Le 04-juil.-05, à 22:18, Lee Corbin a écrit :
Yes, but I contend that while there are two organisms present,
there is only one person. It's much as though some space
aliens kidnapped you and tried to say that Pete at spacetime
coordinates (X1,T1) could not possibly be the same person as
Pete at coordinates (X1,T2) because the times weren't the same.
You'd have to get them to wrap their heads around the idea that
one person could be at two different times in the same place.
They might find this bizarre.
I'm trying to tell you a possibility that you think equally
bizarre: namely that Pete(X1,T1) is the same person as Pete(X2,T1),
namely that the same person may be at two different locations at
the same time. That's all.
I like that idea, but if they are the *same* person then we are all the
same person.
Or, perhaps you were just meaning that they are very close/similar; in
which case you can say Pete(X2,T1) is much closer to Pete(X1,T1) than
Bruno(x, now) is close to Lee(y, now). But then, strictly speaking
Pete(X1,T1) is not the same person as Pete(X2,T1).
In any case I am not sure that those distinctions have any bearing on
the existence of first person indeterminacy and the problem to quantify
that indeterminacy.
Imagine you are duplicated iteratively. At the start you are in room R.
You are scanned and destroyed, painlessly, and we tell you that you
will be reconstituted in room 0 and in room 1.
Then Lee0 and Lee1 are invited in room R again and the experience is
repeated.
Rooms 0 and 1 are identical and quite separate. The only difference is
that in room 0 there is a big 0 drawn on the wall and in room 1 there
is a big 1 drawn on the wall.
You are asked to bet on your immediate and less immediate future
feeling. Precisely: we ask you to choose among the following bets:
Immediate:
A. I will see 0 on the wall.
B. I will see 1 on the wall.
C. I will see 0 on the wall and I will see 1 on the wall.
D. I will see 0 on the wall or I will see 1 on the wall.
Less immediate:
A'. I will always see 0 on the wall.
B'. I will always see 1 on the wall
C'. I will see as many 0 and 1 on the wall
D'. I will see an incompressible sequence of 0 and 1 on the wall
And there are three versions of the experiences. In a first version you
are always reconstituted in the two rooms.
In the second version we tell you in advance that once on 2 iterations,
you are reconstituted in one room only, and this one is chosen by
random with a coin.
In the third version we don't tell you if we choose the first version
or the second version.
We suppose obviously that you want maximize "your" benefit(s). Each
Lee-i is offered 5$ each time his bet is confirmed, but loose 5$ if he
makes a wrong bet.
What will be your strategy in each version? Will your strategy differ?
Note that I have purposefully avoided the use of "first person" in the
question, and so "C" can be considered as a little ambiguous. My point
will be to make you accept there is indeed an ambiguity in C.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
