On 5/7/2022 8:56 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:40 AM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
On 05-05-2022 01:57, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:27 AM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Of course you can. The lottery example shows that even in classical
>> physics you can imagine this happening. If a million copies of
you are
>> made and one will win a lottery whole the rest won't then you
have one
>> in a million chance of experiencing winning the lottery, even
though
>> both outcomes of winning and losing will occur with certainty.
>
> The trouble is that classically, a million copies of you cannot be
> made.
Then assume that I'm Mr. Data and just copy the software running Mr.
Data a million times. So, this is not a findamtnel problem with the
argument.
That technology does not currently exist. And one might reasonably
doubt that it will ever exist....
> The issue was that if the probability of an outcome is 10%, then
> it does not make sense to say that that outcome will certainly
happen.
It does make sense in a scenario where there are multiple copies
if the
same observer. If Alice makes 10 copies of Bob, and one copy of
Bob is
going to experience outcome A and the rest will experience outcome B,
then from Alice will see all the possible states for Bob. But from
Bob's
point of view, things are different. After Bob is exposed to the
result
(A or B) there are two versions of Bob, Bob<A and Bob_B, and if Bob
knows beforehand how the experiment s set up, he'll assign a
probability
of 10% of going to find himself in state Bob_B after the experiment.
I think this boils down to the first person:third person confusion
that Bruno often refers to.
From the third person perspective, the outcome is certain. But from
the first person perspective of each of the copies, the outcome is not
certain.
Consider the following simple situation. You have a bag containing ten
balls, nine of which are red and one is black. If there are ten copies
of Bob, for example, and each copy draws a ball from the bag, without
replacement. Then it is certain (100% probability) that the black ball
will be drawn. But the probability that any particular copy of Bob
drew the black ball is only 10%. (They draw the balls without knowing
the results of other draws). The probability that 'Bob' (including all
copies, presumed identical) will have the black ball is still 100%.
That is the 3p perspective. For each copy, however, their 1p
perspective is that the probability that their ball is black is only
10%. The problem arises if you attempt to impose the 1p perspective on
the 3p view. It cannot be the case that a particular copy of Bob is
both certain to draw black and has only a 10% chance of drawing black.
To consider all copies as equally identified as 'Bob' is the 3p view,
and that is the view that is relevant for the Everett interpretation
of an experiment -- there is nothing in the SE that identifies one
particular observer (there is no 1p view), so Everett is incompatible
with the Born rule (which is a 1p view).
I don't think I agree that there is any such 3p view. There's a 3p
calculation, using MWI, in which ten different "Bob" are predicted. But
no third party ever sees these ten Bobs.
When you start to rely on subjective perspectives I think you've already
violated the spirit of MWI which was proposed to apply to simple
instrument records as well as consciousness. Decoherence is such an
instrument that is implicit in the environment.
Brent
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