RE: Miscellaneous ideas, for what they're worth.

[Gilles HENRI]

>Russell,
>A 'process' requires 'time'.  'Time' is a subset of what you call
>'splitting'. The wavefunction is undifferentiated. It is a single
>wavefunction representing all possible states 'superimposed'.
>James
>
>> -Original Message-
>> From:Russell Standish [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> Sent:    01 February 1999 23:00
>> To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: Re: Miscellaneous ideas, for what they're worth.
>>
>> >
>> > Russell, you disagree with most of us if you think that the act of
>> making
>> > ameasurement causes universes to split in MWI.  On the contrary, the
>> > universe 'splits' at every opportunty.  Everything possible exists in
>> MWI.
>> >
>>
>>
>> I don't think so. Yes I agree that everything is possible in MWI. At
>> each point in time there is a wave function that describes the
>> probability or measure of each possibility. However, in order to
>> 'split' (ie differentiate the possibilities) requires a process - that
>> process is conciousness, which is performing measurements. Whether
>> these measurements happen continuously or not is another matter.

ok, but Russell is right in that the apparence of splitting is
fundamentally due to the fact that consciousness does some kind of
projection of the wavefunction over some macroscopic subcomponent. The
apparence of splitting is due to the properties of consciouness that
behaves macroscopically, like any measurement apparatus (i.e. without
interacting with other components of the wavefunction).


Gilles

Re: Miscellaneous ideas, for what they're worth.

[Eddie Edmondson]

Hal writes:


>Saj Malhi, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, writes:
>> Let's try to establish a few cogent premisses. I realise you probably =
>> won't agree with them all, but I'd be interested to know why:
>> [...]
>> 2]. Consciousness is neither dependent upon nor implied by memory (a man
=
>> suffering from amnesia is no less conscious than a man who remembers =
>> every detail of his life).
>
>But someone who had no memory, who forget every event the instant it
>happened, would not seem to be conscious.  At least, such a kind of
>mind is so different from my own that I would hesitate to say that it
>was conscious in the way that I am.  To me, being able to have some
>continuity from moment to moment seems to be a fundamental aspect of
>my consciousness.
>
>Hal


Ergo, consciousness is Second Law dependent

Edmondson