On 15/07/2016 11:03 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 7/14/2016 5:07 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 15/07/2016 9:42 am, Jason Resch wrote:
I printed the following "Duplicate Questionnaire" and gave one to
both John-Washington, and John-Moscow. The questionnaires each had 8
questions:
1. What city did you last recall being in?
2. How many cities do you see now?
3. What is the name of the city you see before you?
4. True/False: You see two cities right now:
5. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington was:
6. True/False: The prediction that you see Moscow was:
7. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington and Moscow was:
8. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington or Moscow was:
When I gave the questionnaire to John-Washington, he filled out the
following answers (in bold):
1. What city did you last recall being in? *Helsinki*
2. How many cities do you see now? *One*
3. What is the name of the city you see before you? *Washington*
4. True/False: You see two cities right now: *False*
5. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington was: *True*
6. True/False: The prediction that you see Moscow was: *False*
7. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington and Moscow
was: *False*
8. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington or Moscow was:
*True*
When I gave the questionnaire to John-Moscow, he filled out the
following answers (in bold):
1. What city did you last recall being in? *Helsinki*
2. How many cities do you see now? *One*
3. What is the name of the city you see before you? *Moscow*
4. True/False: You see two cities right now: *False*
5. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington was: *False*
6. True/False: The prediction that you see Moscow was: *True*
7. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington and Moscow
was: *False*
8. True/False: The prediction that you see Washington or Moscow was:
*True*
Both Johns expressed deep regret over insulting people on the
Everything list, most especially Bruno. It turned out neither
John-Washington's, nor John-Moscow's prediction that they would see
both cities was true from their own first person points of view.
But you have introduced a distinction between John-W and John-M that
is not present in the original protocol. Remember that the criterion
of personal identity you are working with is based on person memories
(verified by a personal diary if necessary). Both copies of John have
these memories and these diaries, so they both have equal claims to
be John. "John", as this duplicated person, predicts with certainty
that he will see W, and that he will see M, so he predicts that he
will see both cities.
The fact that this appears odd is that our conventional intuition is
essentially dualist -- we think that there is a central core that is
the "real me" that gives me my continuing sense of personal identity.
This intuition breaks down when you have duplication of persons.
Although I think JKC has a point about pronouns, I don't see what it
has to do with Bruno's theory. He just proposes this as an
illustration of first-person-indetermancy as implicit in Everett's
interpretation of QM. It has problems with probability, but so does
Everett's QM - what does probability refer to when everything
happens. The question of which JKC just gets mapped to which world.
Exactly. I have made this point before. The first six or seven steps of
Bruno's argument are not really necessary. It is only when he moves the
Universal Dovetailer into platonia in step 8 that anything new actually
happens. He could have started there and argued for the reversal of
physics and computationalism directly. The duplication of persons is
just a distracting irrelevance to the main argument, and depends so
heavily on a particular theory of personal identity as to be essentially
useless.
Bruce
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