On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 7:17 PM, chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com>wrote:
> I will say though that I find it astonishing if people work their way > through Bruno's steps and claim to understand them and then maintain that > Clark's erudite and ofttimes witty criticisms are in some way obtuse or > difficult to follow. > Thank you. > There is some fuss about Clark's reluctance to apply his argument to MWI. > Like some others I think Clark possibly makes a misstep when (if?) he > defends the notion of 1p in-determinism within an MWI context. In the MWI John Clark doesn't have to worry about who "I" or "you" is because however many copies of "I" or "you" there may or may not be they will never meet. But in Bruno's thought experiment that is no longer true, so pronouns like "you" and "I" cause endless trouble. The MWI is about explaining why Quantum Mechanics is able to make such good predictions, and it does so without making use of the concept of a "observer" so it has no need to explain exactly what that is, and that's why I like MWI. But Bruno's "proof" is supposed to do something entirely different, explain the continuous subjective feeling of self, and yet he talks constantly about probability and probability implies prediction and prediction has absolutely positively nothing to do with a sense of self. If when you pressed the button on the teleportation chamber you were 99% certain, hell even if you were 100% certain that you would end up in Washington and there was not the tiniest particle of doubt in your mind and one second later you found yourself in Moscow your sense of self would not be diminished one bit, you'd just figure that you made a bad prediction, and it wouldn't be for the first time. Bruno is going about it backward and is trying to push on a string, he's trying to uniquely establish identity from the present to the future and that can't be done, you can only go from the past to the present. The fact that you feel like Chris Peck today has nothing to do with probability or prediction or if the Many World's Interpretation is correct or not; you feel like Chris Peck because you remember being Chris Peck yesterday and for no other reason. John K Clark > I can see though that in Comp people are duplicated within worlds whereas > in MWI they are duplicated between worlds, and there possibly are some > repercussions vis a vis the proper use of pro-nouns because of that. Im not > sure it matters much, because Clark could be right about Comp and just > inconsistent about MWI. So this complaint, loudly pursued by Quentin, has > always seemed impotent to me and not worth bothering about. > > Im reluctant to get involved in the step 3 discussions because, mentioning > no names Quentin and PGC, people can get very emotional and arm wavey about > people criticizing Bruno's metaphysics. So for now at least, I'll limit > myself to recommending the odd sci-fi movie on the film thread. The Quiet > Earth (1985) is a little known gem, btw. > > All the best > Chris. > > ------------------------------ > Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:00:42 +1300 > Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas > From: lizj...@gmail.com > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > > > On 12 February 2014 10:55, Richard Ruquist <yann...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 4:10 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 12 February 2014 08:50, Richard Ruquist <yann...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:42 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 12 February 2014 00:41, Richard Ruquist <yann...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:45 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 11 February 2014 18:40, Richard Ruquist <yann...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > String theory based on Maldacena's conjecture predicted the viscosity of > the quark-gluon plasma before it was measured > > > Correctly, I assume. > > > and more recently explained the mechanism behind EPR based on > Einstein-Rosen bridges, which is more like a retrodiction. > > > That seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, although the initials have > a nice near-symmetry. Why would one need to have ERBs - that presumably > have to be kept open by some exotic mechanicsm - to explain EPR when you > can do it very simply anyway? > > > And how can it be done very simply? > > By dropping Bell's assumption that time is fundamentally asymmetric (for > the particles used in an EPR experiment, which are generally photons). > > > Please explain how dropping asymmetric time explains EPR. > > > It makes it logically possible. I will have to ask a physicist for the > details, but it is a mechanism whereby the state of the measuring apparatus > can influence the state of the entire system. If we assume the emitter > creates a pair of entangled photons and their polarisation is measured at > two spacelike-separated locations, then the polarisers can act as a > constraint on the state of the photons and hence of the system, and that > the setting of one polariser can therefore influence the polarisation > measured in the other branch of the experiment (without any FTL signals / > non-locality). > > This preserves realism and locality at the expense of dropping an > assumption that most physicists think is untrue anyway (though the idea of > time being asymmetric is so deeply ingrained that we automatically assume > it must be true of systems it doesn't apply to, like single photons). > > > Your explanation is hardly satisfactory for this physicist > > > That's because I'm not a physicist. I'm merely showing that an explanation > is possible, and hence should be investigated (although it isn't *me*showing > this - it's been looked into by various people, from Wheeler-Feynman > absorber > theory<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory>onwards). > > It has been considered a satisfactory basis for an explanation of Bell's > Inequality by some physicists, including John Bell. > > > -- > 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. > > -- > 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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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