On 28 Oct 2014, at 18:35, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:00 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
No and I am not a member of the grammar police because I often don't
well speak English myself, I'm talking about a fundamental error in
Bruno's thinking process covered up by the very sloppy use of
personal pronouns. In everyday life it's not important to be super
careful with pronouns and it's possible to be careless with them
without causing ambiguities, but if matter duplicating machines are
introduced into the mix extraordinary care must be used and Bruno
didn't do so.
Where?
But I know your answer by heart, and it consists in repeating what I
say, but avoiding the 1p and 3p, and 3-1p, etc. distinctions that I
introduce.
You did not show an error. You attribute me fuzzy things, but your
can't refer where I said them, except by quoting half sentences out of
their context.
> However it may be worth looking past how he says it to what he's
trying to say.
I can't because what he's saying is tightly bound up in the meanings
of those personal pronouns and in a world with matter duplicating
machines the meaning of those personal pronouns is ambiguous.
In UDA I use the common sense notion of first person and third person,
specialized in the term of duplication boxes.
In AUDA, (the arithmetical translation of the UDA) I use Kleene's
second recursion theorem, or the
Dx = F("xx", ...) method.
> I seem to remember that HE (Hugh Everett :-) talks about the
nature of the observer in his paper
Yes, and when Everett talks about "the observer" there is never any
ambiguity because the laws of physics allow us to see only one thing
that fits that description, but that is NOT the case if you have
matter duplicating machines as in Bruno's thought exparament.
If that was relevant, add in the protocol in step three that the one
reconstituted in Moscow is send to the goulag, and the one
reconstituted in Washington is sent to jail, and that they will never
meet, nor have any visit. In that case, with your reasoning above, you
would accept the uncertainty, but as this is not relevant for the
immediate apprehension, as we could relieve you from the goulag and
the jail, after all. So you fail to explain us what is the difference.
> 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
And that's yet another problem that I didn't mention in my last
post, not that predictions have the slightest thing to do with
personal identity but Bruno says that the Helsinki man's prediction
that John Clark will see Washington AND Moscow has been proven wrong
because afterwards the Washington Man said "I see only Washington".
But what makes Bruno think that the information received by the
Washington Man alone (or the Moscow man alone) is enough to evaluate
the truth or falsehood of the Helsinki Man's prediction?
Because we have agreed that you John Clark survived in both place, and
so we take notice of both observation. When they said "both" "W & M",
they both agree that this failed, and understand (I hope) that if they
would have written "W v M, but not sure which one", they would have
both note that the prediction is correct.
Children understand that.
You just stop doing the thought experience, like if you died in the
process. You did agree that you don't die, you did agree that you will
not feel in a superposition of feeling to see both city at once, so,
in the thought experience, you can only expect one of the outcome W,
or M, never both, or you are no more talking about what you expect in
the first person sense.
I've asked Bruno this question nineteen dozen times but never
received a coherent answer.
You did, but keep restating it introducing your ambiguities, avoiding
the 1p/3p distinction.
> you do have to be more careful, because you are only incidentally
linked to one copy in Bruno's thought experiment,
NO! You're linked to BOTH copies with equal strength, and that's
exactly the problem
Comp avoids that problem. There is no problem at all. It is enough to
read the notes in the diaries, as we don't talk of any more than that,
at that step of the reasoning.
and is why when Bruno starts saying that after the duplication "you"
will see this but "you" will not see that its ambiguous drivel.
That argument is so vague and general that it applies to any bet or
use probability. You introduce an ambiguity, to avoid reading the
diaries, where the person agreed that they were unable to predict what
they have experienced. It is even simpler to see that in the iterated
case.
> rather than strictly linked to one by the laws of physics.
The matter duplicating machine works according to the laws of
physics just like everything else.
>> 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.
When I open the door of the duplicating machine chamber not knowing
if I am the original or the copy what will I see? I don't know.
When I open the front door of my house what will I see? I don't know.
Well that applies to QM,Everett as Copenhagen, also, and to lottery,
even to Turing form of indeterminacy, etc. This applies to all form of
indeterminacy.
> both comp and Everett allow for [...]
I don't care what "comp" allows.
She meant "computationalism", and idea you defend, usually, but refuse
to see a simple consequence.
>> 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 that's the first time in it you used the silly word "comp",
up until that point it made some sort of sense even if I didn't
agree with it.
> That seems like you're being deliberately obtuse. Anyone with a
theory needs to invent terms for the components,
Sometimes new jargon is needed but I'm talking about jargon for
jargon's sake. For example, the word "subjective" has been around
for centuries and is understood by everyone, nevertheless the
acronym "FPI" was invented (and 1P) for the same reason government
bureaucrats crank out acronyms by the gross; somebody couldn't
invent a new idea but they could always invent a new word and they
figure that will make them look smart. It doesn't.
Read the papers, I use other words. Those acronyms are used by people
because we discuss those very notion, and exploit them. Step 3 is
still in the very easy part. It really looks like you play dumb, and
seems to have ad hominem motivations.
When too many people start to understand a word (like subjective)
there is a tendency to change it to something less comprehensible,
particularly if your ideas are confused, contradictory or just plain
silly because then what you say sounds deep even when it's not.
That's why psychology is so dense with Unnecessarily Pointless and
Redundantly Repetitive jargon (UPRR) and Very Stupid Acronyms (VSA),
while mathematicians prefers the simplest words they can get away
with, like continuous, limit, open, closed, rational, irrational,
compact and even simple and complex.
Logicians and computer scientist use many acronyms, because we talk on
specific machine, or specific proofs or argument. UTM (universal
turing machine), CT (Church thesis), and here comp is an acronym for
the weak computationalist assumption, although stronger that the
STRONG AI thesis, etc.
You fail to find an error in a reasoning, and so feel the need to
discredit me because I use comp instead of "computationalism", and
this despite you did acknowledge the step 0 and 1, so it is just a
matter of definition, and you distract us by quibble on vocabulary,
notations, etc.
Try better,
Bruno
> Do you refuse to accept the use of "top quark" because "top" has
lots of meanings?
Until 1961 nobody even knew that something like the top quark might
exist so obviously a name for this new thing was needed and "top
quark" worked as well as any; but the human race knew that
subjectivity existed somewhat earlier than 1961 so a new word (and
certainly not a new acronym!) was not needed.
John K Clark
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