You're assuming again that consciousness is conserved. If you go into the machine full of magical sticky consciousness stuff, and that stuff can only be present in one body at any given time, then sure, when you wake up, the probability of you waking up in box A is 50% and the probability of waking up in box B is 50%. But if you assume that consciousness comes only from information content, then you don't just wake up once- you wake up 1024 times. The chance of you waking up in box A is 100%, since it's guaranteed that 512 copies will be in box A. The chance of you waking up in box B is also 100%, since 512 copies are also guaranteed to be in box B. These discontinuities- going to sleep once and waking up one thousand and twenty-four times- are really confusing, and I think it works better to look at it from the perspective of the guy doing the upload rather than the guy being uploaded. If you magically inserted yourself into the brain of a copy at random, then you're right- you'd have an equal chance of waking up in A or B. But to say "you" have an equal chance of waking up in A or B is nonsensical, because "you" as a singular person doesn't exist anymore. You can only talk about "you" when referring to events before the copying- if you try to refer to "you" to describe what happens after the copying, your brain will barf as there are 1024 possible references for the word. The closest thing to a physical analogy I can think of is an electron annihilating a positron. Neither of the emitted gamma rays "is" the electron, as that wouldn't make any sense, but all the electron's energy, charge, quantum numbers and so forth are still there.
- Tom --- Randall Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jun 28, 2007, at 5:59 PM, Tom McCabe wrote: > > --- Randall Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > >> On Jun 28, 2007, at 5:18 PM, Tom McCabe wrote: > >>> How do you get the "50% chance"? There is a 100% > >>> chance of a mind waking up who has been > uploaded, > >> and > >>> also a 100% chance of a mind waking up who > hasn't. > >> > >> Your "100%" is half of the total, which means > you've > >> just relabeled "50%" as "100%", and claiming that > it > >> means something that has to be explained. That > >> isn't > >> the case; it's just a label. > > > > "100%" and "50%" are probabilities; they're > physical > > quantities. Saying that event A and event B both > have > > probabilities of 100% doesn't mean that they're > > mutually exclusive and so we have to renormalize > each > > of their probabilities to 50%; it means that > they're > > both certain to occur. > > But no single individual will experience both > outcomes. A person will remember waking up either > as the upload or as the other, not both at once. > > To make this clearer, let's change the thought > experiment slightly. Let's have a person be > copied into two places or containers as identical > as we can make them: A and B. On copy, we destroy > the original. Then we do the same with the copies. > > After ten iterations, we have 1024 copies (having > destroyed all the copies going into the machine, > you remember), and if you ask, you'll find that > 50% of total waking-up experiences were in the A > box, and 50% in the B box. This being the case, > it seems that someone going into the machine (and > who is a pattern identity adherent) should > expect to wake up in the A box at 50%, and the B > box at 50%. > > -- > Randall Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "If we have matter duplicators, will each of us be a > sovereign > and possess a hydrogen bomb?" -- Jerry Pournelle > > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: > http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
