On 28 September 2013 14:27, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> > Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to >> > see. > > > And I have no objection to thought experiments of that sort, but Bruno is > not talking about assigning the probability you will see Moscow or > Washington, he's talking about the probability you will become the > Washington Man or the Moscow Man, and the two things are not the same. He > claims that if personal diaries were kept and predictions about the future > were made in them it would be concrete evidence on who is who and have a > bearing on the nature of personal identity, but that is nonsense. If > yesterday I wrote in my diary that there is a 100% chance I would make money > in the stock market tomorrow but today I lost my shirt my failed prediction > would not destroy my identity, I would not enter oblivion I'd just be broke. > Personal identity can only be traced from the past to the present, the > future is unknown.
We have evolved to believe at a gut level that we are a single entity travelling forward through time, and when faced with a situation where this is not the case, like duplication, our minds adjust by assigning probabilities. The objective truth is that there is a version of me in Washington, a version in Moscow, and the original version destroyed; but that is not what we are asking when we want to know what to expect when we step into the teleporter. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
