Re: another puzzzle
Eric Cavalcanti wrote: I do not equate my identity with the matter that composes my body at all. I would say that my personal identity cannot be defined in a communicable way, in the way I see it. I believe there is something fundamental about consciousness. If you don't equate your identity with the matter of your body, then why would you believe that your stream of consciousness will always remain tied to the original body rather than one of the copies? What is special about the original body, besides the continuity of material with the material that made up the body before it was copied? There are many of us on this list who also think there's something fundamental about consciousness, but most of us would say that consciousness is tied to *patterns*, not to distinct physical objects. What makes me think that way is that I cannot believe that it is dangerous to have someone simply scan your body. But that's just a sort of common-sense reaction, no? In a world where copying was a regular occurence, people's common sense would tell them something different, since almost everyone would have memories of being scanned at some point and suddenly finding themselves as a copy. And if you try to imagine what kind of *theory* of consciousness/identity you'd have to come up with in in order for this common-sense position to be true, it seems to me that the theory would have to say that either physical or spatial continuity was somehow critical to determining what you'd be likely to experience...can you think of any alternative? Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
Le 24-juin-05, à 20:40, Eugen Leitl a écrit : On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 06:52:11PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Why don't we terminate this pointless thread, until we can actually make numerical models of sufficiently complex animals and people, so the question completely renders itself irrelevant? You answer like if by making things more precise, automatically the question will then vanished away, like if you knew the theorem before No, the nature of identity and cognition can be already described with sufficient precision. By making some assumptions. It is important to state them clearly so that we can derive clear testable consequences of it. I hope you don't take for granted Aristotle theory of cognition which is incompatible not only with empirical facts, but also with quite general and seemingly innocent theoretical assumption, like comp. It's just empirically threads about personal identity are fueled by sentiments similiar to now obsolete ones: those about phlogiston, vis vitalis and creationism. These, too, have gone round in circles for decades and centuries, leading pretty much nowhere. I agree with you. But I do think it is irrational to believe that the mind-body problem is already solved. In particular with comp: it is not solved. Statements I believe that first-person introspective view is special I agree with you. It is no more special that the taste of my coffee in the morning. But this does not mean that the feeling of that taste does not exist, or that we have find an explanation how neurons are associated with that state. Many scientist are gifted overlooking detailed conceptual problems related to that issue. and I'm convinced cognition is not a physical process described by known physical laws or require deep quantum magic, Needless to say I'm convinced that ... is always unscientific. Even I am convinced by 1+1=2. This one could be a sincere communication to a friend, not a scientific assertion. Now, what I have done, is a proof that if comp is true then notion like space, matter, energy, are secondary on the relation between numbers, and this in a verifiable way. continuity matters location is part of system identity, atoms themselves, not their spatiotemporal arrangement constitute identity are such sterile arguments. That was a list of (vague) hypotheses not of arguments. Ultimatively, they cannot be refuted by means other than a direct demonstration, preferrably from a first-person perspective Nobody in this list has ever do that. Some have pointed to that possibility. But that has always been a minority with no sequels. There are argumentations, and of course we go quicky up to the point we disagree so as to been able to progress. There is even two camps (mainly). Those who search some absolute measure and those who believes in the need and importance of a relative measure (to sum up very shortly). (but even then, some observers will still remain unconvinced, claiming the zombie clause, or trying to get the experimenter persecuted for their murder). Some use of zombie in reasoning are valid, some are not. starting to find the axioms. But: replace sufficiently complex animals and people by sufficiently complex machines or by sufficiently rich theories, and then computer science and logic illustrate and enlighten *already* the relevance of the question and the high counter-intuitive character of the possible answers). Absolutely. Apparently, too counter-intuitive for some people to accept, despite based on solid seat-of-the-pants science and empirically refuted by daily routine in IT. I'm not sure I understand? The counter-intuitive consequences of computer science have not been refuted by daily routine in IT. (Information Technologies?). But I don't think it is useful nor necessary to go to the math before understanding the intuitive but precise problems, and thought experiments like those in this (sequences) of threads are very illuminating. Why do you think the question is irrelevant? What do you Of course they're illuminating. But have they convinced many? It doesn't seem so. Well they should, or those not convinced should be asked to be kind enough to explain where in the argument they are not convinced, and in that case we always find that those people have not understand the hypothesis, or that we have been unclear But basically we tend to argue like in the proof of the irrationality of the square root of two. Now the problems are new (or it is new that we tackle them by the sc. method) and some people takes more time than other to figure out what we really talk about, but that is not a problem. Boltzman suicides himself in part due to the dogmatic opposition against the use of statistics in physics among physicist that time. Godel's theorem (like many solutions to Hilbert's problems) has been understood quasi at once, but they are exceptional
Re: another puzzzle
Jesse wrote In reality the molecules in your brain are constantly being recycled--if you believe that the changes that make up memories happen at the synapses, the article at http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20040601.html suggests all the molecules at the synapses are replaced in only 24 hours or so, and also that the entire brain is probably replaced every other month or so. So do you think the Eric Cavalcanti of six months ago is dead, and that your memories of having been him are false? Jesse All, Jesse, IMHO, has pointed out the elephant in the room. Is Sheldrake right about morphic fields guiding our path through the world-line? Or is our concept of reality out of whack? While I respect Sheldrake, for pointing out some obvious quirks in real world perceptions, I think the concept of morphic field is merely descriptive rather than explanatory. But if he's right, is anyone willing to blurt out for the record that consciousness may have its own pilot wave? R Miller
Re: another puzzzle
On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 11:23:33AM +1000, Eric Cavalcanti wrote: Furthermore, there is always some way to tell the difference between the copy and the original, in principle, even if that infomation is not epistemologically available to the subjects themselves. If the original flew to New York, then he This isn't true for two systems in the same quantum state./lunatic-fringe If you use two synchronized discrete systems, evolving along a trajectory in their state space they can't both encode their location by making measurements on their surroundings (due to synchronization constraint). One or both of them must be blind to the surroundings. The information about location must be encoded the environment around them, and be not accessible to the systems themselves at the same time. The difference, dear Brutus, is in the environment, not ourselves. would have interacted with the environment in a completely different way than if he stayed in the room, and that interaction deposits information about his trajectory in the environment in an irreversible manner. What do we care about something we cannot measure? I believe that the solution is not 3-rd person communicable. I believe that if I press the button 100 times, I'll never experience leaving the room, but there will be 100 copies of me claiming otherwise. That is because I believe You have diverged. Of course there are now many persons, suddenly. If you haven't diverged, you're only one person, and you can't both experience leaving the room and not leaving the room. that my 1-st person probability (in the sense of degree of belief) in this case is NOT equal to the fraction of functionally identical copies. I believe that my first person expectation is not measurable by 3rd parties. The only way I can be convinced otherwise is by doing the test. But then you would never know, because empirically (for 3rd parties) the result would be the same in either case. Run a synchronized SHRDLU simulation in two places, and ask it questions. Trivial experiment, and easy enough to do both in gedanken and in practice. Adding a physical robot arm only adds complication to the experiment, but it's the same in principle. I know that sounds somewhat solipsist in the end, but I can't believe that merely scanning me can affect my future. And I would like to be convinced otherwise, because I don't like solipsism. Why don't we terminate this pointless thread, until we can actually make numerical models of sufficiently complex animals and people, so the question completely renders itself irrelevant? -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: another puzzzle
Eric Cavalcanti writes: I do not equate my identity with the matter that composes my body at all. I would say that my personal identity cannot be defined in a communicable way, in the way I see it. I believe there is something fundamental about consciousness. I guess that my position could be made analogous to the following thought experiment: suppose you are playing a virtual simulation game, and in the game you enter a copy machine just like the one we are discussing. The game is programmed to feed your (real) brain with the experience of being in the same room every time you press the button but seing all these copies of your virtual body being created in New York. Of course there's no question of who you are. You are not the copies in New York. While playing the game you do not feel concerned that you could suddenly appear in New York and be trapped in the simulation after pressing the button. In this example my identity would undoubtedly be located in my real brain. I imagine an analogous situation for my identity in the real world, with the difference that I can't (or I don't know how to) unplug from it. But clearly it is not located in my body anymore than it was located in my virtual body inside the simulation. But of course I find this position quite uncomfortable, because I cannot acount for other people's consciousness in any well defined way. And since I don't like solipsism, i.e., I like to believe in other people's consciousness, I must say it's deeply unsatisfactory. But not enough to believe that I could experience being teleported to New York. You've made it clear that you would not enter a machine which destructively scans you and teleports you, because that would be like suicide. But what if you had no choice? Say the Enterprise is about to be blown up by Klingons, and it is clear that you can either stay on board and face certain death, or teleport out and face what you see as probable death. Would you choose to teleport? And if you did, and a moment later found yourself safely on the surface of a nearby planet, with all your friends from the Enterprise, would that convince you that teleportation is not suicide? And even if it didn't quite convince you, would you be pragramatic about it, i.e., I've tried it once and I didn't feel any different at all, so if it is suicide and replacement by a copy, then suicide and replacement by a copy isn't nearly as bad as I thought; so maybe I'll just start using it all the time like everyone else does. --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Over 80,000 jobs across all industries at Australia's #1 job site. http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: another puzzzle
Eric Cavalcanti wrote: If I were to be consistent, I would have to wonder whether the person I was a few months ago was really me, because the atoms comprising my body today are probably completely different. In fact, in *every respect* the person I was a few months ago differs more from me as I am today than I would differ from a teleported copy. In what way is the destruction of the original in teleportation different to the destruction of the original which occurs in the course of normal life, other than the speed with which it happens? If you collected all the discarded matter from your body over the course of a year, you would probably have more than enough to build a whole alternative person. Would you consider that person dead, replaced by a mere copy? If not, could you give a consistent explanation for why you would consider teleportation to be basically different? I do not equate my identity with the matter that composes my body at all. I would say that my personal identity cannot be defined in a communicable way, in the way I see it. I believe there is something fundamental about consciousness. If you don't equate your identity with the matter of your body, then why would you believe that your stream of consciousness will always remain tied to the original body rather than one of the copies? What is special about the original body, besides the continuity of material with the material that made up the body before it was copied? There are many of us on this list who also think there's something fundamental about consciousness, but most of us would say that consciousness is tied to *patterns*, not to distinct physical objects. I guess that my position could be made analogous to the following thought experiment: suppose you are playing a virtual simulation game, and in the game you enter a copy machine just like the one we are discussing. The game is programmed to feed your (real) brain with the experience of being in the same room every time you press the button but seing all these copies of your virtual body being created in New York. Of course there's no question of who you are. You are not the copies in New York. While playing the game you do not feel concerned that you could suddenly appear in New York and be trapped in the simulation after pressing the button. But this thought experiment doesn't really explain anything about *why* you expect your stream of consciousness to be tied to the original body. I could equally well imagine a virtual simulation game where, when you press the copy button, your simulated surroundings suddenly change and you find yourself in the copying chamber, looking back at the original body sitting in the scanning chamber, which you no longer control. Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
rmiller wrote: Jesse wrote In reality the molecules in your brain are constantly being recycled--if you believe that the changes that make up memories happen at the synapses, the article at http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20040601.html suggests all the molecules at the synapses are replaced in only 24 hours or so, and also that the entire brain is probably replaced every other month or so. So do you think the Eric Cavalcanti of six months ago is dead, and that your memories of having been him are false? Jesse All, Jesse, IMHO, has pointed out the elephant in the room. Is Sheldrake right about morphic fields guiding our path through the world-line? You don't need morphic fields to explain the fact that the structure of our brain (and therefore our behavior) remains the same even as the individual molecules get recycled--that's just molecular biology, cells are always using nutrient molecules to build new copies of the same proteins, and meanwhile getting rid of waste molecules from old proteins that have broken down, and the way they do this is well-understood. There's a philosophical mystery here if you believe that consciousness is tied to the particular physical material of your brain as opposed to the pattern of your brain (I'd choose the second option), but I don't think there's any great biological mystery about it. Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
Le 24-juin-05, à 12:27, Eugen Leitl a écrit : Why don't we terminate this pointless thread, until we can actually make numerical models of sufficiently complex animals and people, so the question completely renders itself irrelevant? You answer like if by making things more precise, automatically the question will then vanished away, like if you knew the theorem before starting to find the axioms. But: replace sufficiently complex animals and people by sufficiently complex machines or by sufficiently rich theories, and then computer science and logic illustrate and enlighten *already* the relevance of the question and the high counter-intuitive character of the possible answers). But I don't think it is useful nor necessary to go to the math before understanding the intuitive but precise problems, and thought experiments like those in this (sequences) of threads are very illuminating. Why do you think the question is irrelevant? What do you mean exactly, giving that some people works hard to got yes/no clearcut questions if only to be able to distinguish between the different ways *we* approach those questions. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: another puzzzle
On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 06:52:11PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Why don't we terminate this pointless thread, until we can actually make numerical models of sufficiently complex animals and people, so the question completely renders itself irrelevant? You answer like if by making things more precise, automatically the question will then vanished away, like if you knew the theorem before No, the nature of identity and cognition can be already described with sufficient precision. It's just empirically threads about personal identity are fueled by sentiments similiar to now obsolete ones: those about phlogiston, vis vitalis and creationism. These, too, have gone round in circles for decades and centuries, leading pretty much nowhere. Statements I believe that first-person introspective view is special and I'm convinced cognition is not a physical process described by known physical laws or require deep quantum magic, continuity matters location is part of system identity, atoms themselves, not their spatiotemporal arrangement constitute identity are such sterile arguments. Ultimatively, they cannot be refuted by means other than a direct demonstration, preferrably from a first-person perspective (but even then, some observers will still remain unconvinced, claiming the zombie clause, or trying to get the experimenter persecuted for their murder). starting to find the axioms. But: replace sufficiently complex animals and people by sufficiently complex machines or by sufficiently rich theories, and then computer science and logic illustrate and enlighten *already* the relevance of the question and the high counter-intuitive character of the possible answers). Absolutely. Apparently, too counter-intuitive for some people to accept, despite based on solid seat-of-the-pants science and empirically refuted by daily routine in IT. But I don't think it is useful nor necessary to go to the math before understanding the intuitive but precise problems, and thought experiments like those in this (sequences) of threads are very illuminating. Why do you think the question is irrelevant? What do you Of course they're illuminating. But have they convinced many? It doesn't seem so. mean exactly, giving that some people works hard to got yes/no clearcut questions if only to be able to distinguish between the different ways *we* approach those questions. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: another puzzzle
On 6/23/05, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Eric Cavalcanti writes: I don't think it is that good an analogy for the following reason: I don't believe that pushing a button to create a copy of me in New York will increase my expectation of experiencing New York, while I believe that flipping a coin to decide whether I'll take a plane to New York does. The latter case you could describe in terms of a splitting of the muiltiverse in two universes: one in which I go to New York and one in which I don't. The former I would represent in terms of a single universe where I will not experience New York, but only a copy of me will. I think there is something fundamental about the fact that the copies can meet *in principle*. It doesn't matter how hard it is, how far away you put them, or how controlled you do it. All it matters for me is that they could, in principle, communicate. In this case I don't believe I could have a first person expectation of being in New York. Eric2 finds himself in New York: E2- Wow! It worked after all! I really am in New York! E1- You might be in New York, but I haven't gone anywhere, and I'm the original. E2- How can you demonstrate that you have any more claim to being Eric than I have? I know everything Eric knows, I look like Eric, I certainly feel 100% certain that I'm Eric; what else could I possibly do to convince you than that? E1- But you materialised out of thin air [or whatever copies materialise out of], whereas nothing happened to me, I'm still here where I was. So obviously I'm the original! E2- None of that proves that you have any more claim to being Eric than I am, even if you could somehow show you were the original and I a copy. However, I have some information that might interest you. The people who set up this duplication procedure have not been entirely honest with you. When the original Eric pushed that button, a copy was created, but locally rather than in New York. In fact, the copy was created in a room exactly like the one you are in now. Then, the original Eric flew to New York in the normal way. So you see, I'm the original and you are the copy! E1- But that's ridiculous! I feel *exactly* the same as I did before pressing that button; nothing at all happened to *me*, so I have to be the original! E2- So how do you think you should have felt if you were the copy? That's the whole idea of a functionally identical copy: no-one, neither the copy nor anyone else, can tell that there is any difference. And anyway, it happens to us all the time even without duplicating machines. Almost all the atoms in our body are replaced over the course of months or years. It happens gradually, but if it happened quickly, the effect would be that you would completely disintegrate and be replaced by a near-identical copy who thinks he is you, remembers everything you remember, etc. How is that any different to what has just happened to us? E1- For one thing, that would be different because there is only one Eric extant at any one time. E2- Which would have been the case if we were using destructive teleportation, where the original is destroyed in the process of scanning it. But you're being a bit inconsistent, aren't you? You're saying that if the original were destroyed and replaced with a copy, as happens in the course of life over time, then the copy would have the right to call himself the original; whereas if the original were not destroyed, the copy would not be the original. And yet in both cases the copy would be exactly the same. E1- I don't know about the same; I might feel more at ease if you weren't around... E2- Oh! So now you admit that you're the copy! [and we could go on like this for quite a while, with no resolution to the problem...] Yep, it's a hard problem, and I heard that line of argumentation hundreds of times. But I am still not convinced that the mere fact that someone scans me would increase my expectation of having a discontinuity of experience. I agree that the dialogue above would happen (or not exactly, because Eric wouldn't believe that destructive teleportation is teleportation at all. He would say that it is homicide followed by duplication. In fact, I believe that in your example Eric the copy would probably agree that he is a copy after seing evidence of that, and would live with his life without claiming the rights of the original. That would make him very unhappy and confused, of course, and then Eric the original would pity him and help him as he would help a twin brother. Furthermore, there is always some way to tell the difference between the copy and the original, in principle, even if that infomation is not epistemologically available to the subjects themselves. If the original flew to New York, then he would have interacted with the environment in a completely different way than if he stayed in the room, and that
Re: another puzzzle
Eric Cavalcanti wrote: In fact, I believe that in your example Eric the copy would probably agree that he is a copy after seing evidence of that, and would live with his life without claiming the rights of the original. That would make him very unhappy and confused, of course, and then Eric the original would pity him and help him as he would help a twin brother. In reality the molecules in your brain are constantly being recycled--if you believe that the changes that make up memories happen at the synapses, the article at http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20040601.html suggests all the molecules at the synapses are replaced in only 24 hours or so, and also that the entire brain is probably replaced every other month or so. So do you think the Eric Cavalcanti of six months ago is dead, and that your memories of having been him are false? Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
Eric Cavalcanti writes: I believe that the solution is not 3-rd person communicable. I believe that if I press the button 100 times, I'll never experience leaving the room, but there will be 100 copies of me claiming otherwise. That is because I believe that my 1-st person probability (in the sense of degree of belief) in this case is NOT equal to the fraction of functionally identical copies. I believe that my first person expectation is not measurable by 3rd parties. The only way I can be convinced otherwise is by doing the test. But then you would never know, because empirically (for 3rd parties) the result would be the same in either case. I know that sounds somewhat solipsist in the end, but I can't believe that merely scanning me can affect my future. And I would like to be convinced otherwise, because I don't like solipsism. What do you mean, the only way I could be convinced otherwise is by doing the test? You agree that there is no 3rd person difference, but the whole point is that there can't be any *1st* person difference either! What do you imagine this 1st person difference could be? Actually, I sympathise with you, because for many years I wondered, if I went into a teleporter, would the person who came out the other end really be me, or would I have been committing suicide? Then a few years ago, on a Sunday afternoon driving home from the supermarket, it suddenly dawned on me that this was a crazy question. Other than thinking I was me, remembering my thoughts, behaving like me, looking like me, etc., what other evidence could there possibly be that the copy really was me? If I were to be consistent, I would have to wonder whether the person I was a few months ago was really me, because the atoms comprising my body today are probably completely different. In fact, in *every respect* the person I was a few months ago differs more from me as I am today than I would differ from a teleported copy. In what way is the destruction of the original in teleportation different to the destruction of the original which occurs in the course of normal life, other than the speed with which it happens? If you collected all the discarded matter from your body over the course of a year, you would probably have more than enough to build a whole alternative person. Would you consider that person dead, replaced by a mere copy? If not, could you give a consistent explanation for why you would consider teleportation to be basically different? --Stathis Papaioannou _ Single? Start dating at Lavalife. Try our 7 day FREE trial! http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19179
Re: another puzzzle
Tom Caylor writes: quote-- The flip side of the coin is that apparently the probability of having a next OM is 100% (everything exists). In this theory, no matter what God does with 10^100 copies, there are 10^100^n other identical next OMs out there to replace them. It seems like what I've seen so far on this list is an exercise in forgetting that everything exists for a moment to do a thought experiment to conclude more about everything exists. --endquote That is the basic idea behind these thought experiments with copies: as a more easily understood analogy for what happens in the multiverse/plenitude. The relative measure of OM's does make a difference, because it determines which of the candidate successor OM's you are most likely to experience. In general, it is *far* more likely that a coherent series of OM's will occur as a result of brain activity than exotic, random events out there somewhere. Even if you die, it is far more likely that your next OM will come from scanning your frozen brain in the future, or reconstructing your mind by brute force simulation of every possible human mind in some massive future quantum computer, or some other deliberate effort on the part of our descendants, rather than some completely random process. --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis Papaioannou writes: That is the basic idea behind these thought experiments with copies: as a more easily understood analogy for what happens in the multiverse/plenitude. I don't agree, and in fact I think the use of copies as an analog for what happens in the multiverse is fundamentally misleading. If it were not, you could create the same thought experiments just by talking about flipping coins and such. What is the analog, in the multiverse, of pushing a button to make a copy? When faced with the chance of torture, you are going to push a button to make a copy. What does that correspond to in the multiverse? The closest I can suggest is flipping a coin such that you don't get tortured if it comes up heads. Well, that destroys the whole point of the thought experiment, doesn't it? Of course you'll flip the coin. Anyone would. Pushing a button to make a copy is completely different. That's why we have so much disagreement about what to do in that case, while there would be no disagreement about what to do if you could flip a coin to avoid being tortured. That in itself should be a give-away that the situations are not as analogous as some are suggesting. I would suggest going back over these thought experiments and substitute flipping coins for making copies, and see if the paradoxes don't go away. I believe that many of the paradoxes in the copy experiments are because people do not grasp the full meaning of what copying implies. They are thinking very much in the lines Stathis suggests, that it is a variant on flipping a coin. But it's not. Copying is fundamentally different from flipping a coin, because copying increases measure while coin flipping does not. Measure is crucially important in multiverse models because it is the only foundation for whatever predictive or explanatory ability they possess. Choosing to overlook measure differences in analyzing thought experiments inevitably leads to error. Treating copying like coin flipping is just such an error. If you would instead think through the full implications of copying you would see that it is completely different from flipping a coin. The increase of measure that occurs in copying manifests in the world in tangible and obvious ways. Its phenomenological consequences are no less important. These considerations must be included when analyzing thought experiments involving copies, otherwise you are led into paradox and confusion. Hal Finney
Re: another puzzzle
Hal Finney writes: Stathis Papaioannou writes: That is the basic idea behind these thought experiments with copies: as a more easily understood analogy for what happens in the multiverse/plenitude. I don't agree, and in fact I think the use of copies as an analog for what happens in the multiverse is fundamentally misleading. If it were not, you could create the same thought experiments just by talking about flipping coins and such. What is the analog, in the multiverse, of pushing a button to make a copy? When faced with the chance of torture, you are going to push a button to make a copy. What does that correspond to in the multiverse? When you flip a coin in the multiverse, you are copied many times along with the rest of the universe, with half the copies seeing heads and the other half tails. If an experience such as torture is dependent on the outcome, half the copies will be tortured and the other half won't. From a first person perspective, it looks like there is only one universe with probabilistic laws; from a godlike third person perspective, it is all deterministic, with every possible outcome occurring in some branch or other. The difference between the multiverse and thought experiments with copies is, of course, that in the latter case only a part of the universe is duplicated, and it is possible that the copies will meet. If you control conditions in copying thought experiments to eliminate the effects of these differences, then they should be a good analogy for what happens in the multiverse. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis wrote:To summarise my position, it is this: the measure of an observer moment is relevant when a given observer is contemplating what will happen next... Now, minimising acronym use, could you explain what your understanding is of how measure changes with number of copies of an OM which are instantiated, and if it doesn't, then how does it change, and when you use it in calculating how someone's life will go from OM to OM.
Jesse wrote: Well, see my last response to Hal Finney... The measure on the set of all unique observer-moments is really the fundamental thing, physical notions like "number of copies" are secondary. But I have speculated on the "anticipatory" idea where multiple copies affects your conditional probabilities to the extend that the copies are likely to diverge in the future; so in your example, as long as those 10^100 copies are running in isolated virtual environments and following completely deterministic rules, they won't diverge, so my speculation is that the absolute and relative measures would not be affected in any way by this... There is the question of what it is, exactly, that's supposed to be moving between OMs, and whether this introduces some sort of fundamental duality into my picture of reality...
Soif the copies are completely synchronized, this puzzle is a no-brainer (easy). But what about if one of the neurons in one of the copies does a little jig of its own for second?
More in general, I'm doubting the legitimacy of the puzzle in the first place: If, in your theory, measure really corresponds to the probability of having a next observer moment, and then you bring God into the picture and have him totally mess up the probabilities by doing what he wants, how are you going to conclude anything meaningful as a continuation of your definition of measure? The flip side of the coin is that apparently the probability of having a next OM is 100% ("everything exists"). In this theory, no matter what God does with 10^100 copies, there are 10^100^n other identical next OMs out there to replace them.It seems like what I've seen so far on this listis an exercise in forgetting that "everything exists" for a moment to do a thought experimentto conclude more about "everything exists".
Tom Caylor
Re: another puzzzle
Le 18-juin-05, 13:09, Eric Cavalcanti a crit : But with comp, then yes, I agree that the memory of the newly created copies is just as real as any other memory. ok Or maybe not quite. Because we cannot find any evidence that we were created 10 minutes ago. That hypothesis is indistinguishable of the hypothesis that we have been existing continually over time. Except in our thought experiments (which *assumes* comp). A comp practitioner, who accepts to travel with teleporters will have evidence (but no proof though) that his local body has been created recently when he goes out of the reconstitution box. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: another puzzzle
On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 11:02:01AM +1000, Russell Standish wrote: Applying the SSA, the colour of the light when you first find yourself in the room is more likely to be the high measure state than the low measure state. (You didn't state what that colour was, but hopefully the fictional prisoner can remember it). The subjective duty cycle is 1:1. Because of the their minds perfectly synchronized constraint there's only one individuum. The number of instances doesn't matter, because they have no chance of experiencing anything else but what the sync master experiences. Unless I'm missing something there's no way to tell but to flip a coin, which gives you a 0.5 probability of being sent home. With the RSSA, subsequent states tell you no information whatsoever about which state is high measure. With the ASSA, you would expect that the light remains in one state most of the time (googol out of googol+1). So the fact that the light is alternating (and that you trust that the letter is in fact true) implies that the ASSA does not apply in this thought experiment. Cheers On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 12:12:59AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Having absorbed this information, you reason as follows. Suppose that right now you are one of the copies sampled randomly from all the copies that you could possibly be. If you guess that you are one of the 10^100 group, you will be right with probability (10^100)/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals one). If you guess that you are the sole copy, you will be right with probability 1/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals zero). Therefore, you would be foolish indeed if you don't guess that you in the 10^100 group. And since the light right now is red, red must correspond with the 10^100 copy state and green with the single copy state. But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: another puzzzle
Le 17-juin-05, 07:47, Eric Cavalcanti a crit : if you believe God's story, the most likely is that you have just been created after the last switch, and you have a false memory of being there for a while. I don't see why you call that memory false. Suppose you begin to play chess with the computer at your job office, and, after having save the play on a disk, you continue to play chess with your computer at home. Would say the computer at home has false memories of the play? In that case it is obvious that comp makes *all* memories false, so that we can drop out the adjective false, it does not add information. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: another puzzzle
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 23:31, Quentin Anciaux a crit: Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 16:12, Stathis Papaioannou a crit : One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. SNIP But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? Hi Stathis, If I was in this position, I would not even try to guess, because you (or god :) are explaining me that it is possible to copy me (not only me, but really all the behavior/feelings/mental state/indoor/outdoor state copying, a copy as good as an original or a copy cannot say which is which and even a 3rd person observer could not distinguish). If it is the case, this means that : 1- I'm clonable 2- I is not real 3- A single I does not means anything So I ask you, if it's the case (real complete copy...), why should I guess anything ? Who is the I that must guess ? You can only experience being one person at a time, no matter how faithful and how numerous the copies are. A simpler example than the above to demonstrate what this would be like is given by Bruno Marchal in step 3 of his UDA. You get into a teleporter in Brussels, and it transmits the information to build a copy of your body to Moscow and Washington. To a third person observing this, he notes, as you have above, that after the teleportation there is no longer a toi, because you have become a vous (and not because we're being polite). For you, the effect is that you find yourself *either* in Moscow *or* Washington, each with probability 0.5. Unless you meet the other Quentin, there is no way you can tell, however many times you try this, that the machine operator hasn't flipped a coin to decide which (one) city to send you. This is rather like the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where all possibilities are realised, so that it is a deterministic theory, but from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of any of the worlds, it is indistinguishable from the probabilistic Copenhagen interpretation. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Have fun with your mobile! Ringtones, wallpapers, games and more. http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl
Re: another puzzzle
Hi Jesse, I was still trying to put some sort of reply together to your last post, but I think your water analogy is making me more rather than less confused as to your actual position on these issues, which is obviously something you have thought deeply about. With the puzzle in this thread, I was hoping that it would be clear that the subject in the room *has* to experience the light changing colour every 10 minutes, and therefore can draw no conclusion about which state is the high measure one. It seems that many on this list would indeed say that running a mind in parallel increases its measure, and some would say (eg. Saibal Mitra in recent discussions - I still have to get back to you too, Saibal) that the subject would therefore find himself continually cycling in the 10^100 group. To summarise my position, it is this: the measure of an observer moment is relevant when a given observer is contemplating what will happen next. If there are 2N successor OM's where he will experience A and 3N successor OM's where he will experience B, then he can assume Pr(A)=0.4 and Pr(B)=0.6. Only the ratio matters. Moreover, the ratio/ relative measure can only be of relevance at a particular time point, when considering the immediate future. To say that an individual will not live to 5000 years even though there exist OM's where he is this age, because his measure is much higher when he is under 100 years of age, makes no sense to me. Now, minimising acronym use, could you explain what your understanding is of how measure changes with number of copies of an OM which are instantiated, and if it doesn't, then how does it change, and when you use it in calculating how someone's life will go from OM to OM. Also, you have talked about memory loss, perhaps even complete memory loss, while still being you: in what sense are you still you? Isn't that like saying I am the reincarnation of Alexander the Great or something? You say we need a theory of consciousness to understand these things, but don't you mean a theory of personal identity? I can't see the former knocking on our door in the near future, but I'm pretty confidant about the latter. Thanks for the effort you are putting into explaining this stuff. --Stathis Papaioannou Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I agree you have given the correct answer to my puzzle: from a first person perspective, identical mental states are the same mental state, and at any point there is a 50-50 chance that you are either one of the 10^100 group or on your own. But not everyone on this list would agree, which is why I made up this puzzle. Would you say that because you think running multiple identical copies of a given mind in parallel doesn't necessarily increase the absolute measure of those observer-moments (that would be my opinion), or because you don't believe the concept of absolute measure on observer-moments is meaningful at all, or for some other reason? Jesse _ Sell your car for $9 on carpoint.com.au http://www.carpoint.com.au/sellyourcar
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis wrote: ...Once the difficulty of creating an AI was overcome, it would be a trivial matter to copy the program to another machine (or as a separate process on the same machine) and give it the same inputs. OK this is weird. Every time I get an email from Stathis, I actually get two of them exactly alike (to the nearest bit). Will the real Stathis please send me an email? Tom Caylor
Re: another puzzzle
... or should I say "spooky"? Tom Caylor
Re: another puzzzle
Just to clarify my view on copies, if they start to diverge from me the moment they are created, then they aren't me and I don't care about them in a *selfish* way. That is, if a copy experiences a pain, I don't experience that pain, which I think is as good a test as any to distinguish self from other. This doesn't mean I should be indifferent to the copy's suffering just because he is a copy; I should treat him just like anyone else. What my actual attitude to the copy would be I'm not really sure, having never been in such a situation. I might be resentful and uncomfortable around him, or I may be over-solicitous. But whatever my feelings are, there is a good chance they will be reciprocated. Your scenario with the person being shot when he has just walked out of a duplicating booth reminds me of a number of SF novels where people back up their minds on a regular basis, in case they get killed in an accident. This may help the dead person's family, but it always seemed to me rather pointless from a selfish point of view, since I would still be losing the memories since the backup, and I would therefore still be afraid of dying. If the backup were done continually, within milliseconds of any thought or experience, that would be a different matter. Which brings us to death. My definition of death is that it occurs at a particular time point in an observer's life when there is no successor observer moment ever, anywhere. So with the backup example above, if you suffered a fatal accident today and had the instantant backup machinery going, everything up to the moment you lost consciousness would have been recorded, so your mind can be emulated using the data, and you wake up as an upload (or robot , or newly grown human clone) just as you would wake up in hospital if the accident had rendered you unconscious rather than killed you. Whereas if you had only the el cheapo once a day backup, the last thing you see before you are killed is the last thing you will ever see. With my example, it is important to remeber that the 10^100 copies are *exact* copies which stay in lockstep for the full 10 minutes. If they were initially exact copies and then allowed to diverge, terminating them after 10 minutes would be an act of mass murder, because once they are terminated, their memories and personalities are gone forever: there is no successor OM. (Whether you can call it murder, which is bad, when God does it is an interesting aside, since by definition God never does anything bad.) However, with the exact copies as described, there definitely *is* a successor OM, provided by the single copy in the room when the 10 minutes is up. The continuity is even better than with the instant backup machine described above, since nothing special needs to be done other than allow one of the 10^100 to continue living. So in this case, terminating the 10^100 copies is not murder at all, because subjectively, all the copies' stream of consciousness would continue seamlessly. Finally, there is the idea that a conscious entity's measure has some effect on the entity. If you have given an explanation of why you think this is so, I have missed it or (more likely) not recognised it. Do you think there is any empirical test that can be done to demonstrate higher or lower measure? Do you accept the way I have presented the thought experiment above, i.e. that when God creates or destroys 10^100 copies the subject notices absolutely nothing other than the light changing colour, or do you think he would notice some other difference? If so, it would have to be an *enormous* difference, given the numbers we are talking about; what difference would it make if the ratio were, say, 2:1 instead? Can you honestly say that this subjective effect of measure isn't something that will be cut down by Occam's Razor as a needless complication? Sorry if the last paragraph sounds like I'm being provocative, but this one topic seems to be the source of most of the disagreement between us. --Stathis Papaioannou Hal Finney writes: Stathis Papaioannou writes: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind,
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. RM: You've just described me at work in my office. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. RM. . .at my annual New Years' party. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Having absorbed this information, you reason as follows. Suppose that right now you are one of the copies sampled randomly from all the copies that you could possibly be. If you guess that you are one of the 10^100 group, you will be right with probability (10^100)/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals one). If you guess that you are the sole copy, you will be right with probability 1/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals zero). Therefore, you would be foolish indeed if you don't guess that you in the 10^100 group. And since the light right now is red, red must correspond with the 10^100 copy state and green with the single copy state. But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? RM: Nothing wrong with the premise or the reasoning IMHO. Happens to me every day---while sitting at a traffic light alone in my car(s) all 10^100 of me come up with a great idea---I try to write it down and the light changes to green. --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. \ (snip) The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. RM's two cents worth: If all the 10^100 copies have exactly the same sensory input, exactly the same past, exactly the same environment and have exactly the same behavior systems, then there would be no overall increase in complexity (no additional links between nodes), but there would overall be a multiplication of intensity (10^100). Would this result in a more clarified perception during the time period when one is represented (magnified?) by 10^100? It's an open switch (i.e. who knows???) However, the increase in intensity would *not* result in greater perception; that would involve linking additional nodes---i.e. getting more neurons or elements of the behavior system involved---and the number of links over the 10^100 copies would remain static. If Stathis includes the possibility of chaos into the system at the node level (corresponding to random fluctuations among interactions at the node level) then these differences among the 10^100 copies would amount to 10^100 specific layers of the individual all linked by the equivalence of the similarly-configured behavior systems. If one could see this from the perspective of (say) Hilbert space, it may look like a deck of perfectly similar individuals with minor variations or fuzziness. These links as well as the fuzziness over many worlds may be what corresponds to consciousness.
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there What's wrong with the reasoning here? This is also in response to your explanation to me of copying etc. in your last post to "Many pasts?..." I think there is too much we don't know about quantum behavior vs. macro-matter (e.g. human bodies) behavior to say that copying, and subsequent diverging histories,is not like dividing by zero.I think that even if it were possible to copy a body (i.e. exactly)and have more than one copy at the same time, for the purposes of your thought-experiment why wouldn't it be the equivalent of quantum entanglement where you really have the equivalent of just the original? This is where I think the reasoning in your puzzle is flawed. Having 10^100+1 identicalbodies is equivalent to having one body, so it makes it a 50/50 chance. Until the information is actually revealed, it would be just like the copying didn't happen, therefore there is no way to tell which state (copied or not copied) is currently in effect. Even though this may not be an appealing option, I believe that copying, if possible,wou! ldn't change anything having to do with identity(it doesn't "add to the measure"). Like Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In addition, even if copying a body with two subsequent diverging histories were possible, why wouldn't this become just like two different people? Who cares if there are disputes? That's nothing new. What does that have to do with consiousness? I don't believe that identity is dependent on consciousness. Tom Caylor
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis Papaioannou writes: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Let me make a few comments about this experiment. I would find it quite alarming to be experiencing these conditions. When the light changes and I go from the high to the low measure state, I would expect to die. When it goes from the low to the high measure state, I would expect that my next moment is in a brand new consciousness (that shares memories with the old). Although the near-certainty of death is balanced by the near-certainty of birth, it is to such an extreme degree that it seems utterly bizarre. Conscious observers should not be created and destroyed so cavalierly, not if they know about it. Suppose you stepped out of a duplicating booth, and a guy walked up with a gun, aimed it at you, pulled the trigger and killed you. Would you say, oh, well, I'm only losing two seconds of memories, my counterpart will go on anyway? I don't think so, I think you would be extremely alarmed and upset at the prospect of your death. The existence of your counterpart would be small comfort. I am speaking specifically of your views, Stathis, because I think you have already expressed your disinterest in your copies. God is basically putting you in this situation, but to an enormously, unimaginably vaster degree. He is literally playing God with your consciousness. I would say it's a very bad thing to do. And what happens at the end? Suppose I guess right, all 10^100 of me? How do we all go home? Does God create 10^100 copies of entire universes for all my copies to go home to as a reward? I doubt it! Somehow I think the old guy is going to kill me off again, all but one infinitesimal fraction of me, and let this tiny little piece go home. Well, so what? What good is that? Why do I care, given that I am going to die, what happens to the one in 10^100 part of me? That's an inconceivably small fraction. In fact, I might actually prefer to have that tiny fraction stay in the room so I can be reborn. Having 10^100 copies 50% of the time gives me a lot higher measure than just being one person. I know I just finished complaining about the ethical problems of putting a conscious entity in this situation, but maybe there are reasons to think it's good. So I don't necessarily see that I am motivated to follow God's instructions and try to guess. I might just want to sit there. And in any case, the reward from guessing right seems pretty slim and unmotivating. Congratulations, you get to die. Whoopie. Hal Finney
Re: another puzzzle
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 16:12, Stathis Papaioannou a crit: One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. SNIP But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? Hi Stathis, If I was in this position, I would not even try to guess, because you (or god :) are explaining me that it is possible to copy me (not only me, but really all the behavior/feelings/mental state/indoor/outdoor state copying, a copy as good as an original or a copy cannot say which is which and even a 3rd person observer could not distinguish). If it is the case, this means that : 1- I'm clonable 2- I is not real 3- A single I does not means anything So I ask you, if it's the case (real complete copy...), why should I guess anything ? Who is the I that must guess ? Quentin
Re: another puzzzle
Tom Caylor wrote: Stathis wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there What's wrong with the reasoning here? This is also in response to your explanation to me of copying etc. in your last post to Many pasts?... I think there is too much we don't know about quantum behavior vs. macro-matter (e.g. human bodies) behavior to say that copying, and subsequent diverging histories, is not like dividing by zero. I think that even if it were possible to copy a body (i.e. exactly) and have more than one copy at the same time, for the purposes of your thought-experiment why wouldn't it be the equivalent of quantum entanglement where you really have the equivalent of just the original? This is where I think the reasoning in your puzzle is flawed. Having 10^100+1 identical bodies is equivalent to having one body, so it makes it a 50/50 chance. Until the information is actually revealed, it would be just like the copying didn't happen, therefore there is no way to tell which state (copied or not copied) is currently in effect. Even though this may not be an appealing option, I believe that copying, if possible, wouldn't change anything having to do with identity (it doesn't add to the measure). Like Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In addition, even if copying a body with two subsequent diverging histories were possible, why wouldn't this become just like two different people? Who cares if there are disputes? That's nothing new. What does that have to do with consiousness? I don't believe that identity is dependent on consciousness. The idea of exact copying not being consistent with QM is raised quite often on this list. The problem with this is that you don't need literally exact copying to get the same mental state. If you did, our minds would diverge wildly after only nanoseconds, given the constant changes that occur even at the level of macromolecules, let alone the quantum state of every subatomic particle. It is like saying you could never copy a CD, because you could never get the quantum states exactly the same as in the original. Brains are far more complex than CD's, but like CD's they must be tolerant of a fair amount of noise at *way* above the quantum level, or you would at the very least turn into a different person every time you scratched your head. If this does not convince you, then you can imagine that the thought experiments involving exact copying are being implemented on a (classical) computer, and the people are actually AI programs. Once the difficulty of creating an AI was overcome, it would be a trivial matter to copy the program to another machine (or as a separate process on the same machine) and give it the same inputs. As for your other questions: yes, of course once the copies diverge they are completely different people. For the purposes of this exercise, however, I am assuming they *don't* diverge. In that case, I agree you have given the correct answer to my puzzle: from a first person perspective, identical mental states are the same mental state, and at any point there is a 50-50 chance that you are either one of the 10^100 group or on your own. But not everyone on this list would agree, which is why I made up this puzzle. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dating? Try Lavalife ? get 7 days FREE! Sign up NOW. http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19180
Re: another puzzzle
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I agree you have given the correct answer to my puzzle: from a first person perspective, identical mental states are the same mental state, and at any point there is a 50-50 chance that you are either one of the 10^100 group or on your own. But not everyone on this list would agree, which is why I made up this puzzle. Would you say that because you think running multiple identical copies of a given mind in parallel doesn't necessarily increase the absolute measure of those observer-moments (that would be my opinion), or because you don't believe the concept of absolute measure on observer-moments is meaningful at all, or for some other reason? Jesse
Re: another puzzzle
On 6/17/05, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. (...) a light (...) alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. (...) Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. (...) But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? To make the story more visualisable, imagine that God throws a coin (since he doesn't play dice) to decide whether he will initialise the system in state A (one person) or B (many). We can imagine that at this point the universe is split in two, and in universe 1 there are many people in the room, while in universe 2 there is only one. After ten minutes, God switches the state of *both* universes. In universe 1 there is now one person in the room, while in universe 2 there are many, most of which with a false memory of being there for more than 10 minutes. This happens for a while before the people in the rooms start to learn about the experiment and God's game. But you can convince yourself that it doesn't matter much what was the initial state and how many times the light has switched; if you believe God's story, the most likely is that you have just been created after the last switch, and you have a false memory of being there for a while. Eric.
