Re: The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
Computer scientist's or. If you read it that way it's a yes or no question. Misreading an exclusive or as an inclusive or is often used in CS/Math jokes. He's also indicating that his model of personal identity allows branching, i.e. you're both. If you think you will be the Prestige beforehand, the man in the box will find for himself a rude awakening, if you think you'll be the man in the box beforehand, the Prestige is in for a pleasant surprise. It's clearly wrong to fix your expectation as being one of these persons, which leaves two remaining options. You're both xor you're neither. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
It's a question to which the answer could be yes, I would be the man in the box or the man in the prestige (believes only one is the original, and the other is a copy that doesn't preserve the original's consciousness) or yes, I will be the man in the box and the man in the prestige (believes the original is duplicated and ends up as both) or no, I won't be either of them (believes the original is destroyed and two copies are created) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
John Clark, you have often praised the movie The Prestige on this list. I am curious to know, how did you interpret the line: Would I be the man in the box or the prestige? (Spoken/Thought by the magician Robert Angier, prior to duplicating himself to two locations: a box filled with water and on to a stage before an applauding audience) Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: John Clark, you have often praised the movie The Prestige on this list. I am curious to know, how did you interpret the line: Would I be the man in the box or the prestige? I would answer yes. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
Yes to what? It wasn't a yes or no question. Jason On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 11:49 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: John Clark, you have often praised the movie The Prestige on this list. I am curious to know, how did you interpret the line: Would I be the man in the box or the prestige? I would answer yes. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Prestige (Spoiler Alert) and First Person Indeterminacy
On Mon, May 4, 2015 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Yes to what? It wasn't a yes or no question. Given the way the personal pronoun was used I think it was a yes or no question. John K Clark Jason On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 11:49 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: John Clark, you have often praised the movie The Prestige on this list. I am curious to know, how did you interpret the line: Would I be the man in the box or the prestige? I would answer yes. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Greg Egan's Permutation City was: The prestige
Bruno, more seriously imo. And then I tell you without further explanation that the prestige is truly more. We can come back on this later. OK I cave in, I will watch this movie :-)) Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Greg Egan's Permutation City was: The prestige
Le 17-avr.-08, à 18:15, Günther Greindl a écrit : I read the Wikipedia of The prestige (too lazy to watch the movie ;-) and, yes, it's classical comp stuff *grin* What I would like to recommend to everybody on the list is Greg Egan's book Permutation City Yes that is a very good book. But with all my respect for Egan, it does not adds so much to Galouye. Egan should have taken some of his idea more seriously imo. And then I tell you without further explanation that the prestige is truly more. We can come back on this later. I can recommend everything by Egan - hard, no nonsense, mathematically informed SciFi (his page is here: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ he has good applets on his page also, check them out) In Permutation City, he explores personality duplication, platonic computation, dust theory of consciousness etc - an excellent, breathtaking book. Will transform your views, even if you have been thinking about these things for a long time. I guess you know the book Mind's I? edited by Hofstadter and Dennett. Hofstadter and Dennett miss the comp indeterminacy, but yet it is a wonderful introduction to our topic too. Now the prestige not only don't miss the comp first person (or weakening) indeterminacy but he capture the correct proof of Ah but I will not spoil the pleasure of those who want to guess what I mean by looking at the film. Bruno If you want to survive, you have to die; and if you want to be immortal, you have to die infinitely often. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The prestige
On Apr 17, 5:17 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 16-avr.-08, à 15:13, nichomachus (Steve) a écrit : The Prestige, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla... I also highly recommend this very entertaining movie that I saw last week. Unfortunately, Bruno, I don't see the connection between this film and the computationalist hypothesis. Hmmm I don't want to spoil the movie either ... Have you study the Universal Dovetailer Argument, or just the third key step? Note that from a purely strict logical point of view you don't need comp but a weakening of it. But the comp hyp makes something (in the movie) possible and even real, and even already real in a sense made explicit in the movie. Perhaps I will say more later, when more people (of the list) will have seen the movie. You're right, of course. Although I suppose we could just change the subject to: Spoiler Alert :) 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The prestige
Le 16-avr.-08, à 15:13, nichomachus (Steve) a écrit : The Prestige, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla... I also highly recommend this very entertaining movie that I saw last week. Unfortunately, Bruno, I don't see the connection between this film and the computationalist hypothesis. Hmmm I don't want to spoil the movie either ... Have you study the Universal Dovetailer Argument, or just the third key step? Note that from a purely strict logical point of view you don't need comp but a weakening of it. But the comp hyp makes something (in the movie) possible and even real, and even already real in a sense made explicit in the movie. Perhaps I will say more later, when more people (of the list) will have seen the movie. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The prestige
Le 16-avr.-08, à 18:02, nichomachus a écrit : On Apr 16, 4:54 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 16-avr.-08, à 03:24, Russell Standish a écrit : On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 02:22:23AM +0200, Saibal Mitra wrote: First off, how is it that the MWI does not imply quantum immortality? MWI is just quantum mechanics without the wavefunction collapse postulate. This then implies that after a measurement your wavefuntion will be in a superposition of the states corresponding to definite outcomes. But we cannot just consider suicide experiments and then say that just because branches of the wavefuntion exist in which I survive, I'll find myself there with 100% probability. The fact that probabilities are conserved follows from unitary time evolution. If a state evolves into a linear combination of states in which I'm dead and alive then the probabilities of all these states add up to 1. The probability of finding myself to be alive at all after the experiment is then less than the probability of me finding myself about to perform the suicide experiment. The probability of me finding myself to be alive after n suicide experiments decays exponentially with n. Therefore I should not expect to find myself having survived many suicide experiments. Note that contrary to what you often read in the popular accounts of the multiverse, the multiverse does not split when we make observations. The most natural state for the entire multiverse is just an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian. The energy can be taken to be zero, therefore the wavefunction of the multiverse satisfies the equation: One should also note that this is the ASSA position. The ASSA was introduced by Jacques Mallah in his argument against quantum immortality, and a number of participants in this list adhere to the ASSA position. Its counterpart if the RSSA, which does imply quantum immortality (provided that the no cul-de-sac conjecture holds), and other list participants adhere to the RSSA. To date, no argument has convincingly demonstrated which of the ASSA or RSSA should be preferred, so it has become somewhat a matter of taste. There is some discussion of this in my book Theory of Nothing. Actually, I am not sure the ASSA makes sense once we take into account the distinction between first and third person point of view. Comp immortality is an almost trivial consequence that personal death cannot be a first person experience at all. Quantum immortality is most plausibly equivalent with comp immortality if the quantum level describes our correct comp substitution level. But this does not mean that we can know what shape the comp immortality can have, given that comp forbids us to know which machine we are or which computations bear us. Why is this the case? Whether Comp is true or not, it would seem that the direction of physical research and investigation is in the direction of discovering the presumed foundational TOE that accounts for everything we observe. Say, for example, that it were possible to create in a computer simulation an artificial universe that would evolve intelligent life forms by virtue of the physics of the artificial universe alone. Why, in principle, is it not possible for those intelligent beings to discover the fundamental rules that underlie their existence? They will not be able to discover any details of the architecture of the particular turing machine that is simulating their universe (even whether or not they are in fact being computed), but I don't see any a priori reason why they would not be able to discover their own basic physical laws. Max Tegmark has indicated that it may be possible to get some idea of which mathematical structure bears our own existence by approaching from the opposite direction. Though we may never know which one contains ourselves, it may be possible to derive a probability distribution describing the likelihood of our location in the ensemble. To go back to the comments you were making about the Prestige: If the subject of a quantum immortality experiment finds himself improbably alive, is he in some sense guilty of the murder of the other versions of himself? Or not, since those are merely third person experiences. See Quentin Anciaux's post. I will just comment your last paragraph. What constitutes a first person experience? It seems that you are defining it as an uninterrupted consciousness since comp implies the almost trivial consequence that personal death cannot be a first person experience at all. I am confused by exactly what is meant by first and third person experiences. OK. In the UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument) I define a notion of first person and third person in relation with (classical) teleportation. The first person discourse is given by the content of a diary or memory of a teletransporter, and the third person discourse is the memory or diary content
Greg Egan's Permutation City was: The prestige
I read the Wikipedia of The prestige (too lazy to watch the movie ;-) and, yes, it's classical comp stuff *grin* What I would like to recommend to everybody on the list is Greg Egan's book Permutation City I can recommend everything by Egan - hard, no nonsense, mathematically informed SciFi (his page is here: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ he has good applets on his page also, check them out) In Permutation City, he explores personality duplication, platonic computation, dust theory of consciousness etc - an excellent, breathtaking book. Will transform your views, even if you have been thinking about these things for a long time. Cheers, Günther Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 16-avr.-08, à 15:13, nichomachus (Steve) a écrit : The Prestige, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla... I also highly recommend this very entertaining movie that I saw last week. Unfortunately, Bruno, I don't see the connection between this film and the computationalist hypothesis. Hmmm I don't want to spoil the movie either ... Have you study the Universal Dovetailer Argument, or just the third key step? Note that from a purely strict logical point of view you don't need comp but a weakening of it. But the comp hyp makes something (in the movie) possible and even real, and even already real in a sense made explicit in the movie. Perhaps I will say more later, when more people (of the list) will have seen the movie. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
The prestige
I recommend the movie The prestige. (2006 movie by Christopher Nolan based on a novel by Christopher Priest). Simulacron three (the book by Galouye, or the thirteen floor movie) is the best introduction to our general topic (imo), especially through comp and simulated reality. Matrix and many similar movies or novels (Blade Runner for example) can be seen in that spirit too. But The prestige got the point, (without hiding the cruelty, and using magic to make communicable the non communicable). The prestige can be seen as a conclusion! I can hardly add anything. To see twice! 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The prestige
The Prestige, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla... I also highly recommend this very entertaining movie that I saw last week. Unfortunately, Bruno, I don't see the connection between this film and the computationalist hypothesis. -steve On Apr 16, 5:06 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I recommend the movie The prestige. (2006 movie by Christopher Nolan based on a novel by Christopher Priest). Simulacron three (the book by Galouye, or the thirteen floor movie) is the best introduction to our general topic (imo), especially through comp and simulated reality. Matrix and many similar movies or novels (Blade Runner for example) can be seen in that spirit too. But The prestige got the point, (without hiding the cruelty, and using magic to make communicable the non communicable). The prestige can be seen as a conclusion! I can hardly add anything. To see twice! 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The prestige
The Prestige is an excellent movie. It forced me to seriously consider the questions of identity, personhood and consciousness that it raised and ultimately it set me on the trajectory of joining this list. I would explain more fully the relevance I see of this movie to the everything list, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Regards, Jason On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 8:13 AM, nichomachus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Prestige, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla... I also highly recommend this very entertaining movie that I saw last week. Unfortunately, Bruno, I don't see the connection between this film and the computationalist hypothesis. -steve On Apr 16, 5:06 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I recommend the movie The prestige. (2006 movie by Christopher Nolan based on a novel by Christopher Priest). Simulacron three (the book by Galouye, or the thirteen floor movie) is the best introduction to our general topic (imo), especially through comp and simulated reality. Matrix and many similar movies or novels (Blade Runner for example) can be seen in that spirit too. But The prestige got the point, (without hiding the cruelty, and using magic to make communicable the non communicable). The prestige can be seen as a conclusion! I can hardly add anything. To see twice! Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
