On 04 Feb 2017, at 19:15, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 3:42 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
>> You were correct when when you said "he is
duplicated", therefore while in H any question of the form "what
will he...?" is meaningless because "he" is duplicated and the
personal pronoun is ambiguous after that.
> Given the protocole, and the assumptions and definitions
given, there is no ambiguity at all.
I am right here in Helsinki right now,
OK.
in the future what one and only one city will I see after the
experiment is over?
That is the question. OK. Notice that "I" refers to the 1p-experience.
In the real world, and in any world that doesn't have people
duplicating machines, that question makes perfect sense and the
personal pronouns in it cause no problems. And you're right, a ten
year old can understand the question, even a five year old could.
That's because the person who wrote "I am right here in Helsinki
right now" has one and only one successor in the future and thus
there is a unique answer to the question. However if people
duplicating machines are introduced, as is done in the thought
experiment, then the person who wrote "I am right here in
Helsinki right now" does NOT have a unique successor,
Indeed. But the person "in Helsinki right now" believes or assumes
digital mechanism (computationalism). So he can do some reasoning.
and so the question does NOT have a unique answer,
That is weird.
Assume that the guy will get a cup of coffee in both M and W.
We have agreed that this makes P(I will get coffee) = 1 in that
experiment.
For that reason, we know also that
P(the guy will see a unique city) = 1,
because, by computationalism, we know that each copies will feel
seeing only one city.
So the guy right now in Helsinki can predict with certainty that he
(whoever he can become in that experience) will see only one city.
in fact it doesn't have an answer at all because due to the wording
the "question" is not a question at all, it is gibberish.
On the contrary, the question makes perfect sense for a
computationalist. He knows in Helsinki that he will push a button, and
that he will survive with Probability 1 (assuming computationalism and
the default hypotheses).
What he cannot be sure is if it will be Moscow, or Washington, due to
the 3p duplication. In fact he knows that if he predicts W (resp. M),
one of the two copies will refute the prediction, and we were asked to
give the best prediction which will be confirmed by both future
continuations (by the definitions given). With this protocol, it can
only give a distribution of probability, or a logical statement like
"W xor M", as all the others will be refuted.
Notice that you might weakened the protocol. If in Helsinki there is a
rumor that some Eve could eavesdrop the information sent from H to M
and W, and could make a reconstitution in Vienna, the guy in Helsinki
could predict something like "W or M or some other possible city like
Vienna if the rumor is true".
There is absolutely no problem at all that I can see. All questions
are precise, and have precise answers. The mechanist duplication makes
impossible to reduce the ignorance in Helsinki, and makes impossible a
definite answers leading to the first person indeterminacy. It shows
this amazing fact, with mechanism, 3p determinacy leads to 1p
indeterminacy. It is of course *the* basic key of reducing physics to
a statistics on computations, like QM confirms a posteriori.
Bruno
It takes more than a question mark to make a question.
>> but for that to work after the thought experiment is all
over you've got to tell us what the correct prediction turned out to
be so we can see that the correct prediction was not made. So what
would the correct prediction have been, M or H?
> None. It is "M or H".
So now we know the answer, it's "M or H" . Unfortunately we don't
know exactly (or even approximately) what the question was,
not in a world that has 1p duplicating machines . It's like the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the ultimate answer was known
to be 42 but nobody knew what the ultimate question was.
> About the 3p, or 3-1p view.
After all these years I still can't figure out the
difference between the 3p view and the 3-1p view. Can You?
John K Clark
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