On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote: > On 02-12-2019 09:39, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 7:19 PM Philip Thrift <cloudver...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > > "even in many-worlds you end up on only one branch (stochastically)" > > > > Sean Carroll himself has said (in a tweet) that if you let > > probabilities (stochasticity) in - like the camel's nose under the > > tent - you might as well have a one world - not many worlds - theory. > > > > We do have only one world. Do you know of anyone who lives in more > > than one branch of the multiverse? > > > > Bruce > > Your subjective state (everything that you're aware at some instant), > doesn't fully specify the exact physical state of your brain. The number > of distinct physical brain states is so astronomically large that your > mindset and how you are feeling about everything isn't going to be > consistent with only one physical brain state. This means that given > your subjective state, the physical state of your MWI sector should be > described as a very complex superposition involving a large number of > brain states that are entangled with the environment. >
My brain currently has only one state. Other states may be consistent with my current conscious state, but these do not exist. The idea that I am a superposition of all brain states consistent with my consciousness is just idle speculation. How would you ever prove such a thing? > If we assume that we can bypass this problem and that we can locate > ourselves in one single branch, then this leads to the following > paradox. Consider simulating such a conscious entity on a computer. At > all moments in time, the physical state of the computer is just > transitioning from one particular state to another state. Since > consciousness is related to the actual physical state of the computer, > replacing the computer by a dumb device that doesn't compute anything, > which simply cycles through physical states that the computer would move > through given some particular set of inputs, will render exactly the > same consciousness. > Yes, and so what? If my consciousness is a sequence of brain states, anything that produces that same sequence of brain states will produce my consciousness. Substrate independence, after all. > This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, It is not absurd in the least. Argument ad absurdum is not a logical argument. What is absurd to you may be perfectly reasonable to someone else. > it's a consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. How can a counterfactual exist? By definition, it is counter to the facts, hence, non-existent. > Clearly actions > as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for > consciousness, But there cannot be any such thing as a counterfactual input. You might consider "What if...." scenarios. But they are not relevant for my current brain state. It will do what it will do, whatever the input. > but there is no room to do that within classical single > World physics. But as I pointed out above the generic state of a > conscious involves being located not in a single branch, but being > distributed over an astronomically large number of different branches. > Different branches are, by definition, non-interacting, so different branches correspond to different persons. Anyway, I choose not to accept this load of speculative rubbish. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSUpviJcorZep3k6kDe17SVqtBA32H-QN8ABoupyfPqLg%40mail.gmail.com.
