On 17 Apr 2012, at 11:44, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
It seems to me that, if I believe I am duplicable, and understand the
protocol, I must predict that I will experience being in both Moscow
and
Washington. The process bifurcates one person, who becomes two
people with
absolutely identical physique and memories immediately afterwards,
which
will then begin to diverge.
OK. Then the uncertainty is bearing on the outcome of that divergence
You can predict this, in Helsinki:
(I will feel to be in W) and (I will feel to be in M)
But here you adopt a 3-view on your future 1-views.
But we assume comp, so we know that both copies will *feel* to be
entire and complete in only one city. So from the first person point
of view, it is
(I will feel to be in W) or (I will feel to be in M).
Assuming comp and the correct substitution level, you will never feel
to be simultaneously in W and in M. This would entail a telepathic
element which, given that we have chosen the right substitution level,
would have a non computable element, and contradict comp.
We can verify this by asking the copy in W, and he will assesses to
feel to be in W, and not in M, and having only an intellectual (3-
view) belief of the existence of its copy in M. He cannot even know
for sure that the copy has already been reconstituted there or not.
Both, looking back to pre-bifurcation times,
will say that was me, and both will be correct.
Absolutely so. That is why we have to listen to both of them, and both
of them agree to feel to be in only one city. One sees english
speakers around him, the other sees russian speakers, and none of them
can realy *know* if their doppelganger has been reconstituted. Nor
could they know in advance that they would hear russians or americans.
The advantage of proceeding with such thought experience is that it
avoids the need to agree on personal identity. The indeterminacy bears
only on experience which can be noted in a diary.
Of course, the experience suggest that personal identity is an
illusion. If you keep your identity on both copies, then we can argue
that we are all the same amoeba, who duplicates itself a lot since a
long time. But this remark needs not to be agreed upon to understand
that computationalism reverses physics and the information/computer/
number science.
If you really believe that the you-in W and the you-in M are really
still exactly the same person, having different experience, then I can
argue that you and me are already exactly the same person. Why not?
Perhaps God, playing hide-and-seek with itself :)
But here we try to predict direct accessible results of self-
localization after a self-duplication, and without a non computable
telepathic link, the answer of the copies are different.
There is no essence to
be randomly (or non-randomly) assigned to one location and not the
other.
But there are human beings, knowing in which city they feel to be.
None will write I feel to be in both M and W at once. Each will
write I feel to be in just the city X, with X being M or W
respectively. They can only bet, intellectually, about the existence
of the other. Indeed, the guy in W would not been able to see I have
cheated on him, and that I did not reconstitute him in M. OK?
The individual is now two people and therefore can be and is in both
cities.
Only from a third person point of view. From the point of view of each
copies, despite both being the same person as the one in Helsinki,
they both feel right now to be in only one city. And the first person
indeterminacy bears on such feeling, not on the bodies to which we can
attriibute consciousness, but on the content of the consciousness,
which in this case corresponds to the result of the self-localization
(W, M?) which they will write in their diaries. None will write in the
diary I feel to be in W and M.
Just replace humans by robots having some amount of inference
inductive power. And imagine the iteration of the experience. So after
finding themselves in some city, they buy a ticket to come back by
plane to Helsinki, and they do the experience again and again. After
iterating that experience 64 times, there will be 2^64 copies, and
each of them will have, written in their respective personal diaries a
specific sequence of W and M. Such robots can have already well
defined elementary inference inductive power to guess that their
sequences are non algorithmically compressible. Each of them cannot
predict the next outcome of the self-duplication. Of course, some of
them will develop theories. For example the one having the story
W...W, will be tempted to predict W, but we know she will
have many descendants contradicting that theory, and in this
setting, they are deluded.
Of course real life will not be a sequence of self-duplication, but
it will be a sequence of self-multiplication or differentiation
