Dear Stathis,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...
snip
It is true that nature is quantum mechanical rather than classical, but I
am not aware that anyone has proved that the brain is not a classical
computer. If it is, then it should in theory be possible to get a
functionally equivalent copy by copying the computational state, rather
than exactly emulating the quantum state; rather as one can transfer the
operating system and files from one electronic computer to another,
without copying the original machine atom for atom.
I would not be so hasty to swallow Tegmark's argument that the brain can
not be anything other than a classical computer:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/3/7/19 But that is really not the point
I was trying to make. As you admit, Nature is quantum mechanical and
thus we have to be sure what our ideas about what subset of Nature is or is
not classical. The rules are different for these two realms. When we are
musing about copying our 1st person experience and considering the
implications, are we merely only required to "copy" the informational
content of those 1st person viewpoints, like some tape recording or MP3, or
are we also requiring tacitly that the means that those particular
information structured can to be ordered as they are?
We can wax Scholastically about the properties of relationships between
numbers forever and ever but unless our theoretics make contact with the
tangible world and represent faithfully those aspects that we have verified
experimentally, are we merely generating material for the next episode of
Sliders?
Stephen
