included as well, the limit would ensure that the cul de sacs were avoided. If we factor in other level 1 and 2 type universes then this only helps the argument. I didn't think that level 1 and 2 multiverses were any richer in their variety than level 3. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 29, 6:44 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 30, 2011, at 3:17 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. This has to be true for both ist and 3person points of view because there is nowhere for the consciousness to go. If you are going to include the other types of multiverse then yes, all sorts of possibilities open up. Indeed dreaming cats would be included too. Moreover, it seems to me from Bruno's Sane papers that ist person indeterminacy is non local in space and in time so, I guess in principle it's possible according to that reasoning, that the cat could find a contiuation of its consciousness in some other cat far off in the future in some universe. If we restrict ourselves to level 3 type QM branching of fungible universes then perfect functioning flask gassing mechanisms would provide cul de sacs. I was hoping that this might give a start to some form of extra support (although not a proof )of the no cul de sac conjecture because in the limit as the number of degrees of freedom in the devices introduce more and more branches due to evolutions of the form (4) (which could possibly be infinite linear combinations), then perhaps once the environment was included as well, the limit would ensure that the cul de sacs were avoided. If we factor in other level 1 and 2 type universes then this only helps the argument. I didn't think that level 1 and 2 multiverses were any richer in their variety than level 3. -- Stathis Papaioannou- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I'm not sure whether they are or not. What matters is where will my next observer moment come from? For now let's say it's just from type 3 QM unitary evolutions. Then in this case with the perfect interaction prescription usually used to describe measurement/ interactions then you can have cul de sacs. Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 29, 6:44 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 30, 2011, at 3:17 AM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.com wrote: Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. This has to be true for both ist and 3person points of view because there is nowhere for the consciousness to go. If you are going to include the other types of multiverse then yes, all sorts of possibilities open up. Indeed dreaming cats would be included too. Moreover, it seems to me from Bruno's Sane papers that ist person indeterminacy is non local in space and in time so, I guess in principle it's possible according to that reasoning, that the cat could find a contiuation of its consciousness in some other cat far off in the future in some universe. If we restrict ourselves to level 3 type QM branching of fungible universes then perfect functioning flask gassing mechanisms would provide cul de sacs. I was hoping that this might give a start to some form of extra support (although not a proof )of the no cul de sac conjecture because in the limit as the number of degrees of freedom in the devices introduce more and more branches due to evolutions of the form (4) (which could possibly be infinite linear combinations), then perhaps once the environment was included as well, the limit would ensure that the cul de sacs were avoided. If we factor in other level 1 and 2 type universes then this only helps the argument. I didn't think that level 1 and 2 multiverses were any richer in their variety than level 3. -- Stathis Papaioannou- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I'm also thinking that Level 1 and 2 universes may not be infinite in extent which limits the possible observer moments I have access to. I have argued before on the list that the question of topology of the universe is far from clear. Those OM available from level 3 are possibly more directly accessible ( if MWI is true in the right form). Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 09:17:17AM -0700, Nick Prince wrote: Hi Stathis Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. Why do you think there are conscious moments during the unitary evolution between Mdev and Mc? Surely the evolution between successive observer moments must be nonunitary. Unitary evolution is essentially unobservable. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On Oct 27, 11:52 am, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.comwrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. Nick, I think such cul de sacs exist only from third person perspectives. E.g., the experimenter's view of what happens to the cat. When considering the perspective from the first person (cat) perspective, there are no cul de sacs for a much simpler reason: The cat might be mistaken, dreaming, or even an altogether different being choosing to temporarily experience a cat's point of view. No matter how foolproof a setup an experimenter designs, it is impossible to capture and terminate the cat's continued consciousness as seen from the perspective of the cat. The lower the chance the cat has of surviving through some malfunction of the device, the more likely it becomes that the cat survives via improbable extensions. For the same reasons, I think it is more probable that you will wake up as some trans- or post-human playing a realistic sim ancestor game than for you to live to 200 by some QTI accident (not counting medical advances). Eventually, those alternatives just become more probable. Jason One thing I wonder about: Do the extensions necessarily become improbable? Why is it not possible that the cat just forgets that it is that particular cat, and wakes up as new born cat, or dog, or other animal (maybe human?). It even seems more plausible that as long as the cat is alive, relatively improbable extensions/narrow are required (since there are less futures where the cat is alive, than where it is not). It seems to me it is one step to far to assume that after its death the cat has to continue in a unlikely future in a form very similiar to its current form. That is taking egocentric notions of survival for granted. Maybe it is not required that much of memory or personality or physical form survives for the experience of survival. For example, during dream states, meditation or drug experiences, (almost) all memory and sense of personhood may be lost and still consciousness experiences surviving. This would be an argument in favor of a modern form of reincarnation. When the form is destroyed, consciousness just backtracks (maybe through some dream like experience) and is born anew. We don't even need much assumptions in terms of QTI or non-physical plane for that. All individual memory is lost, and thus consciousness can continue in very many probable futures, namely all newborn individuals that share a similar collective consciousness (which may just be the environment - or world - of the dead one, which obviously does not die). For the person, this is not really immortality, but this isn't required. Only consciousness has to survive in order for basic subjective immortality. It is a quite natural notion of immortality, with natural consequences with regard to immortality experiments (the subject just dies, and consciousness continues from memory loss). This would also explain positive near death experiences: As the person dies, consciousness feels itself opening up, as more consistent future experiences become available. benjayk -- View this message in context:http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp327213... Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - This is similar to my speculations in an earlier topic post http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/4514b50b8eb469c3/c49c3aa24c265a4b?lnk=gstq=homomorphic#c49c3aa24c265a4b where I suggest that very old or dying brains might deterorate in a specific way that allows the transition of 1st person experiences from an old to a young mind i.e. the decaying brain becomes in some way homomorphic to a new young brain which allows an extension of consciousness. It is re incarnation but, as you suggest might be more a continuation of consciousness than any remembering of who I am/was. Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[NP] Maybe you are thinking of Tegmark level 1 or level 2 type multiverses here, in which case I agree. What I was doing in my analysis was thinking about QM type 3 multiverses only. Let's pretend that these are the only variety for the moment, then my analysis does indicate that cul de sacs arise only if the unitary development during interactions follow the ideal measurement prescription. You can see this because in the times between the action of operator Mdev and Mc the cat is alive in both branches but destined to die in one of them. [RS] Why do you think there are conscious moments during the unitary evolution between Mdev and Mc? Surely the evolution between successive observer moments must be nonunitary. Unitary evolution is essentially unobservable. [NP] Perhaps I should have said between Msg and Mdev (although the argument is still similar) that U(t) |moves up= |moves up over the period t. i.e. once the electron interacted with the SG device it took a while to reach the detector but the state of the system did not change in an important way. I know that perhaps I should have put some position representation in there but I don't think that's what your getting at? I'm assuming that there is no collapse of the wavefunction so my experiences are all experienced because states evolve unitarily. I understand that the unitary operator is not an observable operator but I can observe the consequences of its action on a system because I measure observables that give different eigenvalues each time I look (experience things - my experiencing is a form of measurement). Are you saying that during an OM there is no change i.e. it is a static picture? Are you thinking that unitary evolution goes on in between the static pictures? Surely the t in the exponential means that the system evolves over that t. As a ist person I can observe things changing over this t. Can you help me to see if I am making an error of thinking? Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 28 Oct 2011, at 01:56, Nick Prince wrote: [BM] The QTI, or the more general comp immortality, or arithmetical immortality is a complex subject, if only because it depends on what you mean by you. [NP] Can you be more specific on this? Well, we have discuss this a lot on this list. Once you accept the hypothesis that we are digitally emulable, it can be shown that we have to distinguish the first person subjective life from the plausible third person description of the body related to that person, and that the problem of relating those first person description and the third person description are not yet solved. But for the immortality question, we are obliged to consider thought experience involving amnesia, and those experiences illustrates that the notion of personal identity is quite relative, and, with mechanism, they makes no absolute sense at all. They might depend on what *you* want to consider as being *you*. You might consider to be immortal just by succeeding to identify you with your core universal identity (the universal machine that you are), and in that case you can consider that you could survive a strong amnesia. Some drug can help some people to realize such identification. But we are programmed by nature to resist such identification, and to identify ourselves with our little ego which contains our mundane personal histories, and this can make you doubt that you could survive amnesia. Immortality might be a question of personal choice. Assuming mechanism, the question of afterlife can today be shown as being very difficult. Indeed, mechanism breaks the usual mind-brain identity thesis, and consciousness is related to the infinitely many arithmetical relations defining consistent extensions of (relative) computational states. The math leads to a sequence of open problems. [BM] Do you know Kripke semantic? A Kripke frame is just a set (of elements called worlds) with an accessibility relation among the worlds. In modal logic they can be used to characterize modal logical systems. The basic idea is that []p is true in world alpha, if p is true in all the worlds accessible from alpha. Dually, p is true in alpha is p is true in at least one world accessible from alpha. For example the law []p - p will be satisfied in all reflexive frames---independently of the truth value of p. (a frame is reflexive if all the worlds in the frame access to themselves; for all alpha alpha R alpha, with R the accessibility relation). [NP] Sorry but I have no experience in this area but I can see that if yoU adopt non classical logic then it opens up all sorts of possibilities. With the mechanist theory/assumption, I find it better to keep classical logic, and to derive the non classical logic from the intensional variants of the logic of self-reference. We have the mathematical tools to study in a clean transparent way all those intensional nuances (which can be proved to exist necessarily as a consequence of the incompleteness phenomena). It should be obvious that with the mechanist hypothesis, computer science and mathematical logic can put much light on those questions. But those math are not very well knows (beyond professional logicians). Testing the consequences in reality is the tricky part. tHE Quantum mechanical formalism has been successful in so many respects so it gives us some confidence of being on the right track. But then you do have the QM interpretation problem. The Everett theory is based on comp (alias mechanism), and I have shown that comp generalizes QM. A priori there are more computations than quantum computations, but a posteriori the quanyum computations can win a measure battle in the limit. [BM] Then, as other have already mentioned, what will remain unclear (and hard to compute) is the probability that you survive through some memory backtracking. The cat might survive in the worlds where he has been lucky enough to not participate to that experience, and, for all we know, such consistent continuation might have bigger weight than surviving through some quantum tunnel effect saving the brain's cat from the poison. The computation here are just not tractable, if we assume quantum mechanics, and still less, assuming only the comp hypothesis. The only certainty, assuming comp or QM, is that you cannot die. But obviously you can become amnesic of some part, if not all, your existence, or you existences. Like Otto Rossler summed up well : consciousness is a prison. With comp, and I think with QM, there is no escapes from being conscious, in a way or another. I don't like that, but then it is a consequence of those theories. [NP] Consciousness could be a prison yes. but MWI may be false of course, in which case maybe not. If comp says yes it is - as you suggest, then that's another matter. The question then is: is comp more fundamental than QM and if this be the case
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Thanks Bruno for being so patient with me and taking the time to carefully answer my queries. Nick On Oct 28, 3:42 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Oct 2011, at 01:56, Nick Prince wrote: [BM] The QTI, or the more general comp immortality, or arithmetical immortality is a complex subject, if only because it depends on what you mean by you. [NP] Can you be more specific on this? Well, we have discuss this a lot on this list. Once you accept the hypothesis that we are digitally emulable, it can be shown that we have to distinguish the first person subjective life from the plausible third person description of the body related to that person, and that the problem of relating those first person description and the third person description are not yet solved. But for the immortality question, we are obliged to consider thought experience involving amnesia, and those experiences illustrates that the notion of personal identity is quite relative, and, with mechanism, they makes no absolute sense at all. They might depend on what *you* want to consider as being *you*. You might consider to be immortal just by succeeding to identify you with your core universal identity (the universal machine that you are), and in that case you can consider that you could survive a strong amnesia. Some drug can help some people to realize such identification. But we are programmed by nature to resist such identification, and to identify ourselves with our little ego which contains our mundane personal histories, and this can make you doubt that you could survive amnesia. Immortality might be a question of personal choice. Assuming mechanism, the question of afterlife can today be shown as being very difficult. Indeed, mechanism breaks the usual mind-brain identity thesis, and consciousness is related to the infinitely many arithmetical relations defining consistent extensions of (relative) computational states. The math leads to a sequence of open problems. [BM] Do you know Kripke semantic? A Kripke frame is just a set (of elements called worlds) with an accessibility relation among the worlds. In modal logic they can be used to characterize modal logical systems. The basic idea is that []p is true in world alpha, if p is true in all the worlds accessible from alpha. Dually, p is true in alpha is p is true in at least one world accessible from alpha. For example the law []p - p will be satisfied in all reflexive frames---independently of the truth value of p. (a frame is reflexive if all the worlds in the frame access to themselves; for all alpha alpha R alpha, with R the accessibility relation). [NP] Sorry but I have no experience in this area but I can see that if yoU adopt non classical logic then it opens up all sorts of possibilities. With the mechanist theory/assumption, I find it better to keep classical logic, and to derive the non classical logic from the intensional variants of the logic of self-reference. We have the mathematical tools to study in a clean transparent way all those intensional nuances (which can be proved to exist necessarily as a consequence of the incompleteness phenomena). It should be obvious that with the mechanist hypothesis, computer science and mathematical logic can put much light on those questions. But those math are not very well knows (beyond professional logicians). Testing the consequences in reality is the tricky part. tHE Quantum mechanical formalism has been successful in so many respects so it gives us some confidence of being on the right track. But then you do have the QM interpretation problem. The Everett theory is based on comp (alias mechanism), and I have shown that comp generalizes QM. A priori there are more computations than quantum computations, but a posteriori the quanyum computations can win a measure battle in the limit. [BM] Then, as other have already mentioned, what will remain unclear (and hard to compute) is the probability that you survive through some memory backtracking. The cat might survive in the worlds where he has been lucky enough to not participate to that experience, and, for all we know, such consistent continuation might have bigger weight than surviving through some quantum tunnel effect saving the brain's cat from the poison. The computation here are just not tractable, if we assume quantum mechanics, and still less, assuming only the comp hypothesis. The only certainty, assuming comp or QM, is that you cannot die. But obviously you can become amnesic of some part, if not all, your existence, or you existences. Like Otto Rossler summed up well : consciousness is a prison. With comp, and I think with QM, there is no escapes from being conscious, in a way or another. I don't like
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Nick Prince nickmag.pri...@googlemail.comwrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. Nick, I think such cul de sacs exist only from third person perspectives. E.g., the experimenter's view of what happens to the cat. When considering the perspective from the first person (cat) perspective, there are no cul de sacs for a much simpler reason: The cat might be mistaken, dreaming, or even an altogether different being choosing to temporarily experience a cat's point of view. No matter how foolproof a setup an experimenter designs, it is impossible to capture and terminate the cat's continued consciousness as seen from the perspective of the cat. The lower the chance the cat has of surviving through some malfunction of the device, the more likely it becomes that the cat survives via improbable extensions. For the same reasons, I think it is more probable that you will wake up as some trans- or post-human playing a realistic sim ancestor game than for you to live to 200 by some QTI accident (not counting medical advances). Eventually, those alternatives just become more probable. Jason One thing I wonder about: Do the extensions necessarily become improbable? Why is it not possible that the cat just forgets that it is that particular cat, and wakes up as new born cat, or dog, or other animal (maybe human?). It even seems more plausible that as long as the cat is alive, relatively improbable extensions/narrow are required (since there are less futures where the cat is alive, than where it is not). It seems to me it is one step to far to assume that after its death the cat has to continue in a unlikely future in a form very similiar to its current form. That is taking egocentric notions of survival for granted. Maybe it is not required that much of memory or personality or physical form survives for the experience of survival. For example, during dream states, meditation or drug experiences, (almost) all memory and sense of personhood may be lost and still consciousness experiences surviving. This would be an argument in favor of a modern form of reincarnation. When the form is destroyed, consciousness just backtracks (maybe through some dream like experience) and is born anew. We don't even need much assumptions in terms of QTI or non-physical plane for that. All individual memory is lost, and thus consciousness can continue in very many probable futures, namely all newborn individuals that share a similar collective consciousness (which may just be the environment - or world - of the dead one, which obviously does not die). For the person, this is not really immortality, but this isn't required. Only consciousness has to survive in order for basic subjective immortality. It is a quite natural notion of immortality, with natural consequences with regard to immortality experiments (the subject just dies, and consciousness continues from memory loss). This would also explain positive near death experiences: As the person dies, consciousness feels itself opening up, as more consistent future experiences become available. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32730568.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/25/2011 7:00 PM, Nick Prince wrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. I’ve entered this on both the FOR and the Everything list because I hope it is relevant to both Forums. Firstly I am adopting the position that consciousness supervenes on all identical worldlines and where the multiverse differentiates, the first person experience is indeterminate. Secondly I assume local causality applies. Thirdly (to begin with anyway) I assume that all “measuring” systems function as they should do to obtain “correct measurements/outcomes” (I’ll drop this part later though). Now suppose a SINGLE electron is prepared so that its spin is aligned in the x - right direction ( |Xr – for x spin in the right direction) is sent through a SG device and that, whether the electron comes out spinning up in the z direction or down determines the triggering of a device which breaks the flask of gas – (let’s say it is the electron with spin up and moving upwards which is the lethal combination) which kills the cat. On the other hand, an electron emerging with spin down, and moving down in the z direction leaves the measuring device triggered in the down state but this does nothing to the flask) So there is a 50% chance of the cat being killed for each electron fired through. This means there would be interaction Hamiltonians which would make up unitary evolution operators of the form M = exp(-iHt/hbar) which would act on states as follows: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr Msg = stern gerlach interaction evolution operator Mdev = triggering and flask breaking evolution operator Mc = cat /poisonous gas evolution operator. |Dn = neutral detector state |Ca = alive cat state etc. Now standard QM gives |Xr = (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) Notice how I have put operators in time order so that the rightmost operator is implied to operate earlier than those to the left. The order of the state vectors reflects this too. Hi, Are we sure that this ordering, at the level of the state vectors, really matters? We are, after all, only considering observables that mutually commute and thus ordering should be irrelevant. Msg is the unitary operator which causes an evolution from |moves to right to either moves up |moves up or moves down |moves down. Mdev allows evolution of the detector device plus flask smashing mechanism which, if it causes evolution to |Du, breaks open the flask of poisonous gas. |Dd leaves the flask intact. Finally the interaction of the gas with the cat due to the evolution operator Mc leaves the cat either dead |Cd or alive |Ca. Now, assuming a causally functioning system, then we can write: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn ( Msg) |moves to right (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn(1/sqrt2) [|moves up|Zu+|moves down|Zd] =(Mc) |Ca (1/sqrt2) [|Du|moves up|Zu+Dd|moves down|Zd] = (1/sqrt2) [|Cd|Du|moves up|Zu+|Ca|Dd|moves down|Zd] All this is just the standard Schrödinger’s cat problem. However note that if one thinks in terms of a differentiated multiverse we begin with an infinite number of identical experiments in identical universes. By the end of the first evolution due to Msg, the infinite bundle of universes has partitioned into two bundles i.e. one bundle of universes that have a Z spin up electron moving upwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat, and another bundle of universes that have a Z spin down electron moving downwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat. As time progresses the partition is communicated through the system and by the end of the period during which operator Md operates we have two bundles that are even more differentiated because the strands (universes) now are those that have either a Z spin up electron which moved upwards causing a detector to smash the flask but with an, (as yet) still alive cat in one of them and another bundle of universes that had a Z spin down electron which moved downwards, which triggered the detector in a way which did not smash the flask and thus, as yet still also has an alive cat. Finally by the time the last (Mc) operator’s effect has finished its evolutionary action, the cat lays dead (or alive) and thus the final bundles are now partitioned into either a Z spin up electron that moved upwards with a detector that smashed the flask that killed the cat; or, a Z spin down electron that moved downwards with a detector reading that triggered no flask smashing and left the cat alive. There’s nothing new in any of this. It is just the standard paradox normally used
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 26 Oct 2011, at 01:00, Nick Prince wrote: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation I’m trying to get a picture of how David Deutsch’s idea of differentiation works – especially in relation to QTI. With a standard treatment it looks as if there might be cul de sacs for a dying cat. However I think I can see why this conclusion could be wrong. Maybe someone could check my reasoning for this and tell me if there are any flaws. I’ve entered this on both the FOR and the Everything list because I hope it is relevant to both Forums. Firstly I am adopting the position that consciousness supervenes on all identical worldlines and where the multiverse differentiates, the first person experience is indeterminate. Secondly I assume local causality applies. Thirdly (to begin with anyway) I assume that all “measuring” systems function as they should do to obtain “correct measurements/outcomes” (I’ll drop this part later though). Now suppose a SINGLE electron is prepared so that its spin is aligned in the x - right direction ( |Xr – for x spin in the right direction) is sent through a SG device and that, whether the electron comes out spinning up in the z direction or down determines the triggering of a device which breaks the flask of gas – (let’s say it is the electron with spin up and moving upwards which is the lethal combination) which kills the cat. On the other hand, an electron emerging with spin down, and moving down in the z direction leaves the measuring device triggered in the down state but this does nothing to the flask) So there is a 50% chance of the cat being killed for each electron fired through. This means there would be interaction Hamiltonians which would make up unitary evolution operators of the form M = exp(-iHt/hbar) which would act on states as follows: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr Msg = stern gerlach interaction evolution operator Mdev = triggering and flask breaking evolution operator Mc = cat /poisonous gas evolution operator. |Dn = neutral detector state |Ca = alive cat state etc. Now standard QM gives |Xr = (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) Notice how I have put operators in time order so that the rightmost operator is implied to operate earlier than those to the left. The order of the state vectors reflects this too. Msg is the unitary operator which causes an evolution from |moves to right to either moves up |moves up or moves down |moves down. Mdev allows evolution of the detector device plus flask smashing mechanism which, if it causes evolution to |Du, breaks open the flask of poisonous gas. |Dd leaves the flask intact. Finally the interaction of the gas with the cat due to the evolution operator Mc leaves the cat either dead |Cd or alive |Ca. Now, assuming a causally functioning system, then we can write: (Mc) (Mdev) ( Msg) |Ca |Dn |moves to right |Xr =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn ( Msg) |moves to right (1/sqrt2)(|Zu +|Zd) =(Mc) |Ca (Mdev) |Dn(1/sqrt2) [|moves up|Zu+|moves down|Zd] =(Mc) |Ca (1/sqrt2) [|Du|moves up|Zu+Dd|moves down|Zd] = (1/sqrt2) [|Cd|Du|moves up|Zu+|Ca|Dd|moves down|Zd] All this is just the standard Schrödinger’s cat problem. However note that if one thinks in terms of a differentiated multiverse we begin with an infinite number of identical experiments in identical universes. By the end of the first evolution due to Msg, the infinite bundle of universes has partitioned into two bundles i.e. one bundle of universes that have a Z spin up electron moving upwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat, and another bundle of universes that have a Z spin down electron moving downwards with a neutral detector reading and an alive cat. As time progresses the partition is communicated through the system and by the end of the period during which operator Md operates we have two bundles that are even more differentiated because the strands (universes) now are those that have either a Z spin up electron which moved upwards causing a detector to smash the flask but with an, (as yet) still alive cat in one of them and another bundle of universes that had a Z spin down electron which moved downwards, which triggered the detector in a way which did not smash the flask and thus, as yet still also has an alive cat. Finally by the time the last (Mc) operator’s effect has finished its evolutionary action, the cat lays dead (or alive) and thus the final bundles are now partitioned into either a Z spin up electron that moved upwards with a detector that smashed the flask that killed the cat; or, a Z spin down electron that moved downwards with a detector reading that triggered no flask smashing and left the cat alive. There’s nothing new in any of this. It is just the standard paradox normally used to illustrate the problem of collapse. However I have highlighted the fact that the experiment takes time to untangle the different strands of the differentiated multiverse such that the cat can discover which type of strand he
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[CW] I can't help with that unfortunately. My own TOE explains why QM may be a misinterpretation to begin with (even though the observations and predictions of QM are of course valid). [NP] Ok thanks for your comments Craig. I would be interested in your TOE. If you have explained it on this list can you give me the topic reference - I'd like to consider it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[JR] I think such cul de sacs exist only from third person perspectives. E.g., the experimenter's view of what happens to the cat. When considering the perspective from the first person (cat) perspective, there are no cul de sacs for a much simpler reason: The cat might be mistaken, dreaming, or even an altogether different being choosing to temporarily experience a cat's point of view. No matter how foolproof a setup an experimenter designs, it is impossible to capture and terminate the cat's continued consciousness as seen from the perspective of the cat. The lower the chance the cat has of surviving through some malfunction of the device, the more likely it becomes that the cat survives via improbable extensions. For the same reasons, I think it is more probable that you will wake up as some trans- or post-human playing a realistic sim ancestor game than for you to live to 200 by some QTI accident (not counting medical advances). Eventually, those alternatives just become more probable. Jason [NP] Hi Jason, thank you for this response. I can see where you are coming from and this idea is intuitively appealing. What I was trying to do was use a simple alternave unitary evolution example which could open up possible alternative worlds thereby allowing consciousness, from the ist person POV to have access to some of these worlds. I chose a simple low dimensionsional space for the eigenvectors |si|aj but in reality I suspect it is infinite to reflect all possible alternatives. I suppose I'm trying to bridge the gap between possible worlds and the QM formalism so that I still feel in touch with theory that is known to be a good model of reality. Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
[SPK]
Are we sure that this ordering, at the level of the state vectors,
really matters? We are, after all, only considering observables that
mutually commute and thus ordering should be irrelevant.
[NP]
Hi Stephen. I stressed the order because it is how the cat perceives
events and therefore how, from the first person POV the cat feels like
his bundle of worlds which are originally identical (fungible) are
becoming different - but not all at once
[SPK]
It seems to me that we have to take the environment of the system
into account, so we have to have a {environment in the equation, no?
From what I can tell, cul de sac's would have 3p consequences that
would have an effect on the distribution of branches. Maybe we should
consider what effect the 'rest of the universe' has on the 1p of the cat.
[NP]
I agree that the environment needs to be factored in. Especially to
ensure the worlds quickly decohere.
I need to think about your comment on consequences - it is an
interesting point and I'd like to pick it
up again when I've had chance to consider it. Thank you for that.
Nick
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Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 10/27/2011 3:26 PM, Nick Prince wrote:
[SPK]
Are we sure that this ordering, at the level of the state vectors,
really matters? We are, after all, only considering observables that
mutually commute and thus ordering should be irrelevant.
[NP]
Hi Stephen. I stressed the order because it is how the cat perceives
events and therefore how, from the first person POV the cat feels like
his bundle of worlds which are originally identical (fungible) are
becoming different - but not all at once
[SPK]
It seems to me that we have to take the environment of the system
into account, so we have to have a {environment in the equation, no?
From what I can tell, cul de sac's would have 3p consequences that
would have an effect on the distribution of branches. Maybe we should
consider what effect the 'rest of the universe' has on the 1p of the cat.
[NP]
I agree that the environment needs to be factored in. Especially to
ensure the worlds quickly decohere.
But you don't need the environment. The cat itself, or even just the cats brain, even
just a neuron in the cat's brain already has an enormous number of states and will
decohere almost instantly, i.e. the brain is essentially a classical object. What you
need is a better theory of being a cat instead of just |alive cat or |dead cat
Brent
I need to think about your comment on consequences - it is an
interesting point and I'd like to pick it
up again when I've had chance to consider it. Thank you for that.
Nick
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