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.
