On 5/30/2012 1:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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
<mailto: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.
No more than the guys who went to Mars. If they compare experiences they will find that
although they only had probability 1/2 of it happening, they all went to Mars.
Brent
But the experience is "trivial" for the observer looking at it from outside.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
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