On 12/08/2017 1:42 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 12 August 2017 at 13:13, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:On 12/08/2017 12:23 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:On 12 August 2017 at 12:12, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote: On 12/08/2017 3:22 am, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Aug 2017, at 13:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: Are you telling us that P(W) ≠ P(M) ≠ 1/2. What do *you* expect when pushing the button in Helsinki? I expect to die, to be 'cut', according to the protocol. The guys in W and M are two new persons, and neither was around in H to make any prediction whatsoever. Fair enough. You think the digital mechanism thesis is wrong. Correct. There is a fundamental problem with your person-duplication thought experiments. This is that the way in which you interpret the scenario inherently involves an irreducible 1p-3p confusion. The first person (1p) concerns only things that the person can experience directly for himself. It cannot, therefore, involve things that he is told by other people, because such things are necessarily third person (3p) knowledge -- knowledge which he does not have by direct personal experience. So our subject does not know the protocol of the thought experiment from direct experience (he has only been told about it, 3p). When he presses the button in the machine, he can have no 1p expectations about what will happen (because he has not yet experienced it). He presses the button in the spirit of pure experimental enquiry -- "what will happen if I do this?" His prior probability for any particular outcome is zero. So when he presses the button in Helsinki, and opens the door to find himself in Moscow, he will say, "WTF!". In particular, he will not have gained any 1p knowledge of duplication. In fact, he is for ever barred from any such knowledge. If he repeats the experiment many times, he will simply see his experiences as irreducibly random between M and W, with some probability that he can estimate by keeping records over a period of time. If you take the strict 1p view of the thought experiment, the parallel with the early development of QM is more evident. In QM, no-one has the 3p knowledge that all possible outcomes are realized (in different worlds). So, before pressing the button in H, his prior probabilities are p(M) = p(W) = 0, with probably, p(H) = 1. On the other hand, if you allow 3p knowledge of the protocol to influence his estimation of probabilities before the experiment, you can't rule out 3p knowledge that he can gain at any time after pressing the button. In which case, the 1p-3p confusion is complete, p(M) = p(W) = 1, and he can expect to see both cities. In that case, the pure 1p view becomes irrelevant. The subject directly experiences the details of the experimental protocol, through hearing or reading about it. All knowledge is 1p; information from the external world comes to me via my senses and affects my knowledge.You render the 1p-3p distinction meaningless.First person experience is individual and private. The third person point of view is the view of an external observer. Suppose person A is observed laughing by person B. The behaviour - the laughing - can be observed by anyone; this is the third person point of view. Person A might be experiencing happiness or amusement; this is the first person point of view and only person A himself has it. Finally, person B has visual and auditory experiences and knowledge of the outside world (there are laughing entities in it), and this is again from the first person point of view. I would say that knowledge is a type of experience, and therefore always first person and private; information is that which is third person communicable. But perhaps this last point is a matter of semantics.
If your knowledge is gained from someone else, it is necessarily communicable information, and thus third person. First person is your personal experience, which is not communicable. However, knowledge gained by experience is communicable, and thus third person. Otherwise, all that you say above is mere logic chopping.
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