On 12/24/2020 1:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com
<mailto:bhkellet...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou
<stath...@gmail.com <mailto:stath...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett
<bhkellet...@gmail.com <mailto:bhkellet...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou
<stath...@gmail.com <mailto:stath...@gmail.com>> wrote:
You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question
about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities
when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.
There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless
phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities
when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.
The question is whether it is merely a version of the
observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer
who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat
ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system,
for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates
under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical
copies of the original.
As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with
self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is
that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique
reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified
as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in
which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you
attempt to single out a particular individual by some
random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist
assumption -- the selected individual is different from
the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred
by the sampling process itself).
Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all
possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the
Born rule, according to which different outcomes have
different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one
such outcome.
There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment
even in ordinary life.
It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you
have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment.
If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.
I’m not throwing it away, but I am acknowledging that it is a
psychological artefact, not a dualistic soul. Apply this psychological
artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities. The copies
each say “I know logically that all the copies are identical, but I
feel that I am the only real me, continuing from the original”.
Artefact implies that it is constructed. And I agree that if I were
creating an artificial mind to be like the human mind, one of the things
it would include is a module that produces a simulation of itself as it
might exist in various imagined circumstances. This is essential to
have foresight and rational planning.
Brent
"Math is a cybervirus that lives in human minds, evolves therein and
reproduces itself via language."
--- Stephen Paul King
I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that
the essence of that person has been transmitted to me now.
But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of
the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t
help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking
about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should
I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that
they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I
will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that
I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done,
no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should
then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well,
and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person
tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories
of being me.
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