On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> > On 05 Dec 2013, at 17:20, Jason Resch wrote: > > So if you were to spend a day in the box with Schrodinger's cat (each hour > having a 50% chance of poisoning you), what would you predict experience to > be at the end of that day? > > > > I like to answer this by this: At the end of the day I feel well and kiss > the cat, together with a total amnesia of having gazed, which begin by a > nausea, vomiting, cruel pain and agonizing death. I would put quantum > flowers on 'his' quantum tomb to have died for me. Respect for the little > kitty too. > Would you say there is a greater probability of ending up in a strange and different place on this day, compared to normal days when you don't face a 999,999 out of 1,000,000 chance of being killed? > > Are you OK for this? I pay you 10,000$ for accepting to sleep one night > in my sleep laboratory, I tell you in advance that you will live a quite > intense nightmare, but I promise you that you will be 100% amnesic of it > and you will unaffected by the experience, are you OK? > $10,000 is a lot of money, it's hard to think of a nightmare so bad (even without the amnesia) that would not make it worth taking the money. In the equivalent example of torture + amnesia, under which I would be willing to pay $10,000 to avoid to avoid the torture (with or without amnesia), then I think the logical decision is still to reject the torture and $10,000 even if it comes with amnesia. > > The slowing of the annihilation illustrates something weird. Before the > experience the probability are one halve that you will feel either just > passing a boring day with a cat in some chamber, or going through a slow > unpleasant (ending?) event. > Yet the probability that you survive, above one day, the experience seems > to be still one. It is part of a finite path elimination process, from > the 1p perspective. It is analogous to the backtracking. > I am not sure it is correct as I cannot be sure the agonizing near death > experience terminates, and for who? Nothing is simple here. > Indeed. > > I accept *total* annihilation experience only in thought experience! In > practice it might not exist. We don't know (and can't know) our > substitution level, and it depends on what you are willing to abandon, or > to what you identify with is. > 1-annihilation experiences are near death experiences. Is it clear that > they have endings in the arithmetical reality? Who knows? > > The same can be asked for some type of dreams, and altered states of > consciousness. > The way I have for a time looked at is, is there are X instances that explain your current experience. Some may be "ordinary" while others might be, say a "dream". If in your experience, you encounter something you are unlikely to survive ordinarily, like a Mushroom cloud on the horizon, then you will likely next find yourself waking from a dream. (Since all the non-dreaming ordinary explanations are dead). Is there something wrong with this reasoning? > > In my opinion, understanding a theorem in arithmetic already provides a > glimpse on a deep and atemporal experience, connected to the first person > in virtue of an argument. > > I will need to think more on this. Thanks. Jason -- 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.
