On 28 Oct 2014, at 08:00, LizR wrote:
On 28 October 2014 15:10, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 6:38 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So far the only real (non-sarcastic, non-insult-based) objection
I've heard comes down to a semantic quibble to do with redefining
our concept of an individual person.
The entire point of Bruno's "proof" and all of his bizarre thought
experiments is to examine and get rid of that "semantic quibble",
and yet from page 1 Bruno acts as if the concept of personal
identity was already crystal clear even though in his thought
experiments such things were stretched about as far as they could
go. In such circumstances using person pronouns with abandon as
Bruno does without giving them a second thought is just ridiculous.
If you say so. Maybe this is due to English not being his first
language. However it may be worth looking past how he says it to
what he's trying to say.
Thanks Liz.
>This is exactly the same redefinition that was brought up by
Everett in 1957.
No it is not for 3 reasons:
1) Everett was trying to explain the strange observations of the
Quantum world in a logically cohesive way and to show why Quantum
Mechanics was able to make good prediction about future physical
events. Everett said nothing about personal identity or
consciousness because he didn't need to, and that is the HUGE
advantage Many Worlds has over other Quantum interpretations and is
the only reason I'm a fan of the MWI. In the other Quantum
Interpretations consciousness soon enters the picture, that would be
OK if they could explain consciousness but they can't. Everett can't
explain consciousness either but he doesn't need to because
consciousness has nothing to do with his theory.
I seem to remember that HE (Hugh Everett :-) talks about the nature
of the observer in his paper, but it's a while since I read it. But
he does have to explain why an observer sees what he does, why he
doesn't experience splitting, and so on. As far as I remember he
does so using a similar method to Bruno - giving the observer
something like a diary to write his experiences in.
2) Like Everett Bruno is also interested in prediction but he seems
to think that good predictions are the key to personal identity, and
that's just nuts. The sense of self depends on the past not the
future.
If you look at Bruno's thought experiment it does in fact depend on
the past. His talk about prediction is to do with how things will
appear to have happened after they've happened (which is true of
measurements in Everett as well).
3) With Everett the meaning of the personal pronoun "he" is always
obvious, it is the only person that we can observe using the laws of
physics that fits the description of Bruno Marchal, but in a world
with matter duplicating machines there are 2 (or more) people who
fit that description, and so the word "he" conveys zero information.
I don't think it conveys zero information. But you do have to be
more careful, because you are only incidentally linked to one copy
in Bruno's thought experiment, rather than strictly linked to one by
the laws of physics.
Well, even in Everett that one-one link can break. here John Clark
uses the fact that we can interact in between superposed terms, but
that is not relevant, as we have explained with many details to which
Clark never answered.
> a physicist who believes the MWI to be correct will come to the
same conclusions about indeterminacy that someone using Bruno's
matter transmitter would
Obviously, but a person wouldn't need to believe in the MWI or even
be a physicist to know that what is observed when a door is open a
door is uncertain.
??? Sorry I don't understand that sentence.
You are not alone.
> both comp and Everett allow for the possibility that from the
third person viewpoint the duplication could be observed
If you say so, but I'm not a bit interested in "comp" and except for
a few member of this list I don't think anybody on the planet is
either.
Then why did you answer my post?
because, amazingly perhaps, Joihn believe in comp. he even argue that
non-comp is necessarily "crackpot" (where I think only it is premature
without experimental evidence). I show that a form of classical
computationalism is testable. When this one is refuted, we might try
to get non-classical version of computationalism before abandoning it.
> And of course, making up silly versions of Bruno's acronyms
I didn't make a single one up, they were what Wikipedia or Google
though they most likely meant. For example, Wikipedia lists 27
possible means of "comp" and not one of them has anything to do with
intelligence or consciousness or personal identity, and only one had
anything to do with computers, " a class of Usenet groups devoted to
computers and related technology".
That seems like you're being deliberately obtuse. Anyone with a
theory needs to invent terms for the components, just to keep it
manageable. Do you refuse to accept the use of "top quark" because
"top" has lots of meanings?
especially that I use the term "comp" just as a shorthand for
computationalism, and then I mke it more prcise in term of the
(religious/theological/non logically-justifiable) belief that we can
survive with some artificial digital brain. It is weaker than
neurophilosophy by using a generalized notion of brain (whatever
needed to emulate my consciousness, but by definition that is supposed
to be Turing emulable).
By accepting cryogenisation, the transhumanists assume much stronger
hypotheses.
Somehow they say "yes" to not yet born doctors who will use unknown
technologies.
Bruno
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