Hello Chris,
On 27 Sep 2013, at 01:51, chris peck wrote:
Hi
Well Im sure that I am missing something important, but I can't see
it so far...
>>The diary is the one that you have with you. You will not have two
diaries, since you cannot experience being in Moscow and Wsahington at
the same time with contradicting the "survivability" axiom of
COMP. Therefore the probability of the diary containing 'I am in
Washington not Moscow' is decidedly less than 1. That it is precisely
0.5 is a little more debatable, however, particularly in the later
steps.
ISTM you are thinking about things after the teleportation has
occurred.
Precisely: the expectation evaluation is asked to the person in
Helsinki, before the duplication is done, and it concerns where the
person asked will feel to be, from his first person point of view.
If one of the 'me's is asked after teleportation but before the
doors are opened what are the chances of being in moscow, then I can
see that there is indeterminacy.
OK. So you can derive the First Person Indeterminacy (FIP) from the
Delayed Uncertainty Principle: If I can predict with certainty (modulo
default hypothesis) that tomorrow I will feel to be uncertain about
some outcome of some experience, then I am already uncertain now about
that outcome.
But the way the step is formulated is that I am asked prior to
teleportation:
Yes.
"Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before
the experiment about his personal future location, the experiencer
must confess he cannot predict with certainty the personal outcome
of the experiment. He is confronted to an unavoidable uncertainty."
And the situations are very different because prior to teleportation
there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent to both
locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one at either
location. That effects the probabilities, surely?
That entails there are probabilities! Indeed.
There is one me befoe the duplication, and two me's after, from the or
a third person point of view.
But, assuming comp, there is always only one "me", from the first
person points of view. In Helsinki, you can predict with certainty
that you will write in your diary that you are specifically in only
one precise city, and the umber of first-person-me has not changed, it
is still one. From that view, you inherit a doppelganger in the other
city, but it is another "first-person" entity, even if intellectually
( or from a third person view) you can consider that it is a "you".
If I am sufficiently described by the reading process to maintain
'I'ness then this 'I'ness goes to washington and moscow.
That is a third person view on the first person view. You are right.
But the question in Helsinki concerned the first person view on the
first person view.
Given I am supposed to be a 'comp practitioner' and therefore
believe that nothing over and above the data read constitutes 'I'
then, when I am asked what chance there is of me experiencing moscow
in the future, the probability must be 1. No 1-p indeterminacy.
The reconstituted "you" in Washington will understand that you were
wrong. Or you will suddenly understand the question, as you are force
to write "Washington" in the diary (as you feel directly it from the
1p view), and I tell you explicitly that the question was bearing on
that.
The indeterminacy of the situation after teleportation is dependent
on an absence of knowledge concerning which 'me' is being asked the
question: 'moscow me' or 'washington me'.
It is your usual "you" in Helsinki, and the question was about the
result of an experience "which city", and does not concern your
personal identity (later, the thought experience and its follow up
*can* provide some light on this, but it is not needed to grasp what I
mean by the FPI, and how and why it will make physics a branch of
arithmetic/computer-science.
But the situation prior to teleportation is certain because I know I
will be both 'moscow me' and 'washington me'.
You know (actually bet) that you will be both from a third person
point of view, but you know also that each of them will feel unique
and see only one city, and the question asked in helsinki concerned
the effective localization result you will *feel* to see after the
duplication.
If you like, both diaries will be identical up to the point of
teleportation.
Yes, and they diverge after.
>> "I disagree that the 'I' concept is illicit in this argument. It is
upfront with the "folk" concept of surviving an artificial brain
transplant. The 'I' is what survives."
No, I assume comp and assume that comp is sufficient. Them are the
rules of the game. I am not arguing that the comp 'I' is illicit.
The illicit 'I' is something I feel has to be smuggled in
(subconsciously?) to get the feeling of indeterminacy. An intuition,
if you will, that despite trying to assume comp and that this
description is being sent to both places, 'I' (an illicit I) only
ends up at one.
Formally you identify Bp with Bp & p (I will not insist on this right
now).
You make complex something simple, and which can entirely be explained
in third person terms, in iterating the experience. So both the W-guy
and the M-guy come back (by usual planes) in Helsinki, and do the WM-
duplication again. This will generate four diaries: WW, WM, MW, MM.
In helsinki, at the start, you can say, I will be the four guys, but
each guys, and you know this in advance, will *feel* to be one among
those four.
If you iterate the experience a great number of time, it is a exercise
in combinatoric and computer science to show that the vast majority of
the sequences will be incompressible (and so, strongly random).
>>That's one of the troubles with intuition pumps. To be quite honest,
that intuition pump fails me
Perhaps you don't, but it isn't important. I think it is generally
accepted, perhaps not on this list, that one would be banging at the
walls of the teleporter, screaming to be released, certain of
impending death. That kind of intuition. The kind it has been
fruitful not to ignore in our evolutionary past. ;)
In this case, it is simple logic and arithmetic, and grasping the
definition.
I hope you are not stuck, like John Clark, on the 3-view on the 1-
views, after the duplication. It is nice of you, and Clark, to
attribute consciousness to each copies, but to get the FPI, you have
still to listen to them, and get the 1-view on the 1-view, and
understand that what they *each* say is the only coherent (with comp)
things to say: I am in only one city, I got one bit of information,
etc. You have to put yourself in the shoes of each copy.
In the iterated experience, you can guess, I hope, that the guy having
written in the diary:
WWMMMMMWWWMWWMMWWWMWMMMMW
might recognize he was unable to predict that very sequence in Helsinki.
OK?
Bruno
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:35:58 +1200
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
The MWI first made me realise that my notion of "I" might be
inadequate in more ways than I'd previously imagined. For a while I
went around thinking "there's a version of me - and it IS me - who's
spontaneously combusting at this moment. And I can't say thank God
I'm not her, because I *am* - or the me of a moment ago was
(meanwhile another version of me has just mysteriously gained
godlike powers...)
These thoughts used to freak me out a bit. When I later discovered
comp it was just "oh....same old, same old..." :)
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