Re: Time travel and eternal life
Roger, Don't you believe you already have eternal life. I do and I am not even Christian. Richard On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal and all, Do you not realize that 1p far enough into the past (presumably accessible to time travel), where your parents and past friends are still alive, is a form of eternal life ? [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/23/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-22, 08:09:59 Subject: Re: Against Mechanism On 20 Dec 2012, at 22:18, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:30 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You are asking about the present first person point of view of someone, NO. read the question: it is about a future first personal event. That is totally false! The Helsinki man is informing you about his PRESENT first person state of mind, he may be preoccupied trying to guess about what his future state of mind could be but that doesn't change the fact that you cannot communicate with the future Helsinki man you can only ask questions to the present Helsinki man and regardless of the subject of his thoughts he can only tell you about his present state of mind. Bruno Marchal has said, and John Clark agrees, that both the Moscow Man and the Washington Man are the Helsinki Man, and so assuming that the Helsinki Man believed the same thing and is rational, then the conclusion is obvious, the Helsinki Man will say that the Helsinki man will see Washington AND Moscow. In the 3p view, Yes, and as I've said before if 2 things are identical in the 3p they are certainly identical in the 1p, although the reverse is not necessarily true. but the question is about the future 1p view In a world with duplicating chambers there is no such thing as the future 1p view. Of course there is. There are two such future 1-view. The 1-view of the M-man, and the 1-view of the W-man. If they don't exist, you would die, and comp is false. The use the is just an emphasis on the fact that, although there are two such view, they are felt unique by the experimenter. For example: suppose the Washington Man said the Helsinki Man's prediction in the past about a hypothetical first person point of view that would occur in the future turned out to be wrong, would that mean that the Washington man would no longer feel in his gut that he was the Helsinki Man? Of course not! That's why to follow a chain of identity the way to go is from the present to the past not from the present to the future. But we have to do prediction to confirm or refute a theory on reality, which is the present case. Not with personal identity we don't! If you are like me and most people you have made predictions about what you will do that turn out to be wrong, but incorrect or not when that happens you still feel like you were the one that made the prediction. Exactly, and that is why if you predict W and M, both will rightly admit having been wrong. This is just obviously wrong. It is correct in the 3p picture, but the question was about the 1p picture. And that's the problem right there, THERE IS NO THE 1P PICTURE, THERE IS ONLY A 1P PICTURE! And? And so in a world with duplicating machines asking about the future 1p picture is as silly as asking how long is a piece of string because it depends on the string. Then QM without collapse is refuted at once. It is not weird as it is only an indetermination on the person result after a self-duplication. the math are easy to do, It's not just the math, everything about it is easy; the one that sees Washington is the Washington Man and the Washington Man is the one who sees Washington. What more do you want to know about it? What more is there to know? The technic to predict the future when we are multiplied, like in QM-without-collapse, or in arithmetic. both remember being the Helsinki Man, so although different both ARE the Helsinki Man, Exactly, and that is why the question makes sense. So does the answer, the Helsinki man will see both cities. In the 3p view, that's correct, but fail to answer the question asked. If he was asked on the 3p view after the duplication. Apparently asking somebody something on the 3p is supposed to be different than just asking somebody, but I have no idea how. Take the QS as example: the most probable 3p outcome is the guy died. The most probable experimenter 1p outcome, is I stay alive. When self-multiplication exist, the 1p and 3p difference play a big role, in both comp and Everett QM. 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
Time travel and eternal life
Hi Craig Weinberg Speaking of teleportation, if that means time travel, I find it strangely comforting that my parents are actually, really alive back there in 1950. So in effect, you never die, you just get time-shifted. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/5/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-05, 02:20:22 Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:59:55 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 9:48 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point, since the only point that matters is the actual truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think that implications for teleportation and AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say the least. Hi Craig, Excellent post! Thanks Stephen! Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient. Yep, the assumption is that the function that gives rise to Sense is exactly representable as countable and recursively enumerable functions. The trick is finding the machine configuration that matches each of these. That's where the engineers come in and the theorists go out the door. That seems to be the hypocrisy of comp - it assumes that function is enough, that all-but-computation is epiphenomena, but then wants to bring it back home to the material universe to claim the prize. It makes me think of the self-help guru who preaches that money doesn't make you happy in a best-selling book. Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have to collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does the experience of the now disembodied person come in? The person rides the computation, it is not located any particular place. But all this is predicated on the condition that consciousness is, at its more rubimentary level, nothing but countable and recursively enumerable functions. THe real question that we need to ask is: Might there be a point where we no longer are dealing with countable and recursively enumerable functions? What about countable and recursively enumerable functions that are coding for other countable and recursively enumerable functions? Are those still computable? So far the answer seems to be: Yes, they are. But what about the truth of the statements that those countable and recursively enumerable functions encode? Are they countable and recursively enumerable functions? Nope! Those are something else entirely! Right. Something about microelectronics and neurology though that blinds us to the chasm between the map and the territory. This kind of example with pencil and paper helps me see how really bizarre it is to expect a conscious experience to arise out of mechanism. I guess it's just Leibniz millhouse but really...say we have the code for the experience of the memory of the smell of pancakes. We have a trillion people furiously scribbling on notepads, talking to other scribblers on the phone, passing information, calculating stuff. We introduce this pancake code by calling 350,000 of them on the phone and issuing this code, and they all write it down, add it to the other numbers and addresses and whatnot, make thousands of phonecalls to other people who are also writing this stuff down and adding numbers with their special decoder rings, etc. So why and how does this pancake smell come into play? If we assume that this is possible that the pancake smell is actually conjured in some way for some reason we can't imagine, then doesn't it open the doorway to disembodied spirits everywhere? We wouldn't need a whole Boltzmann brain to conjure a
