On 9/09/2015 2:33 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 9 September 2015 at 14:28, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 9/09/2015 2:20 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 9 September 2015 at 13:40, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 9/09/2015 1:20 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 9 September 2015 at 12:44, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 9/09/2015 12:26 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 9 September 2015 at 10:43, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
Whether or not all possibilities are realized, they
are not in evidence, so their relevance to the
question of probabilities is questionable.
Your simple model case of a coin toss causing a
world split is just a made-up example to give the
result you want, so again its relevance is dubious.
There is no sensible physical theory in which the
world splits on classical coin tosses.
If you can't imagine a world split, consider a virtual
reality in which the program forks every time a coin is
tossed, one fork seeing heads and the other tails. You
are an observer in this world and you have this
information, so you know for certain that "all
possibilities are realised" when the coin is tossed.
What would you say about your expectation of seeing heads?
I presume you mean that the world is duplicated on each
toss, with one branch showing each outcome. We are back
to the dreaded "person duplication" problem. My opinion
on this is that on such a duplication, two new persons
are created, so the probability that the original person
will see either heads or tails is precisely zero,
because that person no longer exists after the duplication.
After the coin has been tossed a few times, you (or one of
the entities identifying as you) will say that, despite the
opinion he expressed on 9th September on the Everything
List, it does seem that he has survived the duplication and
that heads comes up about half the time.
It is a question whether it is just the person who is
duplicated, or whether it is the whole world split into two
non-communicating replicates. In the former case, two new
persons are created and they will experience normal
probabilistic outcomes of coin tosses. The second case
(duplicate, non-interacting worlds), is indistinguishable
from a simple series of coin tosses in this one world --
duplication has added nothing.
What if you are locked in a prison cell isolated from the world,
and the prison cell is duplicated without your knowledge? What if
in a year you are released and meet your duplicate? What if you
are never released but are informed of the duplication?
You can make any number of artificial scenarios that appear to
imply almost anything you want. Whereas, actually, they imply
nothing at all, because such artificial scenarios have nothing to
do with the real world.
If under these duplication scenarios you are fooled into thinking
that you have not been duplicated, then you might think that you
have continued as the same unique person. You would, however, be
mistaken in that belief. Nothing unusual here -- most people have
mistaken beliefs about any number of things.
You could also claim that you are fooled into thinking that you have
continued as the same unique person in everyday life, since the matter
constituting your body has changed. It's arbitrary to say that in the
everyday life scenario you have survived while in other duplication
scenarios you only have the delusional belief that you have survived.
Not at all. In everyday life there is a continuity of body as well as of
thought and memory. Plus the all important fact that the continuer is
unique. Immediately you introduce a non-uniqueness into the
continuer(s), you destroy the conditions for continued personal identity.
Bruce
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