On 29 May 2012, at 22:41, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/29/2012 1:26 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 12:55 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
To see this the following thought experience can help. Some guy won
a price consisting in visiting Mars by teleportation. But his state
law forbid annihilation of human. So he made a teleportation to
Mars without annihilation. The version of Mars is very happy, and
the version of earth complained, and so try again and again, and
again ... You are the observer, and from your point of view, you
can of course only see the guy who got the feeling to be infinitely
unlucky, as if P = 1/2, staying on earth for n experience has
probability 1/2^n (that the Harry Potter experience). Assuming the
infinite iteration, the guy as a probability near one to go quickly
on Mars.
Bruno,
Thanks for your very detailed reply in the other thread, I intend
to get back to it later, but I had a strange thought while reading
about the above experiment that I wanted to clear up.
You mentioned that the probability of remaining on Earth is
(1/2)^n, where n is the number of teleportations. I can see
clearly that the probability of remaining on earth after the first
teleportation is 50%, but as the teleportations continue, does it
remain 50%? Let's say that N = 5, therefore there are 5 copies on
Mars, and 1 copy on earth. Wouldn't the probability of remaining
on Earth be equal to 1/6th?
While I can see it this way, I can also shift my perspective so
that I see the probability as 1/32 (since each time the teleport
button is pressed, I split in two). It is easier for me to see how
this works in quantum mechanics under the following experiment:
I choose 5 different electrons and measure the spin on the y-axis,
the probability that I measure all 5 to be in the up state is 1 in
32 (as I have caused 5 splittings), but what if the experiment is:
measure the spin states of up to 5 electrons, but stop once you
find one in the up state. In this case it seems there are 6 copies
of me, with the following records:
1. D
2. DU
3. DDU
4. DDDU
5. DDDDU
6. DDDDD
However, not all of these copies should have the same measure.
The way I see it is they have the following probabilities:
1. D (1/2)
2. DU (1/4)
3. DDU (1/8)
4. DDDU (1/16)
5. DDDDU (1/32)
6. DDDDD (1/32)
I suppose what is bothering me is that in the Mars transporter
experiment, it seems the end result (having 1 copy on earth, and 5
copies on mars) is no different from the case where the transporter
creates all 5 copies on Mars at once. In that case, it is clear
that the chance of remaining on Earth should be (1/6th) but if the
beginning and end states of the experiment are the same, why should
it matter if the replication is done iteratively or all at once? Do
RSSA and ASSA make different predictions in this case?
Thanks,
Jason
I think you are right, Jason. For the probability to be (1/2^n)
implies that there is some single "soul" that is "you" and it's
not really duplicated so that if it went to Mars on the first try
there would be zero probability of it going on the second. Then
the probability of your "soul" being on Mars is
(1/2)+(1/4)+(1/8)+...+(1/2^n).
Under the alternative, that "you" really are duplicated the
probability that some "you" chosen at random is on Mars is (n-1/n).
But in this case there is really no "you", there are n+1 people who
have some common history.
The probability bears on the first experiences, which are indeed never
duplicated from their 1-pov, and we ask for the probability of
"staying" on earth. It is equivalent with the probability of always
getting head in a throw of a coin. So, from the perspective of the guy
who stays on Earth, he is living an Harry-Potter like experience. But
the experience is "trivial" for the observer looking at it from outside.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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