On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 Bruno Marchal<marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
What is the probability the Helsinki man will receive signals from
Moscow turning him into the Moscow man? 100%.
That's ambiguous.
There is nothing ambiguous about it! Granted this thought
experiment is odd
but everything is crystal clear. According to the thought
experiment you
have been teleported to Moscow which means you will now be
receiving sights
and sounds and smells and tastes and feeling textures from Moscow
instead
of Helsinki. I say the probability of that happening is 100%, how
can I
tell if my prediction is correct? If after the experiment I can find
something that says he is Bruno Marchal and that he feels like he
is in one
and only one place and that one place is Moscow then my prediction
has been
confirmed as being correct. After the experiment I CAN find such a
thing so
my prediction was correct. The fact that there is also a Bruno
Marchal in
Washington is irrelevant, it does not reduce the feeling that Bruno
Marchal
has that he is in one and only one place and that one place is
Moscow by
even a infinitesimal amount.
If you say 100%, it means that you are talking on the first person
that
you can attribute to different people.
Of course the first person can be attributed to different people
because
according to the thought experiment *YOU* have been duplicated, let
me
repeat that, YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED. Although perfectly logical
that is
certainly a unusual situation, I've never been duplicated before
and you
probably haven't either, so it shouldn't be surprising that the
results of
such a unusual situation are odd, not illogical not self
contradictory just
odd.
we get a paradox if you say that it is 100% for both Moscow and
Washington.
There is not the slightest thing paradoxical about it, in fact if I
had
said anything else then that WOULD have been paradoxical. Why?
Because YOU
HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED, that means your first person perspective has
been
duplicated and will remain identical until differing environmental
factors
cause the two of YOU to diverge; and even then they would both be
Bruno
Marchal they just wouldn't be each other.
What is the probability the Helsinki man will receive signals from
neither Washington nor Moscow and thus leaving him as the
Helsinki man?
100%.
In the protocol considered the Helsinki guy is annihilated.
Fine, if that's the thought experiment then the probability the
Helsinki
man will receive signals from either Washington or Moscow is 100%
so the
probability he will remain the Helsinki man is 0%. Annihilate or
don't,
either way the results are deterministic.
What is the probability the Helsinki man will feel like the
Moscow man?
0% because if he felt like the Moscow man he wouldn't be the
Helsinki man
anymore.
In that case, the probability to survive, in the usual clinical
sense, a
teleportation experience is 0
But "the usual clinical sense" is totally useless in this case
because this
case is about as far from "usual" as you can get and still remain
logical.
Why do I say that? Because YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.
What is the probability the Moscow man will feel like the
Washington
man? 0% because if he felt like the Washington man he wouldn't be
the
Moscow man anymore.
I guess the last "Moscow" should be replaced by "Helsinki".
You can if you want to, either way its still true.
What is the probability that a third party in all this will see a
person in Helsinki and Washington and Moscow with all 3 having a
exactly
equal right to call themselves John K Clark? 100%.
The guy in Helsinki is annihilated
Then 2 have a exactly equal right to call themselves John K Clark,
and
although "annihilated" the guy in Helsinki didn't die because dying
means
having a last thought and he didn't have one, he continued to feel
sensations only now they originated in Moscow and Washington not
Helsinki.
Helsinki where the third party will see only ashes after the
experiment
I don't care if a third party thinks I'm dead as long as I think
I'm not.
You have avoided the question, asked in Helsinki to you: "where
can you
expect to be from a personal, first person point of view, after the
duplication is done?".
I have not avoided the question at all, the answer is that the one
and only
one place you will feel to be after the experiment is Moscow and
Washington
and there is nothing paradoxical about that. I think your
difficulty is
that when you blithely say you have been duplicated you don't really
understand that it means YOU HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED.
You cannot answer in W and in M, because you will not write, after
the
experience, in your diary "I feel to be W and I feel to be in M"
In Washington you will write in your diary "I feel like I am in
Washington
and only in Washington" and in Moscow you will write in your diary
"I feel
like I am in Moscow and only in Moscow" because YOU HAVE BEEN
DUPLICATED.
The question is just hard, if not impossible, for the bat, which
is very
different from us. Yet it makes some sense to ask some question on
qualia,
due to the bat peculiar use of sound.
That's irrelevant, we are of the same species but I can't even know
what
it's like to be you; I might know what it would be like for John
Clark to
be Bruno Marchal but not what its like for Bruno Marchal to be Bruno
Marchal, only you can know that.
something akin to that first person indeterminacy is used
implicitly in
the QM
The two are not even close. Quantum Mechanical indeterminacy is
real and
can be measured experimentally, "first person indeterminacy" not
only can't
be measured nobody can even clearly express exactly what it is that
is
supposed to be indeterminate.
Consider a giant screen composed of 16180 x 10000 black and white
pixels.
There are 2^(16180 x 10000) possible images that can be done on that
screen. OK? Now, here is the self-multiplying protocol. I multiply
you in
2^(16180 x 10000) exemplar, in front of each of the possible
screen image
...... and I iterate that experience, meaning that I re-multiply
all the
resulting persons again by 2^(16180 x 10000), putting them again
in front
of each possible screen, and this 24 times per second, during 1h30
hours (=
90 minutes). You can see that the number of people getting out of
the lab
will be 2^[(16180 x 10000) x (60 x 90) x 24], given that the
candidate is
multiplied 24 times per second, and that there is (60 x 90)
seconds in
1h30. OK? Again the question is asked to the guy (you) before the
experiment begin. What question? This one: what experience do you
expect to
live.
As the number of John K Clark's is now equal to the number of ways
a screen
of that size changing 24 times a second can produce in 90 minutes I
would
expect that John K Clark would see every 90 minute 16180 x 10000
black and
white videos that is possible to exist. To prove me wrong just
produce a
video that John K Clark has not seen, but there is no such video.
If you want, I can still make everything 3p in that question, in the
following manner. I make a genuine sample of 1000 persons among the
2^[(16180 x 10000) x (60 x 90) x 24] resulting persons, by
selecting them
with a random coin, or whatever choice reasonable enough for not
biasing
the statistics. I ask them the same question, including "did you
expect to
see the movie you did see?".
Yes. I John K Clark just saw a 90 minutes documentary on the
history of
asphalt, and as that is certainly one of the large but finite
number of 90
minute movies I can see on that screen it is entirely consistent
with my
prediction that John K Clark will see every 90 minute movie that
screen can
show.
John K Clark
