Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
At 20:11 13/11/03 -0500, Jesse Mazer wrote: David Kwinter wrote: Thank you Bruno Jesse, this anticipatory QTI is the most awesome interpretation of QM I've ever heard. It's not so much an interpretation of QM as the many-worlds interpretation of QM + some assumptions about laws of consciousness, particularly laws governing first-person probabilities in duplications. It's just consequence of the comp hyp. actually the invariance lemma: the fact that from a first person perspective is not possible to be aware of computational substitutions, reconstitution delays, realness/virtualness distinctions, or even realness/arithmeticalness distinctions, etc. + realism on the relation between positive integers, and realism on what immaterial machine (programs) can prove about themselves and their most probable local neighborhood. I agree that non collapse form of QM confirms comp-immortality like prospects. Bruno
RE: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
I might still occasionally face accidents where I had to be very lucky to survive, but the lower the probability there is of surviving a particular type of accident, the less likely I am to experience events leading up to such an accident. So if someone is on a cliff about to commit suicide, from his perspective, he will probably find he can't go through with it? In fact will a suicidal person find that nothing tends to go wrong in his life (because if it did he would want to commit suicide)? The more suicidal he is the better! Or perhaps there is a vanishingly small probability of finding yourself so easily depressed even though it is not unreasonable to come across other people that are. But if the tendency to be suicidal is inherited in the genes can it be that this is anticipatory as well? Of course at the time you inherit your genes you aren't conscious. - David -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2003 5:34 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Fw: Quantum accident survivor Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:56:31 +0100 At 14:36 07/11/03 -0800, Hal Finney wrote: snip Well, I do believe in continuity of consciousness, modulo the issues of measure. That is, I think some continuations would be more likely to be experienced than others. For example, if you started up 9 computers each running one copy of me (all running the same program so they stay in sync), and one computer running a different copy of me, my current theory is that I would expect to experience the first version with 90% probability. Almost OK, but perhaps false if you put *the measure* on the (infinite) computations going through those states. I mean, if the 9 computers running one copy of you just stop (in some absolute way I ask you to conceive for the benefit of the argument), and if the one computer running the different copy, instead of stopping, is multiplied eventually into many self-distinguishable copies of you, then putting the measure on the histories should make you expect to experience (and memorized) the second version more probably. It is the idea I like to summarize in the following diagram: \/ | | \/ | | \/ =| | | | | | | | That is, it is like a future bifurcation enhances your present measure. It is why I think comp confirms Deutsch idea that QM branching is really QM differentiation. What do you think? I mean, do you conceive that the measure could be put only on the maximal possible computations? Bruno This is an important point which I think people often miss about the QTI. It is sometimes spoken of as if the QTI only goes into effect at the moment you are about to die (and thus have no successor observer-moment), which would often require some fantastically improbable escape, like quantum tunneling away from a nearby nuclear explosion. But if later bifurcations can effect the first-person probability of earlier ones, this need not be the case. Consider this thought experiment. Two presidential candidates, let's say Wesley Clark and George W. Bush, are going to be running against each other in the presidential election. Two months before the election, I step into a machine that destructively scans me and recreates two copies in different locations--one copy will appear in a room with a portrait of George W. on the wall, the other copy will appear in a room with a portrait of Wesley Clark. The usual interpretation of first-person probabilities is that, all other things being equal, as the scanner begins to activate I should expect a 50% chance that the next thing I see will be the portrait of George W. appearing before me, and a 50% chance that it will be Wesley Clark. But suppose all other things are *not* equal--an additional part of the plan, which I have agreed to, is that following the election, the copy who appeared in the room with the winning candidate will be duplicated 999 times, while the copy who appeared in the room with the losing candidate will not experience any further duplications. Thus, at any time after the election, 999 out of 1000 versions of me who are descended from the original who first stepped into the duplication machine two months before the election will remember appearing in the room with the candidate who ended up winning, while only 1 out of 1000 will remember appearing in the room with the losing candidate. The last minute theory of quantum immortality is based on the idea that first-person probabilities are based solely on the observer-moments that qualify as immediate successors to my current observer-moment, and this idea suggests that as I step into the duplication machine two months
Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
Thank you Bruno Jesse, this anticipatory QTI is the most awesome interpretation of QM I've ever heard. Is it too optimistic to think that we are being 'nudged' toward a biotech breakthrough which will give us legitimate/objective immortality? On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 02:34 AM, Jesse Mazer wrote: From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Fw: Quantum accident survivor Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:56:31 +0100 At 14:36 07/11/03 -0800, Hal Finney wrote: snip Well, I do believe in continuity of consciousness, modulo the issues of measure. That is, I think some continuations would be more likely to be experienced than others. For example, if you started up 9 computers each running one copy of me (all running the same program so they stay in sync), and one computer running a different copy of me, my current theory is that I would expect to experience the first version with 90% probability. Almost OK, but perhaps false if you put *the measure* on the (infinite) computations going through those states. I mean, if the 9 computers running one copy of you just stop (in some absolute way I ask you to conceive for the benefit of the argument), and if the one computer running the different copy, instead of stopping, is multiplied eventually into many self-distinguishable copies of you, then putting the measure on the histories should make you expect to experience (and memorized) the second version more probably. It is the idea I like to summarize in the following diagram: \/ | | \/ | | \/ =| | | | | | | | That is, it is like a future bifurcation enhances your present measure. It is why I think comp confirms Deutsch idea that QM branching is really QM differentiation. What do you think? I mean, do you conceive that the measure could be put only on the maximal possible computations? Bruno This is an important point which I think people often miss about the QTI. It is sometimes spoken of as if the QTI only goes into effect at the moment you are about to die (and thus have no successor observer-moment), which would often require some fantastically improbable escape, like quantum tunneling away from a nearby nuclear explosion. But if later bifurcations can effect the first-person probability of earlier ones, this need not be the case. Consider this thought experiment. Two presidential candidates, let's say Wesley Clark and George W. Bush, are going to be running against each other in the presidential election. Two months before the election, I step into a machine that destructively scans me and recreates two copies in different locations--one copy will appear in a room with a portrait of George W. on the wall, the other copy will appear in a room with a portrait of Wesley Clark. The usual interpretation of first-person probabilities is that, all other things being equal, as the scanner begins to activate I should expect a 50% chance that the next thing I see will be the portrait of George W. appearing before me, and a 50% chance that it will be Wesley Clark. But suppose all other things are *not* equal--an additional part of the plan, which I have agreed to, is that following the election, the copy who appeared in the room with the winning candidate will be duplicated 999 times, while the copy who appeared in the room with the losing candidate will not experience any further duplications. Thus, at any time after the election, 999 out of 1000 versions of me who are descended from the original who first stepped into the duplication machine two months before the election will remember appearing in the room with the candidate who ended up winning, while only 1 out of 1000 will remember appearing in the room with the losing candidate. The last minute theory of quantum immortality is based on the idea that first-person probabilities are based solely on the observer-moments that qualify as immediate successors to my current observer-moment, and this idea suggests that as I step into the duplication machine two months before the election, I should expect a 50% chance of appearing in the room with the portrait of the candidate who goes on to win the election. But as Bruno suggests, an alternate theory is that later bifurcations should be taken to influence the first-person probabilities of earlier bifurcations--under this anticipatory theory, I should expect only a 1 out of 1000 chance that I will appear in the room with the portrait of the losing candidate. This would lead to a weird sort of first-person precognition, where after the duplication but before the election, I'd have good reason to believe (from a first-person point of view) that I could predict the outcome with a high probability of being right. But this kind of prediction would be useless from a
Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 04:34:27AM -0500, Jesse Mazer wrote: Applied to quantum immortality, this anticipatory idea suggests it would not be as if the universe is allowing events to go any which way right up until something is about to kill me, and then it steps in with some miraculous coincidence which saves me; instead, it would be more like the universe would constantly be nudging the my first-person probabilities in favor of branches where I don't face any dangerous accidents which require miracles in the first place. Of course since this would just be a probabilistic effect, I might still occasionally face accidents where I had to be very lucky to survive, but the lower the probability there is of surviving a particular type of accident, the less likely I am to experience events leading up to such an accident. If you believe this, would you treat terminally ill people as zombies, since their consciousness should already have been nudged away from this branch? What do you do when they protest that they are in fact not zombies?
Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
Wei Dai wrote: On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 10:11:04PM -0500, Jesse Mazer wrote: Of course not, no more than I would treat the copy who materialized in a room with the portrait of the candidate who went on to lose the election as a zombie. From the point of view of myself about to be duplicated, it was certainly be much more probable that my next experience would be of finding myself in the room with the portrait of the candidate who would go on to win (since after the election that copy would be duplicated 999 times while the other would not), but the probability of ending up in the room with the losing candidate was not zero, and after the split it is certainly true that both copies are equally conscious. Suppose you get into an experiment where you're copied, then the original is certain to be killed. According to anticipatory quantum immortality, your probability of experiencing being the original after copying is complete is 0. Not really, there is always the possibility (perhaps a certainty if you buy the 'everything that can exist does exist' hypothesis) that an observer-moment with the same memories up to the point he was killed will arise somewhere else in the multiverse, even if it's by a random statistical fluctuation or something. In any case, even if it was possible to have a situation where the first-person probability of my becoming a particular future observer-moment were zero, that wouldn't mean that observer-moment does not experience himself as real, perhaps it would just suggest there was zero chance that his own past included my current observer-moment. The problem here is that you're acting as if first-person measure somehow implies something about consciousness. I do think that complexity of consciousness may be one of the factors that influences first-person measure, so that I could be less likely to become a copy with large amounts of brain damage, but if my interpretation of the two-presidential-candidates though-experiment is right it obviously isn't the only factor, and therefore you can't reason in reverse that less measure -- less consciousness, since in that thought-experiment there's no reason to think either of the two copies is less conscious even if one has only 1/999th the measure of the other. Jesse Mazer _ From Beethoven to the Rolling Stones, your favorite music is always playing on MSN Radio Plus. No ads, no talk. Trial month FREE! http://join.msn.com/?page=offers/premiumradio
Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality
Dear Russell and Friends, Does not QM's no-cloning theorem imply Jesse's argument? Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 10:45 PM Subject: Re: Last-minute vs. anticipatory quantum immortality I think its a little unrealistic to assert that a given copy is certain to be killed. It is this certainty factor that gives rise to zombies. So long as there is only a 99.999...1% of something happening, then no zombies appear. Wei Dai wrote: On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 10:11:04PM -0500, Jesse Mazer wrote: Of course not, no more than I would treat the copy who materialized in a room with the portrait of the candidate who went on to lose the election as a zombie. From the point of view of myself about to be duplicated, it was certainly be much more probable that my next experience would be of finding myself in the room with the portrait of the candidate who would go on to win (since after the election that copy would be duplicated 999 times while the other would not), but the probability of ending up in the room with the losing candidate was not zero, and after the split it is certainly true that both copies are equally conscious. Suppose you get into an experiment where you're copied, then the original is certain to be killed. According to anticipatory quantum immortality, your probability of experiencing being the original after copying is complete is 0. Therefore you should have no objection to the original being tortured in exchange for a payment to the surviving clone, right? (Ignore for a moment your natural aversion against torturing anyone. Suppose that if you objected to being tortured, a random someone else will be tortured anyway.) -- -- A/Prof Russell StandishDirector High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 () Australia[EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 -- --
