subject:"Re\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\: What gives philosophers a bad name\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\?"



On 01 Oct 2013, at 18:41, John Clark wrote:



On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 Digital teleportation is not necessary, with existing technology  
I can make a real experiment, not just a thought experiment, that  
incorporates all the philosophical implications, such as they are,  
as your hi-tech version. In Helsinki I put you into a soundproof  
box, I then flip a fair coin and put you and the box on a jet headed  
to either Washington of Moscow. Several hours later you push a  
button, the box opens and you find out what city your eyes are  
receiving signals from. Do you find anything about this surprising  
or philosophically interesting? I don't.


 OK. That clear. You really miss the point. In your scenario, you  
throw a coin. In the duplication, you don't throw any coin, yet it  
generates the same situation, indeed. That is the miracle.


In both cases if the Helsinki man sees Moscow he will turn into the  
Moscow man and if the Helsinki man sees Washington he will turn into  
the Washington man.


Exact.



You're big on point of view so you must know that if your  
doppelganger is experiencing a different city it in no way effects  
what you are seeing;


Exact.



so philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is  
just as uninformative as your hi-tech version.



Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an indeterminacy  
from coin throwing, which is very well known since Pascal.
In that case, a God knowing the precise way how you throw the coin,  
can predict your personal first person future.
In the duplication case, you get a stronger form of indeterminacy,  
which has nothing to do with imprecision in the initial data, and that  
even a God cannot predict to you in advance. It is similar with QM  
indeterminacy, except that it does not rely on QM.






 I give you a Island spath (CaCO_3 cristal), and I send a photon in  
some polarized state, and if it deviates, I send you to Moscow, and  
if not, I send you to Washington.


Then the calculation is easy and precise, the probability that I the  
Helsinki man will be in Moscow is 0% and the probability that I the  
Helsinki man will be in Washington is 0% because in any other city  
I would no longer be the Helsinki man.


You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been the  
Helsinki man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man, he  
has just been duplicated, and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.





If you change the meaning of the personal pronoun I you can change  
the probability to 100% for both cities. But no matter what I  
means it will always be the case that the man who sees Moscow will  
be the Moscow man.


Sure.

But this does not help to predict. As you have admitted the  
probabilistic equivalence with your low tech coin throwing, you *have*  
recognized (perhaps unintentionally) that P(W) = P(M) = 1/2.


So please, read the step 4, which I have just reminded to you, and  
tell us if you agree, so that we can move to step 5.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
(an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
function, for example).


But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the  
subconscious.  If one conceives a subjective moment as just what  
one is conscious of in a moment it doesn't encode very much of the  
past.  And in the digital simulation paradigm the computational  
state doesn't encode any of it.  So I think each conscious moment  
must have considerable extent in (physical) time so as to overlap  
and provide continuity.


But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person  
moment can be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.




  Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to  
computational steps.


OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last  
remark is quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation  
to physics. I think.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 22:20, John Clark wrote:



On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 Forget Everett, forget Quantum Mechanics, even in pure Newtonian  
physics subjective indeterminacy exists because of lack of  
information. If you knew the exact speed things were moving at and  
the coefficient of friction and the aerodynamic drag on the ball in  
a Roulette Wheel you could figure out what number the wheel would  
produce, but you don't so the number is indeterminate for you. Big  
deal.


 You miss the nuance between the origin of the indeterminacies,

The origin of the indeterminacies is the random use of personal  
pronouns


?



with no clear referents by Bruno Marchal such that all questions  
like what is the probability I will do this or that? become  
meaningless.
Most of the time it's OK to be sloppy with pronouns because the  
referents are obvious, but NOT in philosophical discussions about  
the nature of personal identity.


We need no more personal identity notion than we need to say I will  
survive with an artficial brain, or by using simple teleportation.  
Then, as you said yourself, we need only the fact that those  
remembering having been the guy in Helsinki have the right to do so.


You try to evade the indeterminacy by making it into an ambiguity, but  
at the same time, you have accepted that it is (phenomenologically)  
equivalent with throwing a coin. So you fail to be consistent.






All that can be said is that from ANY point of view there is a 100%  
chance the Helsinki man will turn into the Washington man, and a  
100% chance  the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man; so if  
I is the Helsinki man then there is a 0% chance I will see  
either city because very soon I will turn into something that is  
not I.


That contradicts many posts you sent. In particular, this would mean  
that duplication entails death, but then simple teleportation too, and  
the digital mechanist assumption in the cognitive science (comp)   
becomes wrong.






 You want me to give you a algorithm that can generate important  
information with absolutely nothing to work with? I have no such  
algorithm.


 If you don't have an algorihm,

The only algorithm I have or need is that from ANY point of view if  
the Helsinki man sees Moscow then the Helsinki man will turn into  
the Moscow man, and if the Helsinki man sees Washington then the  
Helsinki man will turn into the Washington man. What else do you  
want to know?


That is not to bad, but fail to appreciate the need to evaluate the  
chance of some first person events. If you don't have an algorithm,  
you have an indeterminacy and make my point. You know in advance that  
you will stay alive in both city, but that you will feel being in only  
one city.







 then, given that you have agreed that you will survive (not die)  
in that experience,


Yes I agree.

 and given that you have agreed all possibilities are lived as  
unique by the continuers,


Yes, I agree.

 this confession means that you do agree there is an uncertainty.

Huh? Uncertainty about what?


Uncertainty in Helsinki about which city you will see from your future  
first person experience.






 Please proceed to step 4,

No thanks.

 or explain why you do not want to proceed

Because step 3 sucks.


Why? You have not yet make a convincing point on this.






 In step 4, you are still read and annihilated in Helsinki, the  
information to build the copy are still sent to Washington and  
Moscow, but in Moscow the reconstitution is delayed for one year.


I don't see what a delay has to do with the price of eggs.

 What do you expect to live when pushing on the button

Who cares, expectations have nothing to do with identity or the  
sense of self.


Which is another topic. See my paper Mechanism and Personal Identity  
if interested in that topic, and create a new thread if you have  
question on that. The reversal phsyics/machine-psychology-theology use  
only the idea that anyone having your exact memory, character,  
personality, can be said to be you, and by assumption this is  
preserved with the protocol of the thought experiments.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:

 On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
 logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
 defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
 (an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
 function, for example).


 But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.  If
 one conceives a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in a
 moment it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
 simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of it.  So I
 think each conscious moment must have considerable extent in (physical)
 time so as to overlap and provide continuity.


 But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person moment can
 be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.



   Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
 computational steps.


 OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last remark is
 quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to physics. I
 think.

Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:

f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)

So f(0) would go through the steps:
(0)
(0 1)
(0 1 2)
...

If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a moment, each
step would contain a memory of the past, although the function I wrote
is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a causality
sequence: (0) - (0 1) - (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?

Telmo.

 Bruno


 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 02 Oct 2013, at 03:51, chris peck wrote:


Hi David

Thanks for the response. It was by far the best response Ive had and  
a pleasure to read.


Lets distinguish between conclusions and arguments.


I can entertain many bizarre conclusions. I often wonder about an  
'infinite plenitude of numbers' or my favorite, an infinite pattern  
of binary state because maybe that's ontologically simpler, and what  
would be represented therein. You'ld have pac-man, space invaders  
and doom. You'ld have microsoft windows and microsoft windows  
implementing linux VMs. Goodness, you'ld have Windows implementing  
Linux VMs implementing Windows VMs. An infinite amount of this.  
You'ld have represented every photo-realistic CGI dinosaur in every  
CGI dinosaur movie ever made. All these things ended up as a finite  
pattern of binary states and therefore get represented in my  
infinite plenitude of binary patterns.


Assuming 'comp', then we'ld have every subjective moment experienced  
by every creature that has existed all represented in there  
somewhere. Forgetting for the moment whether any of these states  
would be 'active', or how they would ever get realized or  
distinguished from noise, or for that matter what could ever  
interpret them; but assuming 'comp' they would at least be  
represented. I can entertain all this and far more besides. Ok. so  
the point Im trying to labor is it is not the bizzaro nature of any  
conclusion that troubles me.


Its Bruno's 'logic' in his informal proof at step 3. If I were God,  
and Bruno had sussed me out and was absolutely right in his  
conclusions, I'ld still be whinging about step 3. 'He got there' I  
would grumble, 'but illegitimately!'


I also don't think he should ride on the back of Everett. It seems  
that there is an argument now that Brunos' conclusions are similar  
to Everett's, therefore lets be forgiving about his informal proof.  
Lets not.


Everett's theory is that we don't need the collapse axiom in QM. This  
idea solves the measurement problem.


My result is that if comp is right, then we don't need (and even  
cannot use) the wave axiom itself. It has to be recovered from  
arithmetic. This either solves the problem of the origin of  
consciousness and matter, or leads to a testable refutation of comp.


Bruno





As for Everett and MWI I posted a remark on Quantum Immortality  
wherein the person in front of the gun can be certain of 2 things,  
she will survive and she will die and given she believes MWI  
(assumes comp) she will expect to survive (and die) certainly. And  
she will experience both certainly. This seems to me the essence of  
MWI. So if asked, prior to the suicide attempt what she expects to  
experience, she should say that she expects to experience not being  
shot and being shot. See, I analyze MWI in the same fashion.


Now I see an argument brewing that all this is a trivial matter  
consequent on how Bruno has phrased step 3. Maybe it is trivial. But  
is Bruno trivially right or trivially wrong in step 3? To what  
extent are people giving Bruno the benefit of the doubt because its  
a bit like Everett?


All the best

 From: stath...@gmail.com
 Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 09:40:47 +1000
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

 On 1 October 2013 22:47, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com  
wrote:


  A child recently saw by himself that even God cannot predict  
to you (in

  Helsinki) the outcome felt after such duplication.
 
  I can imagine a child being fooled by the idea. Obviously I  
would disagree

  with this child.

 I tend to agree with Bruno that the idea is trivially obvious, and  
yet
 you and others such as John Clark disagree. In these cases I think  
the

 problem must be that the two disagreeing parties have different
 notions in mind. The same occurs in discussions about free will.


 --
 Stathis Papaioannou

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is just as
 uninformative as your hi-tech version.


  Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an indeterminacy
 from coin throwing,


And the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than
Washington for no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no law of
logic that demands every event have a cause.

 You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been the
 Helsinki man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man


Agreed? I'm the one who introduced the idea to this list! And I was very
surprised that I even had to talk about such a rudimentary concept to a
bunch of people who fancy themselves philosophers.

 he has just been duplicated


Yes.

 and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.


Please note, if the following seems clunky it's because it contains no
pronouns, but a inelegant prose style is the price that must be payed when
writing philosophically about personal identity and duplicating chambers:

What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a 100%
chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man because the
Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki Man will turn into
the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw Washington, and a 100%
chance that the first person view of the Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY
of Helsinki because otherwise the first person view of the Helsinki Man
would not be the first person view of the Helsinki man.

And before Bruno Marchal rebuts this by saying John Clark is confusing peas
with some other sort of peas please clearly explain exactly what question
concerning personal identity has a indeterminate answer. AND DO SO WITHOUT
USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT!

 if you change the meaning of the personal pronoun I you can change the
 probability to 100% for both cities. But no matter what I means it will
 always be the case that the man who sees Moscow will be the Moscow man.


  Sure. But this does not help to predict. As you have admitted the
 probabilistic equivalence with your low tech coin throwing


Who cares? I'm not interested in prediction and certainly not a prediction
about which way a coin will fall, I'm interested in the nature of personal
identity, and correct predictions have zero effect on that, exactly the
same as incorrect predictions do.

 So please, read the step 4


I never read step 4 of any proof unless I thoroughly understand step 3.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread meekerdb


On 10/2/2013 7:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
(an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
function, for example).


But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.  If
one conceives a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in a
moment it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of it.  So I
think each conscious moment must have considerable extent in (physical)
time so as to overlap and provide continuity.


But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person moment can
be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.



   Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
computational steps.


OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last remark is
quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to physics. I
think.

Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:

f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)

So f(0) would go through the steps:
(0)
(0 1)
(0 1 2)
...

If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a moment, each
step would contain a memory of the past, although the function I wrote
is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a causality
sequence: (0) - (0 1) - (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?


They form a sequence of states which overlap and so have an inherent order.  But that 
can't be the right model for conscious states because they don't contain all past 
conscious states; in general their content is very sparse relative memory.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 9:37 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 10/2/2013 7:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:

 On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
 logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
 defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
 (an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
 function, for example).


 But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.
 If
 one conceives a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in
 a
 moment it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
 simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of it.  So
 I
 think each conscious moment must have considerable extent in (physical)
 time so as to overlap and provide continuity.


 But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person moment
 can
 be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.



Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
 computational steps.


 OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last remark
 is
 quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to physics. I
 think.

 Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:

 f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)

 So f(0) would go through the steps:
 (0)
 (0 1)
 (0 1 2)
 ...

 If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a moment, each
 step would contain a memory of the past, although the function I wrote
 is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
 Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a causality
 sequence: (0) - (0 1) - (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?


 They form a sequence of states which overlap and so have an inherent order.
 But that can't be the right model for conscious states because they don't
 contain all past conscious states; in general their content is very sparse
 relative memory.

Sure but it would be trivial to define some recursive function that
generates a sequence of states with sparse or even distorted memories
of previous states. The recursive function could be as complex as you
like.

Telmo.

 Brent


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 3 October 2013 06:48, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

   philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is just
 as uninformative as your hi-tech version.


  Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an indeterminacy
 from coin throwing,


 And the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than
 Washington for no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no law of
 logic that demands every event have a cause.

  You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been the
 Helsinki man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man


 Agreed? I'm the one who introduced the idea to this list! And I was very
 surprised that I even had to talk about such a rudimentary concept to a
 bunch of people who fancy themselves philosophers.

  he has just been duplicated


 Yes.

  and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.


 Please note, if the following seems clunky it's because it contains no
 pronouns, but a inelegant prose style is the price that must be payed when
 writing philosophically about personal identity and duplicating chambers:

 What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a 100%
 chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man because the
 Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki Man will turn into
 the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw Washington, and a 100%
 chance that the first person view of the Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY
 of Helsinki because otherwise the first person view of the Helsinki Man
 would not be the first person view of the Helsinki man.

 And before Bruno Marchal rebuts this by saying John Clark is confusing
 peas with some other sort of peas please clearly explain exactly what
 question concerning personal identity has a indeterminate answer. AND DO SO
 WITHOUT USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT!


This is an interesting way of looking at things. I have always had trouble
with the MWI version of this - it's generally hard to believe that the
person who is having these experiences will become two people who have
had different experiences (to avoid any personal pronouns in those
descriptions). Whether one calls this indeterminacy or not starts to look
like a question of language rather than something more fundamental.
Back-pedalling to the quantum version (to avoid any problems that people
have with comp), we have the equivalent situation where I am about to
perform a measurement that has what I would consider, no doubt naively, to
have a 50-50 chance of going either way. Once I have done the measurement,
I find that it has result 1, so I would be justified to think, Aha, that
was a 50% chance which happened to come out this way, rather than the other
way. Meanwhile another version of me has obtained result 2 and thinks
the opposite. Do we call this indeterminacy? And does it relate to personal
identity?

We certainly can call this, let's say, naive indeterminacy, in that it
looks like a coin toss. If I believe the Copenhagen interpretation then I
think it is genuine indeterminacy. If I believe the MWI I think it is
apparent indeterminacy. (Comp of course also has the latter type.) What
this says about personal identity is just that certain things appear
indeterminate to people, because a person is really something that in the
next instant turns into a sheaf of near-identical people, each with
different experiences. I think the point here is that if you would say in
an MWI context that you have a 50% chance of a measurement coming out one
way, and 50% of it coming out another, then you should say the same thing
about the teleporter, because if nothing else, the MWI leads to a constant
version of the teleporter thought experiment actually occurring.

You could in fact do the teleporter experiment by using a quantum coin
flip and sending each version of Helsinki man to his destination by
conventional means. Obviously that wouldn't tell us much about the digital
nature of consciousness, but if we assume digital consciousness then there
is no reason why it couldn't, very much in theory, be cut and pasted into
two locations. More to the point, if consciousness is a computation, then
it can, rather less in theory, be instantiated in a computer (with
sufficient resources). So instead of Helsinki man we could have the
equivalent - HAL, let's say - who is running inside an android which looks
like a human being. HAL steps into the teleporter, which freezes the state
of his processing unit and memory, reads it, and transmits it to Moscow and
Washington, and back in Helsinki reads in a new identity (sent from some
other location). The copies sent to M and W are downloaded into two other
androids.

According to comp, sending a person by teleporter would be equivalent to
the above description, albeit rather more technically challenging. Maybe it
would help the discussion to consider what happens

RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread chris peck

Hi Bruno

[JC] Because step 3 sucks. 











[Bruno] Why? You have not yet make a convincing point on this. 

His point is convincing me.

regards.


 Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 23:18:07 +0200
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 From: te...@telmomenezes.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 9:37 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
  On 10/2/2013 7:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 
  On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 
  On 01 Oct 2013, at 19:34, meekerdb wrote:
 
  On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:
 
  However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
  logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
  defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
  (an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
  function, for example).
 
 
  But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.
  If
  one conceives a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in
  a
  moment it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
  simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of it.  So
  I
  think each conscious moment must have considerable extent in (physical)
  time so as to overlap and provide continuity.
 
 
  But then comp is false, OK? As with comp the present first person moment
  can
  be encoded, and indeed sent on Mars, etc.
 
 
 
 Of course physical time need not correspond in any simple way to
  computational steps.
 
 
  OK. With this remark, comp remains consistent, indeed. That last remark
  is
  quite interesting, and a key to grasp comp and its relation to physics. I
  think.
 
  Could time arise from recursivity? A very caricatural example:
 
  f(x) = x :: f(x + 1)
 
  So f(0) would go through the steps:
  (0)
  (0 1)
  (0 1 2)
  ...
 
  If (in a caricatural way) we associated each step with a moment, each
  step would contain a memory of the past, although the function I wrote
  is just some static mathematical object I dug up from Platonia.
  Furthermore, these moments would appear to be relates in a causality
  sequence: (0) - (0 1) - (0 1 2) and so on. What do you think?
 
 
  They form a sequence of states which overlap and so have an inherent order.
  But that can't be the right model for conscious states because they don't
  contain all past conscious states; in general their content is very sparse
  relative memory.
 
 Sure but it would be trivial to define some recursive function that
 generates a sequence of states with sparse or even distorted memories
 of previous states. The recursive function could be as complex as you
 like.
 
 Telmo.
 
  Brent
 
 
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 3 October 2013 12:38, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Hi Bruno

 *[JC] Because step 3 sucks.
 *
 * *
 * *
 * ** *
 *
 *
 * *
 *[Bruno] Why? You have not yet make a convincing point on this. *

 His point is convincing me.

 Which point is that? JC said:

What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a 100%
 chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man because the
 Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki Man will turn into
 the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw Washington, and a 100%
 chance that the first person view of the Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY
 of Helsinki because otherwise the first person view of the Helsinki Man
 would not be the first person view of the Helsinki man.


This is uncontraversially, one might say trivially correct, but it doesn't
refute anything about the first person indeterminacy, which occurs in
quantum measurements as well as hypothetical teleporters. Is there
something wrong with quantum indeterminacy?

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread meekerdb


On 10/2/2013 4:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 3 October 2013 06:48, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com 
wrote:


On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is 
just as
uninformative as your hi-tech version.


 Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an indeterminacy 
from
coin throwing,


And the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than 
Washington for
no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no law of logic that 
demands every
event have a cause.

 You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been the 
Helsinki
man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man


Agreed? I'm the one who introduced the idea to this list! And I was very 
surprised
that I even had to talk about such a rudimentary concept to a bunch of 
people who
fancy themselves philosophers.

 he has just been duplicated


Yes.

 and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.


Please note, if the following seems clunky it's because it contains no 
pronouns, but
a inelegant prose style is the price that must be payed when writing 
philosophically
about personal identity and duplicating chambers:

What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a 100% 
chance that
the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man because the Helsinki Man saw 
Moscow,
and a 100% chance the Helsinki Man will turn into the Washington Man 
because the
Helsinki Man saw Washington, and a 100% chance that the first person view 
of the
Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY of Helsinki because otherwise the first 
person view
of the Helsinki Man would not be the first person view of the Helsinki man.

And before Bruno Marchal rebuts this by saying John Clark is confusing peas 
with
some other sort of peas please clearly explain exactly what question 
concerning
personal identity has a indeterminate answer. AND DO SO WITHOUT USING 
PERSONAL
PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT!


This is an interesting way of looking at things. I have always had trouble with the MWI 
version of this - it's generally hard to believe that the person who is having these 
experiences will become two people who have had different experiences (to avoid any 
personal pronouns in those descriptions). Whether one calls this indeterminacy or not 
starts to look like a question of language rather than something more fundamental. 
Back-pedalling to the quantum version (to avoid any problems that people have with 
comp), we have the equivalent situation where I am about to perform a measurement that 
has what I would consider, no doubt naively, to have a 50-50 chance of going either way. 
Once I have done the measurement, I find that it has result 1, so I would be justified 
to think, Aha, that was a 50% chance which happened to come out this way, rather than 
the other way. Meanwhile another version of me has obtained result 2 and thinks the 
opposite. Do we call this indeterminacy? And does it relate to personal identity?


We certainly can call this, let's say, naive indeterminacy, in that it looks like a 
coin toss. If I believe the Copenhagen interpretation then I think it is genuine 
indeterminacy.



Interestingly it appears that most coin tosses may be quantum random, arXiv:1212.0953v1 
[gr-qc]



Randomness in a coin flip comes from a lack of correlation
between the starting and ending coin positions.
The signal triggering the flip travels along human neurons
which have an intrinsic temporal uncertainty of
tn ? 1ms [8]. It has been argued that fluctuations in the
number of open neuron ion channels can account for the
observed values of  tn [8]. These molecular fluctuations
are due to random Brownian motion of the polypeptides
in their surrounding fluid. Based on our assessment that
the probabilities for fluctuations in water are fundamentally
quantum, we argue that the value of  tn realized in
a given situation is also fundamentally quantum. Quantum
fluctuations in the water drive the motion of the
polypeptides, resulting in different numbers of ion channels
being open or closed at a given moment, in a given
instance realized from the many quantum possibilities.
Consider a coin flipped and caught at about the same
height, by a hand moving at speed vh in the direction
of the toss and with a flip imparting an additional speed
vf to the coin. A neurological uncertainty in the time of
flip,  tn, results in a change in flight time  tf =  tn × vh/(vh + vf ).
A similar catch time uncertainty results
in a total flight time uncertainty  tt = ?2 tf . A coin
flipped upward by an impact at its edge has a rotation
frequency f = 4vf /( d) where d is the coin diameter.
The resulting uncertainty in the number of spins is  N =
f tt. Using vh = vf = 5m/s and d = 0.01m

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 3 October 2013 13:15, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Interestingly it appears that most coin tosses may be quantum random,
 arXiv:1212.0953v1 [gr-qc]

 (snip)


 I say most because I know that magicians train themselves to be able to
 flip a coin and catch it consistently.

 Interesting. I think there's a slight bias (in non-magicians) towards the
coin coming down one way or the other - either the same as it started or
the opposite, I can't remember which (There could be an ig-nobel in finding
out for sure...)

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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-02 Thread chris peck

Hi Liz

 Is there something wrong with quantum indeterminacy?

Apart from the fact the MWI removes it? And that that is the point of MWI? And 
that probability questions in MWI are notoriously thorny?

This is why I resort to the Quantum Suicide experiment or better still to 
Quantum Russian Roulette. The experimenter is 1-p certain of his own survival, 
not unsure about it. Otherwise, he'ld never take part. And this certainty has 
nothing to do with the fact that in the other outcome he dies. It doesn't 
matter what happens in that branch. His certainty is consequent on the fact 
that all outcomes obtain and being a MWI believer he believes just that.

The Stanford Encyclopedia puts it:

 The quantum state of the Universe at one time specifies the quantum state at 
all times. If I am going to perform a quantum experiment with two possible 
outcomes such that standard quantum mechanics predicts probability 1/3 for 
outcome A and 2/3 for outcome B, then, according to the MWI, both the world 
with outcome A and the world with outcome B will exist. It is senseless to ask: 
What is the probability that I will get A instead of B? because I will 
correspond to both Levs: the one who observes A and the other one who 
observes B.

I agree with that analysis, and disagree with subsequent attempts to smuggle 
some notion of probability back in. I'll read them again shortly just to see if 
they are any more convincing but on the face of it MWI has an issue with 1-p 
indeterminacy. It shouldn't really be there.

Regards.


Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 13:19:50 +1300
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

On 3 October 2013 13:15, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


  

  
  Interestingly it appears that most coin tosses may be quantum
random, arXiv:1212.0953v1 [gr-qc]


(snip) 



I say most because I know that magicians train themselves to be
able to flip a coin and catch it consistently.


Interesting. I think there's a slight bias (in non-magicians) towards the coin 
coming down one way or the other - either the same as it started or the 
opposite, I can't remember which (There could be an ig-nobel in finding out for 
sure...)







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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 3 October 2013 14:12, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Hi Liz
 *
  Is there something wrong with quantum indeterminacy?

 *
 Apart from the fact the MWI removes it? And that that is the point of MWI?
 And that probability questions in MWI are notoriously thorny?


OK, and since the comp teleporter thought experiment gives *exactly* the
same type of first person indeterminacy as the MWI, and for very similar
reasons, I can't see what the problem is with that, either -- except
perhaps what to call it -- indeterminacy is clearly not the right word.
(As I said, this seems to be an argument about terminology, and certainly
doesn't do anything to disprove comp.)


 This is why I resort to the Quantum Suicide experiment or better still to
 Quantum Russian Roulette. The experimenter is 1-p certain of his own
 survival, not unsure about it. Otherwise, he'ld never take part. And this
 certainty has nothing to do with the fact that in the other outcome he
 dies. It doesn't matter what happens in that branch. His certainty is
 consequent on the fact that all outcomes obtain and being a MWI believer he
 believes just that.


My thinking is that the QTI means he must survive in *both* branches (to be
exact, he has a non-zero probability of surviving in both). In a few
branches where the gun/bomb/whatever fires/explodes/whatever, he still
survives, though probably horribly injured/mutilated - something he will
have to live with for an indefinite future. Obviously the ratio of the
former to the latter is huge, probably astronomically huge, but there is
still a finite chance (or rather certainty) of ending up as the injured
party. So playing quantum roulette effectively means I am condemning some
of my future selves to a nasty fate.

(This is why I try to avoid playing Quantum Roulette...)

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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread chris peck

Hi Liz

 The scientist naturally assigns a 50% chance to each outcome, even though he 
 knows that he's duplicated by worlds splitting, and that in reality he will 
 see both   But there seems to be a lot of trouble with the comp version 
 for some reason.

Bruno has a meeting in washington but has double booked it with one in moscow. 
So, he goes to the teleporter/duplicator and travels off to both cities and 
both meetings. On the way back both Brunos take the Re-assembler, which,  when 
both scans are available, runs a quick 'diff' over them and merges the result 
back into one. Bruno is reassembled replete with memories of both trips. 

We ask this Bruno what the probability was of experiencing Moscow before the 
trip. Well he has a 1-p memory of both cities, so he knows, from a 1-p view 
that the chance was 1. 

I imagine there will be some sort of ad hoc 'no cul-de-sac' strap ons to 
Bruno's theory as to why this kind of experiment is barred. But it seems 
perfectly in tune with 'comp' to me. What I think it shows is that the 
probabilities depend on how many Bruno's there are when the question is asked. 
And if you ask before teleportation the probability is 1 as it is after the 
merge.

The probabilities are governed by conjunction when you ask one man about to be 
duplicated: he will be in moscow AND washington. When you ask a duplicate, he  
IS in moscow OR washington. 1-p ness, 3-pness, 10p-ness, its all philosophical 
sleight of hand as far as I can tell.

And if I am pre-duplicate, being asked what I expect, if I believe in comp then 
I will expect to be in moscow and washington. Afterall, believing in comp I 
would not believe that there would be some other thing that chased my 
description to either city. Beliefs and expectancies are 1-p phenomena. What 
else is there? There is only me trying to imagine being either washington-me or 
Moscow-me in the future. But this is a 3-p perspective. As soon as I imagine me 
being somewhere else, I am objectifying me. Im 3-peeing me.

regards

Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 12:32:06 +1300
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

On 1 October 2013 09:40, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a 100% 
probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember being the 
Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that the Helsinki man had 
more than one future.  



Nicely and succinctly put. In comp the duplicated man indeed has more than 
one future.

Bruno is distinguishing between our overview and the man's personal point of 
view, and ISTM that this is analogous to a scientist performing a schrodinger's 
cat type experiment. The scientist naturally assigns a 50% chance to each 
outcome, even though he knows that he's duplicated by worlds splitting, and 
that in reality he will see both (i.e. he has more than one future). 
Similarly the guy in Helsinki assigns a 50% chance to himself arriving in 
Washington, and ditto for Moscow. But from our third person perspective, he 
arrives in both places. I can't see that this is problematic, if we accept the 
MWI then the comp thought experiment is very similar. But there seems to be a 
lot of trouble with the comp version for some reason.







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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 30 Sep 2013, at 16:50, John Clark wrote:




On 9/28/2013 12:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  I have few doubt that 9/11 is an inside job, and the evidences  
are rather big that this is the case,


How the hell did this thread turn into a showcase for looney  
conspiracy theories? The level of logical rigor shown in this idea  
is similar to that shown in your Universal Dance Association theory.



That is an opportunist remark using a quote without context.

We are still waiting your argument against UDA step three, and four.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 30 Sep 2013, at 22:25, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/30/2013 7:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 29 Sep 2013, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/29/2013 12:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
As he knows in advance that he will feel, whoever he is, live  
only one (again, from The 1-pov).


But that sentence is hard to parse.  Whoever he is implies there  
is only one he,


?
It implies there is two 3-he. as indeed it is the case.

the point is that both 3-he lives a unique 1-me (in W, and in M).



as if he is a soul that goes to either Moscow or Washington but  
not both.  Yet the assumption of comp is that this soul is  
duplicated and so he has no unique reference.


Well that's was a reply to a point made by Clark.

We know that with comp, both the W-guy and the M-guy *are* the same  
person as the Helsinki guy.


But that depends on having a theory of personal identity, which you  
deny having used. It seems to me that you're using have the same  
memories (or diary).


I do not use more identity theory than what is needed to understand  
the duplication question, and it is quite less than a theory of  
identity per se. And I use it sometimes only to make the argument  
shorter. You are just asked to push on a button, and then to open a  
door, and the question is assuming comp, what do you expect. It is  
not related to who do you thing you really are?.






The point is that both the W-guy and the M-guy were not able to  
predict in Helsinki that they would have the W experience, or the M  
experience.  Both see that they get only one of them.


Yes.  But suppose you and I are in Helsinki.  We each get into a  
teleporter and random device sends one of us to Moscow and the other  
to Washington.  It's equally unpredictable, by me and by you, where  
we will experience.  So why is the fact that we are not the same  
person, don't share the same memories, significant?


?
In this case you have to use a 3p random input. When you are  
duplicated, we stay in the 3p deterministic frame, yet we can predict  
(assuming comp)  that we live an indeterminacy from the 1p view.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 30 Sep 2013, at 22:40, John Clark wrote:




Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a  
100% probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember  
being the Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that  
the Helsinki man had more than one future.


Exact. But this made the FPI point.

Every one know that if we assume that if the Helsinki man can survive  
digital teleportation, in each of those futures he will feel to be  
unique, and living in only one city, and the question asked in  
Helsinki was bearing about the expectation on which city he will feel  
to see when opening the door.


Your reasoning would show that in Everett QM, where we have also many  
different futures, there is no indeterminacy, but as Everett  
explained,  the indeterminacy remains, it just become first person  
(Everett uses subjective instead).


Just give us an algorithm refuting that first person indeterminacy.  
The last one you gave was directly refuted by both copies after the  
duplication.


Bruno





http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread chris peck

Hi Bruno

You might quote mùe, but I make clear and insist, at each step of the UDA, 
that the question is addressed before the duplication.

You insist but you do not make clear. Even in this reply you state: On the 
contrary, it is very simple. After the duplication 

 The confirmation or refutation of the prediction is asked after. So the guy 
 which predicted W and M is refuted by its own seeing (After, both will see 
 only one city, and the question was about that seeing, and not the body 
 localization).

Bruno, it would be the same ... for you ... if it was about the body 
localization the bodys end up in different places too. In anycase, as far as 
the seeing goes, if I make the prediction that I will see moscow and I will see 
washington, in this situation, I am not committed to the statement there will 
be a future me that will be seeing washington and moscow. And therefore, my 
prediction simply is not refuted by the fact that each future me sees only one 
city. 

Can't you see that? Its very simple.

 It might not help you to betray that you are searching a confusion, as this 
 betrays you want the result to be false, before understanding. But OK. let 
 us see.

Im not searching for one, Bruno. It sticks out like a sore thumb. I disagree 
with you, I have no intention of being coy about it.

 [Me] Strictly speaking one can not have a first person view on a first 
 person view. 

 [Bruno] On the contrary, it is very simple. After the duplication you can 
 say I am in both place, so in both place there are two 1-views, as I do 
 attribute consciousness to my doppelganger. This is a third person view, but 
 which attribute 1-view to both people. 

First you say it is simple to have a 1-p view of a 1-p view, and then you admit 
the example you give of such a view is actually a third person view on a 1 -p 
view. You're not even trying to make sense instead you're just contradicting 
yourself.



[Me] The viewing is 1 - p and whatever is viewed, however hard you try to fool 
yourself that it is also a 1 - p view is, in fact, 3 - p. It is the object of 
viewing.

[Bruno] Which is inferred, and of course not viewed (I might be dreaming, or 
deluded, etc.).

?

 
The object of the 1 - p.

That is ambiguous. 


What more ambiguous than a 1 - p view on a 1 - p view that is infact 3 -p?

?
I can predict that I will view W or M, but you cannot view M v W, or that can 
mean too many things.

I think I've hit a nerve because you're being deliberately obtuse.

 Feel just emphasizes that the probability has to bear on the 1p.

Thats right. What he feels he will see in the future. Assuming comp and that he 
believes comp : Moscow and Washington.

By assuming comp we know in advance that after the duplication, the guy will 
feel (or write in his diary) I feel to be in W, or I feel to be in M. 

By assuming comp, and thus the 'yes doctor' thing, the guy will write 'I feel 
to be in W' and 'I feel to be M' in his diary. Though, ofcourse, there will be 
no diary with both entries.


 Knowledge is typically 1p, but belief are sharable and more typically 3p.

No, beliefs are 1-p. There has never been a belief held 3 - p. The idea is 
hogwash.

 It is a very simple idea. I am not sure what you are missing. 

Its a very simple rebuttle. Im not sure what you are missing.

 I fail to see if you have grasped the 1p-indeterminacy. 

I have grasped its rebuttle. I have understood why you are wrong.

  You certainly failed to provide a flaw, in case you think there is one. may 
 be you can elaborate. 

I've provided the same flaw other people have and I have elaborated at length. 
There is no point in elaborating much further with you. You are not capable of 
seeing flaws in your own reasoning. I have seen you at work protecting other 
ideas of yours, inventing spurious reasons as to why people might find them 
difficult to accept, all the while side stepping the possibility that the ideas 
are just wrong. All you have done in this post is deflect, obfuscate and deny 
the bleeding obvious.


 A child recently saw by himself that even God cannot predict to you (in 
 Helsinki) the outcome felt after such duplication.

I can imagine a child being fooled by the idea. Obviously I would disagree with 
this child.

regards.

 From: marc...@ulb.ac.be
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 14:42:46 +0200
 
 
 On 30 Sep 2013, at 22:40, John Clark wrote:
 
 
 
  Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a  
  100% probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember  
  being the Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that  
  the Helsinki man had more than one future.
 
 Exact. But this made the FPI point.
 
 Every one know that if we assume that if the Helsinki man can survive  
 digital teleportation, in each of those futures he will feel to be  
 unique, and living in only one city, and the question asked

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 08:30, chris peck wrote:


Hi Liz

 The scientist naturally assigns a 50% chance to each outcome,  
even though he knows that he's duplicated by worlds splitting, and  
that in reality he will see both  But there seems to be a lot  
of trouble with the comp version for some reason.


Bruno has a meeting in washington but has double booked it with one  
in moscow. So, he goes to the teleporter/duplicator and travels off  
to both cities and both meetings. On the way back both Brunos take  
the Re-assembler, which,  when both scans are available, runs a  
quick 'diff' over them and merges the result back into one. Bruno is  
reassembled replete with memories of both trips.


We ask this Bruno what the probability was of experiencing Moscow  
before the trip. Well he has a 1-p memory of both cities, so he  
knows, from a 1-p view that the chance was 1.


On the contrary, B will remember having ask himself why Washington  
in Washington, and why Moscow in Moscow.
He will remember having be undetermined. The fusion of memories  
(accepting they made sense without erasing the W and M exoerience  
(which is not clear for me) will confirm even more the indeterminacy  
(if possible).






I imagine there will be some sort of ad hoc 'no cul-de-sac' strap  
ons to Bruno's theory as to why this kind of experiment is barred.  
But it seems perfectly in tune with 'comp' to me. What I think it  
shows is that the probabilities depend on how many Bruno's there are  
when the question is asked.


The question is asked in Helsinki, and concerns the city seen after  
(immediately after if you prefer) pushing the button.




And if you ask before teleportation the probability is 1 as it is  
after the merge.


That is logically impossible, as it would need to live simultaneously  
being in both cities, which is impossible in the protocol given.






The probabilities are governed by conjunction when you ask one man  
about to be duplicated: he will be in moscow AND washington. When  
you ask a duplicate, he  IS in moscow OR washington. 1-p ness, 3- 
pness, 10p-ness, its all philosophical sleight of hand as far as I  
can tell.


No, it concerns the result of self-localization written in the  
personal diary directly after the duplication. That is third person  
verifiable (objective, testable).
Your argument would admit an equivalent one for negating the quantum  
indeterminacy that we live, and which is explained in the  
deterministic account of QM-Everett.


tell me if you see the point. Some people need the iterated self- 
duplication to get the aha, so I don't despair that you see the point  
(unless you don't want to see it, of course). Have you read the  
sane2004 paper? What about step 4?


Bruno








And if I am pre-duplicate, being asked what I expect, if I believe  
in comp then I will expect to be in moscow and washington. Afterall,  
believing in comp I would not believe that there would be some other  
thing that chased my description to either city. Beliefs and  
expectancies are 1-p phenomena. What else is there? There is only me  
trying to imagine being either washington-me or Moscow-me in the  
future. But this is a 3-p perspective. As soon as I imagine me being  
somewhere else, I am objectifying me. Im 3-peeing me.


regards

Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 12:32:06 +1300
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

On 1 October 2013 09:40, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a  
100% probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember  
being the Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that  
the Helsinki man had more than one future.


Nicely and succinctly put. In comp the duplicated man indeed has  
more than one future.


Bruno is distinguishing between our overview and the man's  
personal point of view, and ISTM that this is analogous to a  
scientist performing a schrodinger's cat type experiment. The  
scientist naturally assigns a 50% chance to each outcome, even  
though he knows that he's duplicated by worlds splitting, and that  
in reality he will see both (i.e. he has more than one future).  
Similarly the guy in Helsinki assigns a 50% chance to himself  
arriving in Washington, and ditto for Moscow. But from our third  
person perspective, he arrives in both places. I can't see that  
this is problematic, if we accept the MWI then the comp thought  
experiment is very similar. But there seems to be a lot of trouble  
with the comp version for some reason.



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 14:47, chris peck wrote:


Hi Bruno

You might quote mùe, but I make clear and insist, at each step of  
the UDA, that the question is addressed before the duplication.


You insist but you do not make clear. Even in this reply you state:  
On the contrary, it is very simple. After the duplication 



You can say, before the duplication, that, after the duplication you  
will be in both place, but that will be a third person description of  
you, and the question is about your first person experience. In that  
case, you know in advance, before the duplication, that you will feel  
to be in only one place after the duplication (unless telepathy, non- 
comp, etc.).






 The confirmation or refutation of the prediction is asked after.  
So the guy which predicted W and M is refuted by its own seeing  
(After, both will see only one city, and the question was about that  
seeing, and not the body localization).


Bruno, it would be the same ... for you ... if it was about the body  
localization the bodys end up in different places too. In anycase,  
as far as the seeing goes, if I make the prediction that I will see  
moscow and I will see washington, in this situation, I am not  
committed to the statement there will be a future me that will be  
seeing washington and moscow. And therefore, my prediction simply is  
not refuted by the fact that each future me sees only one city.


Because you are just changing the question. I make precise the  
question is about your future experience, not about the localization  
of the body.
Bioh experience will be lived, like in Everett QM, but they cannot be  
lived simultaneously. Both copies will agree having been unable to  
predict their present seeing in Helsinki.







Can't you see that? Its very simple.


Indeed. But that was an answer to another question.





 It might not help you to betray that you are searching a  
confusion, as this betrays you want the result to be false, before  
understanding. But OK. let us see.


Im not searching for one, Bruno. It sticks out like a sore thumb. I  
disagree with you, I have no intention of being coy about it.


OK, fine. Do you see the point now?




 [Me] Strictly speaking one can not have a first person view on a  
first person view.


Of course you can. It is what you feel about what you feel.





 [Bruno] On the contrary, it is very simple. After the duplication  
you can say I am in both place, so in both place there are two 1- 
views, as I do attribute consciousness to my doppelganger. This is a  
third person view, but which attribute 1-view to both people.


First you say it is simple to have a 1-p view of a 1-p view, and  
then you admit the example you give of such a view is actually a  
third person view on a 1 -p view.


I give both so that you see the difference. This 1-view on 1-view was  
used in a precise context to attempt some help for John Clark.





You're not even trying to make sense instead you're just  
contradicting yourself.


The 3-view on 1-views appears when you talk about the two copies of  
you, and attribute consciousness or first person experience to both of  
them. It is mainly empathy.
The 1-views, and the 1-view on the 1-view are the content of such  
experience. But don't mind this too much, as the original question is  
simpler.





?
I can predict that I will view W or M, but you cannot view M v W,  
or that can mean too many things.


I think I've hit a nerve because you're being deliberately obtuse.



I was just saying that I did not undersand what you mean by viewing M  
or W.






 Feel just emphasizes that the probability has to bear on the 1p.

Thats right. What he feels he will see in the future. Assuming comp  
and that he believes comp : Moscow and Washington.



So he pushes the button, and after, one copy sees only Moscow, and the  
other copy sees only washington, so, both copies understand that the  
prediction Moscow and Washington is refuted.







By assuming comp we know in advance that after the duplication,  
the guy will feel (or write in his diary) I feel to be in W, or I  
feel to be in M.


By assuming comp, and thus the 'yes doctor' thing, the guy will write


when?



'I feel to be in W' and 'I feel to be M' in his diary. Though,  
ofcourse, there will be no diary with both entries.


Exactly, and that is why both will feel like some random selection has  
been done. Of course the computationalist knows that no random 3p  
event ever occurred, and that is why it is only a first person  
indeterminacy occurred.


Do you see the point? Do you want me to give you the iterated  
duplication experiment? Some people grasped the 1p-indeterminacy more  
easily in that case.


Bruno





http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread David Nyman

On 1 October 2013 13:47, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

  You certainly failed to provide a flaw, in case you think there is one.
 may be you can elaborate.

 I've provided the same flaw other people have and I have elaborated at
 length. There is no point in elaborating much further with you. You are not
 capable of seeing flaws in your own reasoning. I have seen you at work
 protecting other ideas of yours, inventing spurious reasons as to why people
 might find them difficult to accept, all the while side stepping the
 possibility that the ideas are just wrong. All you have done in this post is
 deflect, obfuscate and deny the bleeding obvious.

Chris, can you entertain the idea that you are simply rebutting a
straw man? What Bruno is demonstrating, in step 3, corresponds to the
logic Everett set out in his relative state interpretation of QM (aka
MWI): i.e that an objectively deterministic process can result in
subjectively indeterminate outcomes. Like you, after reading
Everett's thesis, Bryce deWitt initially thought he had an obvious
rebuttal, saying But I don't feel myself split. However, when
Everett pointed out in reply that one should expect precisely this
outcome according to the logic as set out - he was able to concede the
point and change his position. None of this, of course, means that
either the UDA or MWI is correct; just that, starting from their
respective assumptions, if you follow the logic correctly you should
arrive at their respective conclusions.

Of course, it is true that in a certain sense, after duplication there
are two of you and hence that you will experience both outcomes; but
*not at the same time*. It is this latter stipulation that brings in
the subjective, or first-person consideration. As Liz has suggested,
it might be particularly apposite today to recall Fred Hoyle's
metaphor, or heuristic, for the difference between objective and
subjective views, as described in his novel October the First is Too
Late. Like Everett, Hoyle proposed something that, at first blush,
seems logically absurd and easily rebutted: i.e. that our subjective
states could simply be the consequence of a random sequence drawn from
the momentary experiences of the entire class of sentient beings. My
own first reaction - somewhat like de Witt's - was That's obviously
crazy - my life isn't a random blizzard of the momentary experiences
of every Tom, Dick and Harry.

However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
(an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
function, for example). Consequently whatever individual person is
implicated in that structure can have no means of knowing what comes
before or after the present moment other than on the basis of
information already encoded within it. Looked at in this way it
becomes possible to understand how relative states could be duplicated
(or multiplied without limit, for that matter) and yet there could be
but a single subjective experience, linked to a specific identity,
situation, and history, at any one time.

David

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

Every one know that if we assume that if the Helsinki man can survive
digital teleportation, in each of those futures he will feel to be unique,
and living in only one city,

Digital teleportation is not necessary, with existing technology I can make
a real experiment, not just a thought experiment, that incorporates all the
philosophical implications, such as they are, as your hi-tech version. In
Helsinki I put you into a soundproof box, I then flip a fair coin and put
you and the box on a jet headed to either Washington of Moscow. Several
hours later you push a button, the box opens and you find out what city
your eyes are receiving signals from. Do you find anything about this
surprising or philosophically interesting? I don't.

and the question asked in Helsinki was bearing about the expectation on
which city he will feel to see when opening the door.

Who cares? Expectations have NOTHING to do with a feeling of self, and
that's what we're talking about.

John K Clark

Your reasoning would show that in Everett QM, where we have also many
different futures, there is no indeterminacy, but as Everett explained,
the indeterminacy remains, it just become first person (Everett uses
subjective instead).

Just give us an algorithm refuting that first person indeterminacy. The
last one you gave was directly refuted by both copies after the duplication.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

Your reasoning would show that in Everett QM, where we have also many
different futures,

Yes.

but as Everett explained, the indeterminacy remains, it just become
first person

Forget Everett, forget Quantum Mechanics, even in pure Newtonian physics
subjective indeterminacy exists because of lack of information. If you knew
the exact speed things were moving at and the coefficient of friction and
the aerodynamic drag on the ball in a Roulette Wheel you could figure out
what number the wheel would produce, but you don't so the number is
indeterminate for you. Big deal.

Just give us an algorithm refuting that first person indeterminacy.

You want me to give you a algorithm that can generate important information
with absolutely nothing to work with? I have no such algorithm. On the TV
game show Let's Make a Deal Monty Hall (God in your terminology) knows
with absolute certainty exactly which of the 3 doors the car is behind, but
you're just a contestant and don't have all the information that Monty has,
so for you the position of the car is indeterminate and all you can do is
play the odds.

A new car is behind one door and a goat behind the other two, you pick a
door at random and Monty opens a door you didn't pick and shows you a goat
and gives you the opportunity to change your choice of a door if you wish.
Monty knows what door the prize is behind and you do not, so Monty could
pick the correct door with a probability of 100% but the best you can do at
first is 33.3%, after he lets you change your choice and pick another door
you know a little more and your probability increases to 66.6%, Monty's
probability stays at 100% and the thing itself, the new car, has no
probability at all. If Everett is right then it's exactly the same for a
electron, it has no probability at all and indeterminacy is just a measure
of our lack of information; if Copenhagen is right then probability is an
inherent part of the electron itself.

John K Clark

The last one you gave was directly refuted by both copies after the
duplication.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 17:07, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Oct 1, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Every one know that if we assume that if the Helsinki man can  
survive digital teleportation, in each of those futures he will feel  
to be unique, and living in only one city,


Digital teleportation is not necessary, with existing technology I  
can make a real experiment, not just a thought experiment, that  
incorporates all the philosophical implications, such as they are,  
as your hi-tech version. In Helsinki I put you into a soundproof  
box, I then flip a fair coin and put you and the box on a jet headed  
to either Washington of Moscow. Several hours later you push a  
button, the box opens and you find out what city your eyes are  
receiving signals from. Do you find anything about this surprising  
or philosophically interesting? I don't.



OK. That clear. You really miss the point. In your scenario, you throw  
a coin. In the duplication, you don't throw any coin, yet it generates  
the same situation, indeed. That is the miracle.


A much more real thought experience is that I give you a Island spath  
(CaCO_3 cristal), and I send a photon in some polarized state, and if  
it deviates, I send you to Moscow, and if not, I send you to Washington.


That is again phenomenologically equivalent (as both futures are  
realized, in the two cases, for different reason).

But here, we use the (Everett) QM, and comp does not assume it.





 and the question asked in Helsinki was bearing about the  
expectation on which city he will feel to see when opening the door.


Who cares?


The point is in getting to step 4, once you see that the duplication  
experience is phenomenologically equivalent with a throw of a coin.

Like you have just shown.

In that case we can use the P=1/2 of the coin, in the duplication, and  
that will be used in some further step.


This post shows that you get the point. So please proceed.





Expectations have NOTHING to do with a feeling of self, and that's  
what we're talking about.


(I think the point is in the understanding that if comp is correct (we  
can survive digital teleportation), then physics become a branch of  
arithmetic/computer science), making comp testable.


You might try to see what it is meant by that, before being convinced  
(or not) that comp makes this necessary.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Digital teleportation is not necessary, with existing technology I can
 make a real experiment, not just a thought experiment, that incorporates
 all the philosophical implications, such as they are, as your hi-tech
 version. In Helsinki I put you into a soundproof box, I then flip a fair
 coin and put you and the box on a jet headed to either Washington of
 Moscow. Several hours later you push a button, the box opens and you find
 out what city your eyes are receiving signals from. Do you find anything
 about this surprising or philosophically interesting? I don't.


  OK. That clear. You really miss the point. In your scenario, you throw a
 coin. In the duplication, you don't throw any coin, yet it generates the
 same situation, indeed. That is the miracle.


In both cases if the Helsinki man sees Moscow he will turn into the Moscow
man and if the Helsinki man sees Washington he will turn into the
Washington man. You're big on point of view so you must know that if your
doppelganger is experiencing a different city it in no way effects what you
are seeing; so philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well
and is just as uninformative as your hi-tech version.

 I give you a Island spath (CaCO_3 cristal), and I send a photon in some
 polarized state, and if it deviates, I send you to Moscow, and if not, I
 send you to Washington.


Then the calculation is easy and precise, the probability that I the
Helsinki man will be in Moscow is 0% and the probability that I the
Helsinki man will be in Washington is 0% because in any other city I
would no longer be the Helsinki man. If you change the meaning of the
personal pronoun I you can change the probability to 100% for both
cities. But no matter what I means it will always be the case that the
man who sees Moscow will be the Moscow man.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 01 Oct 2013, at 17:48, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 Your reasoning would show that in Everett QM, where we have also  
many different futures,


Yes.

 but as Everett explained,  the indeterminacy remains, it just  
become first person


Forget Everett, forget Quantum Mechanics, even in pure Newtonian  
physics subjective indeterminacy exists because of lack of  
information. If you knew the exact speed things were moving at and  
the coefficient of friction and the aerodynamic drag on the ball in  
a Roulette Wheel you could figure out what number the wheel would  
produce, but you don't so the number is indeterminate for you. Big  
deal.


You miss the nuance between the origin of the indeterminacies, but  
that's OK with me, as you seem to agree with the 1/2 in the self- 
duplication, so I look forward hearing you on step 4.







 Just give us an algorithm refuting that first person indeterminacy.

You want me to give you a algorithm that can generate important  
information with absolutely nothing to work with? I have no such  
algorithm.


If you don't have an algorihm, then, given that you have agreed that  
you will survive (not die) in that experience, and given that you have  
agreed all possibilities are lived as unique by the continuers, this  
confession means that you do agree there is an uncertainty.


Again, proceed.




On the TV game show Let's Make a Deal Monty Hall (God in your  
terminology) knows with absolute certainty exactly which of the 3  
doors the car is behind, but you're just a contestant and don't have  
all the information that Monty has, so for you the position of the  
car is indeterminate and all you can do is play the odds.


A new car is behind one door and a goat behind the other two, you  
pick a door at random and Monty opens a door you didn't pick and  
shows you a goat and gives you the opportunity to change your choice  
of a door if you wish. Monty knows what door the prize is behind and  
you do not, so Monty could pick the correct door with a probability  
of 100% but the best you can do at first is 33.3%, after he lets you  
change your choice and pick another door you know a little more and  
your probability increases to 66.6%, Monty's probability stays at  
100% and the thing itself, the new car, has no probability at all.  
If Everett is right then it's exactly the same for a electron, it  
has no probability at all and indeterminacy is just a measure of our  
lack of information; if Copenhagen is right then probability is an  
inherent part of the electron itself.



No problem with any of this.

Please proceed to step 4, or explain why you do not want to proceed,  
as you said once.


In step 4, you are still read and annihilated in Helsinki, the  
information to build the copy are still sent to Washington and Moscow,  
but in Moscow the reconstitution is delayed for one year.
The protocol is known by the candidate person in Helsinki, and the  
question is the same as in step 3. What do you expect to live when  
pushing on the button, will it be statistically different, etc.


Bruno





  John K Clark






The last one you gave was directly refuted by both copies after the  
duplication.



Bruno





http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread meekerdb


On 10/1/2013 7:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

However, on reflection, this is not what one should deduce from the
logic as set out. The logical structure of each subjective moment is
defined as encoding its relative past and anticipated future states
(an assumption that seems consistent with our understanding of brain
function, for example).


But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.  If one conceives 
a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in a moment it doesn't encode 
very much of the past.  And in the digital simulation paradigm the computational state 
doesn't encode any of it.  So I think each conscious moment must have considerable 
extent in (physical) time so as to overlap and provide continuity.  Of course physical 
time need not correspond in any simple way to computational steps.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Forget Everett, forget Quantum Mechanics, even in pure Newtonian physics
 subjective indeterminacy exists because of lack of information. If you knew
 the exact speed things were moving at and the coefficient of friction and
 the aerodynamic drag on the ball in a Roulette Wheel you could figure out
 what number the wheel would produce, but you don't so the number is
 indeterminate for you. Big deal.


  You miss the nuance between the origin of the indeterminacies,


The origin of the indeterminacies is the random use of personal pronouns
with no clear referents by Bruno Marchal such that all questions like what
is the probability I will do this or that? become meaningless. Most of
the time it's OK to be sloppy with pronouns because the referents are
obvious, but NOT in philosophical discussions about the nature of personal
identity.

All that can be said is that from ANY point of view there is a 100% chance
the Helsinki man will turn into the Washington man, and a 100% chance  the
Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man; so if I is the Helsinki man
then there is a 0% chance I will see either city because very soon I
will turn into something that is not I.

 You want me to give you a algorithm that can generate important
 information with absolutely nothing to work with? I have no such algorithm.


  If you don't have an algorihm,


The only algorithm I have or need is that from ANY point of view if the
Helsinki man sees Moscow then the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow
man, and if the Helsinki man sees Washington then the Helsinki man will
turn into the Washington man. What else do you want to know?

 then, given that you have agreed that you will survive (not die) in that
 experience,


Yes I agree.

 and given that you have agreed all possibilities are lived as unique by
 the continuers,


Yes, I agree.


  this confession means that you do agree there is an uncertainty.


Huh? Uncertainty about what?

 Please proceed to step 4,


No thanks.

 or explain why you do not want to proceed


Because step 3 sucks.

 In step 4, you are still read and annihilated in Helsinki, the
 information to build the copy are still sent to Washington and Moscow, but
 in Moscow the reconstitution is delayed for one year.


I don't see what a delay has to do with the price of eggs.

 What do you expect to live when pushing on the button


Who cares, expectations have nothing to do with identity or the sense of
self.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread David Nyman

On 1 October 2013 18:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 But then it seems one needs the physical, or at least the subconscious.  If
 one conceives a subjective moment as just what one is conscious of in a
 moment it doesn't encode very much of the past.  And in the digital
 simulation paradigm the computational state doesn't encode any of it.  So I
 think each conscious moment must have considerable extent in (physical)
 time so as to overlap and provide continuity.  Of course physical time need
 not correspond in any simple way to computational steps.

I can only agree. I think that Hoyle deliberately didn't try to
over-define what he meant by the contents of one of his pigeon holes
and indeed one could make the same comment about the related notion of
an observer moment. My characterisation of its structure is simply
intended to draw attention to what is implicit in the assumptions -
i.e. that it entails sufficient information, however encoded, to
encapsulate (not necessarily entirely, or even predominantly,
consciously, as you correctly point out) an identity, a situation, and
a history. That said, this seems at the least not inconsistent with
our current understanding of neural function; indeed, most
particularly, with respect to its dis-function, in which specific
aspects of identity, situation and history are all too apt suddenly to
disappear - well, from moment to moment.

As you say, how all this might map in detail to physical or
computational structures is somewhat obscure, to put it mildly. The
role of the flow of experiential time is especially intriguing and
in idle moments I sometimes fall to speculating on how it might play
out in terms of Hoyle's metaphor. One thing that seems clear is that,
for the metaphor to make sense, one must assume an irreducible dynamic
already implicit in the relation between present and past occasions
assumed to be encoded as a whole within a singular (specious) present
moment. That is, as you say above, each conscious moment must have
considerable extent in (physical) time so as to overlap and provide
continuity. The reason for this stipulation, of course, is that the
abstract transitions between one moment and another are not
themselves conceived as being encoded within the structure of any
given moment.

Hence the conceptual role of transition is, in the first place, to
establish a singular abstract experiential fixed point and, in the
second, to delimit experiential content within the span of each of a
mutually-exclusive succession of observer moments. Conceived thus, it
cannot represent a flow of time between such moments; it represents
merely an unbiased serialisation, or selection, over the entire class
of such moments. Consequently any such flow, as already stipulated,
must either be encoded in the structure of each moment or not at all.
Curiously, the experiencing subjects, that are thus momentarily
individuated, nonetheless seemingly cannot help being wedded to the
notion - indeed to the local illusion - that there really is some
such continuing transition, despite its unobservability in principle;
after all, the alternative would seem to be an infinity of monadic
subjects trapped forever, each in a single moment. Considered thus, I
think, Hoyle's metaphor allows one to speak genuinely of the illusion
of a flow of time while giving at least a conceptual account of how
such a trick might be managed.

David

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 1 October 2013 22:47, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

 A child recently saw by himself that even God cannot predict to you (in
 Helsinki) the outcome felt after such duplication.

 I can imagine a child being fooled by the idea. Obviously I would disagree
 with this child.

I tend to agree with Bruno that the idea is trivially obvious, and yet
you and others such as John Clark disagree. In these cases I think the
problem must be that the two disagreeing parties have different
notions in mind. The same occurs in discussions about free will.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread chris peck

Hi David

Thanks for the response. It was by far the best response Ive had and a pleasure 
to read.

Lets distinguish between conclusions and arguments.


I can entertain many bizarre conclusions. I often wonder about an 'infinite 
plenitude of numbers' or my favorite, an infinite pattern of binary state 
because maybe that's ontologically simpler, and what would be represented 
therein. You'ld have pac-man, space invaders and doom. You'ld have microsoft 
windows and microsoft windows implementing linux VMs. Goodness, you'ld have 
Windows implementing Linux VMs implementing Windows VMs. An infinite amount of 
this. You'ld have represented every photo-realistic CGI dinosaur in every CGI 
dinosaur movie ever made. All these things ended up as a finite pattern of 
binary states and therefore get represented in my infinite plenitude of binary 
patterns. 

Assuming 'comp', then we'ld have every subjective moment experienced by every 
creature that has existed all represented in there somewhere. Forgetting for 
the moment whether any of these states would be 'active', or how they would 
ever get realized or distinguished from noise, or for that matter what could 
ever interpret them; but assuming 'comp' they would at least be represented. I 
can entertain all this and far more besides. Ok. so the point Im trying to 
labor is it is not the bizzaro nature of any conclusion that troubles me. 

Its Bruno's 'logic' in his informal proof at step 3. If I were God, and Bruno 
had sussed me out and was absolutely right in his conclusions, I'ld still be 
whinging about step 3. 'He got there' I would grumble, 'but illegitimately!'

I also don't think he should ride on the back of Everett. It seems that there 
is an argument now that Brunos' conclusions are similar to Everett's, therefore 
lets be forgiving about his informal proof. Lets not. 

As for Everett and MWI I posted a remark on Quantum Immortality wherein the 
person in front of the gun can be certain of 2 things, she will survive and she 
will die and given she believes MWI (assumes comp) she will expect to survive 
(and die) certainly. And she will experience both certainly. This seems to me 
the essence of MWI. So if asked, prior to the suicide attempt what she expects 
to experience, she should say that she expects to experience not being shot and 
being shot. See, I analyze MWI in the same fashion.

Now I see an argument brewing that all this is a trivial matter consequent on 
how Bruno has phrased step 3. Maybe it is trivial. But is Bruno trivially right 
or trivially wrong in step 3? To what extent are people giving Bruno the 
benefit of the doubt because its a bit like Everett?

All the best

 From: stath...@gmail.com
 Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 09:40:47 +1000
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 On 1 October 2013 22:47, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
  A child recently saw by himself that even God cannot predict to you (in
  Helsinki) the outcome felt after such duplication.
 
  I can imagine a child being fooled by the idea. Obviously I would disagree
  with this child.
 
 I tend to agree with Bruno that the idea is trivially obvious, and yet
 you and others such as John Clark disagree. In these cases I think the
 problem must be that the two disagreeing parties have different
 notions in mind. The same occurs in discussions about free will.
 
 
 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou
 
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread LizR

On 2 October 2013 14:51, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

 I also don't think he should ride on the back of Everett. It seems that
 there is an argument now that Brunos' conclusions are similar to Everett's,
 therefore lets be forgiving about his informal proof. Lets not.


Sorry, I think that was me. I was just trying to point out that anyone who
accepts the MWI is already comfortable with the idea of a duplication
experiment. I wasn't using this to say anything about whether we should (or
shouldn't) accept Bruno's proof.

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-10-01 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Oct 02, 2013 at 01:51:01AM +, chris peck wrote:
 Hi David
 
 Thanks for the response. It was by far the best response Ive had and a 
 pleasure to read.
 
 Lets distinguish between conclusions and arguments.
 
 
 I can entertain many bizarre conclusions. I often wonder about an 'infinite 
 plenitude of numbers' or my favorite, an infinite pattern of binary state 
 because maybe that's ontologically simpler, and what would be represented 
 therein. You'ld have pac-man, space invaders and doom. You'ld have microsoft 
 windows and microsoft windows implementing linux VMs. Goodness, you'ld have 
 Windows implementing Linux VMs implementing Windows VMs. An infinite amount 
 of this. You'ld have represented every photo-realistic CGI dinosaur in every 
 CGI dinosaur movie ever made. All these things ended up as a finite pattern 
 of binary states and therefore get represented in my infinite plenitude of 
 binary patterns. 
 
 Assuming 'comp', then we'ld have every subjective moment experienced by every 
 creature that has existed all represented in there somewhere. Forgetting for 
 the moment whether any of these states would be 'active', or how they would 
 ever get realized or distinguished from noise, or for that matter what could 
 ever interpret them; but assuming 'comp' they would at least be represented. 
 I can entertain all this and far more besides. Ok. so the point Im trying to 
 labor is it is not the bizzaro nature of any conclusion that troubles me. 
 
 Its Bruno's 'logic' in his informal proof at step 3. If I were God, and Bruno 
 had sussed me out and was absolutely right in his conclusions, I'ld still be 
 whinging about step 3. 'He got there' I would grumble, 'but illegitimately!'
 
 I also don't think he should ride on the back of Everett. It seems that there 
 is an argument now that Brunos' conclusions are similar to Everett's, 
 therefore lets be forgiving about his informal proof. Lets not. 
 
 As for Everett and MWI I posted a remark on Quantum Immortality wherein the 
 person in front of the gun can be certain of 2 things, she will survive and 
 she will die and given she believes MWI (assumes comp) she will expect to 
 survive (and die) certainly. And she will experience both certainly. This 
 seems to me the essence of MWI. So if asked, prior to the suicide attempt 
 what she expects to experience, she should say that she expects to experience 
 not being shot and being shot. See, I analyze MWI in the same fashion.
 
 Now I see an argument brewing that all this is a trivial matter consequent on 
 how Bruno has phrased step 3. Maybe it is trivial. But is Bruno trivially 
 right or trivially wrong in step 3? To what extent are people giving Bruno 
 the benefit of the doubt because its a bit like Everett?
 

Not at all. The UDA does not depend on the MWI at all.

Step 3 simply implies that an omnisicent third party (ie God) cannot
know which outcome the duplicated person experiences, because one
person has become two.

If I were God, the first thing I'd do is rule out the validity of
COMP. Those pesky computer programs are not allowed to be conscious,
otherwise they'd call into question my very omniscience :).

The situation is analagous to the observation of the spin of an
electron in MWI - an omniscient observer cannot know whether the
observer experiences spin up or spin down, since both observations are
equally real. This is by contrast to a single world interpretation, eg
Copenhagen where only one of spin-up or spin-down is factually
correct.

But step 3 is not analogous to quantum immortality - there's a related
comp-imortality theorem for that.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Sep 2013, at 12:19, chris peck wrote:


Hi Bruno, and thanks for the reply.

 Precisely: the expectation evaluation is asked to the person in  
Helsinki, before the duplication is done, and it concerns where the  
person asked will feel to be, from his first person point of view.


---

Yes, but in the responses Ive had from yourself and others the  
situation has been addressed from the situation after Helsinki. So  
far at least.


?

You might quote mùe, but I make clear and insist, at each step of the  
UDA, that the question is addressed before the duplication. After, it  
would not have any meaning (like what is the probability to get Head  
after the coin has been throwned).
The confirmation or refutation of the prediction is asked after. So  
the guy which predicted W and M is refuted by its own seeing (After,  
both will see only one city, and the question was about that seeing,  
and not the body localization).








---


If one of the 'me's is asked after teleportation but before the  
doors are opened what are the chances of being in moscow, then I can  
see that there is indeterminacy.


OK. So you can derive the First Person Indeterminacy (FIP) from the  
Delayed Uncertainty Principle: If I can predict with certainty  
(modulo default hypothesis) that tomorrow I will feel to be  
uncertain about some outcome of some experience, then I am already  
uncertain now about that outcome.


Not sure about that Bruno. I know that if I believe I have been  
duplicated and end up at the terminal of some teleport system  
without knowing which terminal I'm at then the probabilities change  
from the situation before teleportation. At that point I believe I  
will be duplicated and genuinely end up at both terminals.


That entails there are probabilities! Indeed.

There is one me befoe the duplication, and two me's after, from the  
or a third person point of view.


But, assuming comp, there is always only one me, from the first  
person points of view. In Helsinki, you can predict with certainty  
that you will write in your diary that you are specifically in only  
one precise city, and the umber of first-person-me has not changed,  
it is still one. From that view, you inherit a doppelganger in the  
other city, but it is another first-person entity, even if  
intellectually ( or from a third person view) you can consider that  
it is a you.


If I am sufficiently described by the reading process to maintain  
'I'ness then this 'I'ness goes to washington and moscow.



That is a third person view on the first person view. You are right.  
But the question in Helsinki concerned the first person view on the  
first person view.



---

I think I'm beginning to see where your confusion comes from.


It might not help you to betray that you are searching a confusion, as  
this betrays you want the result to be false, before understanding.  
But OK. let us see.




Strictly speaking one can not have a first person view on a first  
person view.


On the contrary, it is very simple. After the duplication you can say  
I am in both place, so in both place there are two 1-views, as I do  
attribute consciousness to my doppelganger. This is a third person  
view, but which attribute 1-view to both people. I have introduced  
this only to refute Clark idea that this fact shows there is no  
indeterminacy, and this lead by analogy to distinguish it from the  
genuine 1-view on oneself. of course you are right, the 1-view on the  
1-view is an 1-view.






The viewing is 1 - p and whatever is viewed, however hard you try to  
fool yourself that it is also a 1 - p view is, in fact, 3 - p. It is  
the object of viewing.


Which is inferred, and of course not viewed (I might be dreaming, or  
deluded, etc.).





The object of the 1 - p.


That is ambiguous.




I can imagine my self viewing Moscow or Washington,


?
I can predict that I will view W or M, but you cannot view M v W, or  
that can mean too many things.





perhaps as a 1st person camera perspective a la Blair Witch Project  
- i can even split screen it so that I can imagine a simultaneous  
Washington and Moscow view. But in fact here the 1 -p is the  
imagining not the 'viewing Moscow or viewing Washington'.


Keep in mind that here 1p is defined by the content of the personal  
diary or memory. The reasoning works by given a (simple) 3p definition  
of the 1p.





Consequently, there is nothing really to suggest that I have  
'intellectualized' the process anymore than you have. And in fact,  
at this point in your informal 'proof' you suggest people should  
attempt to 'feel' rather than think the point through. Alarm bells  
start ringing whenever philosophers appeal to 'feels' over thought.  
You do not present an argument for why feels should be given  
precedence and of

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Sep 2013, at 19:38, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 And cause is a complex high level notion.

A cause is complex and at a high level only if the effect is complex  
and at a high level. If Z is at the fundamental level (assuming  
there really is such a level and causes and effects aren't  
infinitely nested) then it's quite literally the simplest thing in  
the world to say that Y causes Z, because after that there is  
nothing more to say.


? (too much fuzzy talk for me).




  Does comp mean every event must have a cause?

 No.

Then I do believe in comp.


It is an open problem.





 with comp every event has a reason

Then I do NOT believe in comp. And this is why I say I don't know  
what comp means and neither do you.


An arithmetical reason. Of course you can argue that 0 exists for no  
reason. I prefer not doing philosophy, before you grasp the FPI, or  
find a flaw.







 but not necessarily a physical cause.

Ignoring the fact that you have never satisfactorily explained what  
physical means,


This is a gratuitous unfair remark. I am probably the first one who  
give a precise definition of the physical and which does not assumed  
any physical reality of any sort. But to grasp this, you need to  
progress a little bit more in the work.






even in pure mathematics your ideas break down. Chaitin's constant  
is completely random,


In some sense; yes. It is also entirely determined (God can know it).




it has no physical cause, it has no non physical cause,


?
(I prefer to avoid the notion of cause, but it is obvious that  
Chaitin number as a cause or logical reason).







and Chaitin proved that no logical process, no function, no infinite  
sequence, nothing, can produce it.


It is limit computable, you can approximate it from below, (without  
ever knowing when the decimal stabilize, but they will). You can also  
compute it from an oracle for the Busy beaver function.


You mix math and physics in a context which does not assumed physics.



Nobody knows or will ever know the value of Chaitin's constant, all  
we know is that it exists and it's a real number greater than 0 but  
less than 1.


I have computed it with many decimal for some universal system. If the  
universal formalism makes little program easily not stopping (or  
stopping) you can compute the first decimal.




In fact most real numbers are like that, unlike very rare exceptions  
like the rational numbers or PI or e the shortest way to express  
most real numbers is to just write down all the digits. There is no  
shortcut.


Sure. That is why you can use the iterated self-duplication to grasp  
that the FPI lead to a very strong form of indeterminacy.








 Thus regardless of what comp means it is certain that if  
Everett is correct then Bruno Marchal has more than one future;


 In God' eyes, or in the 3p view, but the 1p-view remains unique.

Tell me more about this unique 1p-view; if you mean the view of  
Helsinki the man is having right now then the 1p-view will never  
see Washington or Moscow or anything else except the view of  
Helsinki as it is right now.


It the comp equivalent of Everetts impossiblity to feel the split. In  
helsinki you know that whoever you will note in the local personal  
diary, it will contain only I see W or I see M. It is in that  
sense that the 1-view remain unique, from its 1-view perspective.







 the question is about what you (in Helsinki) can expect to feel.

NO!! That is NOT the question


I am the one asking the question.  That remark is definitely absurd.




and this is the single most important thing you're so dreadfully  
confused about. You want to know about the nature of personal  
identity,


Absolutely not. I want only evaluate my chance to see M, or W, when in  
helsinki I am told that I will be duplicated. I know that I will push  
on a button, open a door and see a city, and by comp I know I will see  
only one city (indeoendetly of any concern on personal identity, and  
the reasoning works for any machine, or even just any duplicable  
entity).


You keep asserting an repeating statement that I have already  
addressed and explain how much you are not correct on what I said or  
wrote.




and for that it is 100% irrelevant if your expectations turn out to  
be correct or not. All that matters is if tomorrow there is a person  
(or lots of persons, it doesn't matter) who remembers being you today.


Which is trivially the case in our case.



Since I was a child my expectations have proven to be incorrect many  
many times, yet I have always felt like me.



Personal identity is addressed in another paper I wrote, but the UDA  
does not rely to it (it is the contrary: the theory of personal  
identity relies on the UDA, and this is completely out of the present  
topic).


Here, personal identity is only distracting.





 In all case, he will feel to be a unique person having

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Sep 2013, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/29/2013 12:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
As he knows in advance that he will feel, whoever he is, live only  
one (again, from The 1-pov).


But that sentence is hard to parse.  Whoever he is implies there  
is only one he,


?
It implies there is two 3-he. as indeed it is the case.

the point is that both 3-he lives a unique 1-me (in W, and in M).



as if he is a soul that goes to either Moscow or Washington but not  
both.  Yet the assumption of comp is that this soul is duplicated  
and so he has no unique reference.


Well that's was a reply to a point made by Clark.

We know that with comp, both the W-guy and the M-guy *are* the same  
person as the Helsinki guy. The point is that both the W-guy and the M- 
guy were not able to predict in Helsinki that they would have the W  
experience, or the M experience.  Both see that they get only one of  
them.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread John Clark

On 9/28/2013 12:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


   I have few doubt that 9/11 is an inside job, and the evidences are
 rather big that this is the case,


How the hell did this thread turn into a showcase for looney conspiracy
theories? The level of logical rigor shown in this idea is similar to that
shown in your Universal Dance Association theory.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread meekerdb

On 9/30/2013 7:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Sep 2013, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/29/2013 12:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
As he knows in advance that he will feel, whoever he is, live only one (again, from
The 1-pov).

But that sentence is hard to parse. Whoever he is implies there is only one
he,

?
It implies there is two 3-he. as indeed it is the case.

the point is that both 3-he lives a unique 1-me (in W, and in M).

as if he is a soul that goes to either Moscow or Washington but not both. Yet the
assumption of comp is that this soul is duplicated and so he has no unique reference.

Well that's was a reply to a point made by Clark.

We know that with comp, both the W-guy and the M-guy *are* the same person as the
Helsinki guy.

But that depends on having a theory of personal identity, which you deny having used. It
seems to me that you're using have the same memories (or diary).

The point is that both the W-guy and the M-guy were not able to predict in Helsinki that
they would have the W experience, or the M experience. Both see that they get only one
of them.

Yes. But suppose you and I are in Helsinki. We each get into a teleporter and random
device sends one of us to Moscow and the other to Washington. It's equally unpredictable,
by me and by you, where we will experience. So why is the fact that we are not the same
person, don't share the same memories, significant?

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 A cause is complex and at a high level only if the effect is complex and
 at a high level. If Z is at the fundamental level (assuming there really is
 such a level and causes and effects aren't infinitely nested) then it's
 quite literally the simplest thing in the world to say that Y causes Z,
 because after that there is nothing more to say.


  ? (too much fuzzy talk for me).


Which word didn't you understand?

even in pure mathematics your ideas break down. Chaitin's constant is
 completely random,


  In some sense; yes. It is also entirely determined (God can know it).


There is no God and if there were even He wouldn't know it.


  I want only evaluate my chance to see M, or W, when in helsinki I am
 told that I will be duplicated.


That's 4 personal pronouns all with unclear referents in a sentence only 22
words long that is supposed to explain the nature of personal identity.

 I know that I will push on a button, open a door and see a city,


And by see a city Bruno Marchal means input information that will
complete a calculation determining if Bruno Marchal will say I am in
Washington or I am in Moscow. Different input causes different output.

 and by comp I know I will see only one city


That's 2 personal pronouns with unclear referents in only 11 words.

 Personal identity is addressed in another paper I wrote, but the UDA does
 not rely to it (it is the contrary: the theory of personal identity relies
 on the UDA, and this is completely out of the present topic).


Then what the hell is the present topic, imbecilic and dull as dishwater
911 conspiracy theories?

  there are several different people who all remember being the guy in
 Helsinki it turned out that the guy in Helsinki had several different
 futures.



 From some 3p view, that's correct. But


There is no but about it, that's correct from EVERY point of view.

 the question is about the most probable first person experience,


Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a 100%
probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember being the
Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that the Helsinki man
had more than one future.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-30 Thread LizR

On 1 October 2013 09:40, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


 Personal identity has nothing to do with prediction, and there is a 100%
 probability the the Washington man and the Moscow man remember being the
 Helsinki man, and that is all you need to know to say that the Helsinki man
 had more than one future.

 Nicely and succinctly put. In comp the duplicated man indeed has more
than one future.

Bruno is distinguishing between our overview and the man's personal point
of view, and ISTM that this is analogous to a scientist performing a
schrodinger's cat type experiment. The scientist naturally assigns a 50%
chance to each outcome, even though he knows that he's duplicated by worlds
splitting, and that in reality he will see both (i.e. he has more than
one future). Similarly the guy in Helsinki assigns a 50% chance to
himself arriving in Washington, and ditto for Moscow. But from our third
person perspective, he arrives in both places. I can't see that this is
problematic, if we accept the MWI then the comp thought experiment is very
similar. But there seems to be a lot of trouble with the comp version for
some reason.

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Sep 2013, at 16:58, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 Everett mention what you call feeling of identity, which is a  
consequence of modeling the observer by a machine


It doesn't matter if modeling the observer by a machine is valid  
or not, if tomorrow somebody remembers being  Bruno Marchal today  
then Bruno Marchal has a future,


That's my point. So in the WM duplication, the experiencer has a  
future. In fact, he has two futures, and their are logically  
incompatible, *from The 1-pov* point of view. As he knows in advance  
that he will feel, whoever he is, live only one (again, from The 1-pov).





if not then Bruno Marchal has no future, and Quantum Mechanics or a  
understanding of Everett's Many Worlds is not needed for any of it.


It is the other way round.



Period. However in a completely different unrelated matter, if you  
want to assign a probability that tomorrow Bruno Marchal will  
observe a electron move left or right then you will need Quantum  
Mechanics, and some (including me) feel that Everett's  
interpretation is a convenient way to think about it, although there  
are other ways.


I use Everett QM to illustrate a more general phenomenon, which  
applies in the classical setting of machine's calssical duplication.





 With comp [...]

Does comp mean every event must have a cause?


No. And cause is a complex high level notion. Then with comp every  
event has a reason, but not necessarily a physical cause. That is an  
open problem.




That question has a simple yes or no answer,


Or Open problem. But irrelevant for the FPI.



and you made up the word so you must know the answer, what is it? If  
it's yes then I don't believe in this thing you call comp.


It is irrelevant open problem.




 in all cases we have one future, in the first person pov

It is revealing that in explaining the theory of personal identity  
Bruno Marchal must always insert vague undefined personal pronouns  
like we or you or I at key points despite the fact that if it  
were already clear what those pronouns referred to then the entire  
matter would already be settled.


I give a simple definition of the 1-I and 3-I, in the UDA context (and  
anoher definition in the AUDA, based on the Dx = xx method used to  
define self-reference in computer science. You are the one describing  
this as pee-pee stuf when I make this precise, and then you don't take  
the definition into account. I don't see the rationality here.





Thus regardless of what comp means it is certain that if Everett  
is correct then Bruno Marchal has more than one future;


In God' eyes, or in the 3p view, but the 1p-view remains unique. You  
will not *feel* being in M and W, and the question is about what you  
(in Helsinki) can expect to feel. In all case, he will feel to be a  
unique person having been selected for one future relatively to who he  
remembers to be (the guy in Helsinki).


You just continue to ignore the 1p and 3p distinction.

Bruno



as to the question does he have more than one future?, well,  
that has the same answer as the question how long is a piece of  
string?. But no doubt I am confusing the first person view of the  
second person view of the third person view with the second person  
view of the first person view of the third person view once removed  
on my mother's side.


By the way, exactly when does this first person pov occur in a  
given experiment and how long does it last? If it's what I'm feeling  
right now then it's not going to last for long because right now  
doesn't last for long.


  John K Clark






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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Sep 2013, at 20:25, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/28/2013 12:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

...
Prohibition is only a technic to sell a lot of drugs, without  
quality control, nor price control, + the ability to directly  
target all kids on all streets, making huge black markets, and  
leading to important corruption so that prohibition is continued,  
and the fear selling business can be pursued. Nixon,  Reagan, but  
also Chirac and people in the UK, are known having ordered studies  
on marijuana, and put the result in the trash (as *all* independent  
studies have shown marijuana far less toxic and addictive than  
alcohol, etc.).


The society A partnership for a drug free America is financed by  
the industries of alcohol, tobacco, guns and scientology. Which  
says a lot.


It explains why the legal drugs are the dangerous one (oil,  
alcohol, tobacco, ...), and the illegal drugs are mostly innocuous  
(french cheese, cannabis, ...). Prohibition makes the state into a  
drug dealer, and transforms the planet into a big Chicago.  
Pollution and climate change comes from there too, as Henry Ford  
already asked why to use non sustainable oil, when hemp guarantied  
atmospheric equilibrium. The green should invest in  
antiprohibitionism.


After the NDAA 2012, the war on terror seems to me to be like the  
war on drugs. Pure fear selling business. It is a quasi- 
confession. Obama could have said simply we are the terrorist.  
Since them, I have few doubt that 9/11 is an inside job, and the  
evidences are rather big that this is the case, especially when you  
look at the NIST report, which is technically as convincing than  
the papers on the danger of cannabis.


I agree with most of what you wrote above, but that last is  
nonsense.  There is no way the government could have engineered the  
9/11 attacks without it being leaked even before it happened.  
Remember Occam, you need to take the simplest explanation.



It is the simplest explanation of why Obama signed the NDAA, and  
refused to change the language (just one or two commas more, and that  
would have been OK, but they are still missing and his administration  
refused to add the commas since, and this despite the fact that the  
supreme court has judged it unconstitutional).


Then you might try to explain to me how you answer the questions asked  
by the Engineers  Architect about how building seven did fall, and  
many other many questions. (But this is out-of-topic, we can discuss  
this in the youtube comments on some video, I will look for the  
clearest).


I am not saying that 9/11 is an inside job, but I am saying that I  
have now more evidences that it is, than that it is not.
After the NDAA 2012, the war on terror looks suspiciously similar to  
the war on drugs.


Bruno


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Sep 2013, at 20:28, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/28/2013 12:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 19:55, John Clark wrote:



On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au  
wrote:


 I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years  
ago when you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would  
experience when undergoing the duplicator experiment.


Yes.

 I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in  
both places at once,


No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were  
duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and  
Washington. I also said the vague and sloppy use of words like  
youand  he and I and the man is at the root of Bruno's  
intense confusion, and apparently yours as well.


  which does violence to the notion of survival after copying  
assumption of COMP.


Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to  
go back to square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just  
the first few pages that I read, I have already written about   
6.02*10^23 posts that covers the subjects in this post and most  
are in far far greater detail.


Just provide one link.

We have answered them all. You kept repeating the same confusion  
between different person points of view, or, in some post, you  
confuse the phenomenology of the indeterminacy with all their  
different logical origins. In many, you just change the definitions  
given.




I have come to the conclusion that logical arguments will not  
convince anybody if it is their policy to first decide what they  
want to believe and only then look for evidence to support it.



I have never met a scientist not convinced by the first person  
indeterminacy, accepting to discuss this privately or publicly.
You try to avoid the debate, and that's the only strategy used by  
philosophers to hide the (quite simple) discovery.


You act like a pseudo-religious dogmatic pseudo-philosopher, it  
seems to me. If you would have a real argument, you would take a  
pleasure to explain it calmly, and without using insults and  
mocking hand waving.


So, provide an argument, answer the questions, or try to admit that  
you lost your point.


I'm not sure you even need to convince JC of the FPI due to  
duplication.  He already believes there is uncertainty due to MWI of  
QM.  Isn't that enough for your argument to proceed.


It would make the derivation of quantum logic and QM circular. The  
original point in the FPI is that we get a strong form of  
indeterminacy which does not assumes QM, and the whole reversal  
reasoning needs this.


Bruno




Brent


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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread chris peck

Hi Bruno, and thanks for the reply.

 Precisely: the expectation evaluation is asked to the person in Helsinki, 
 before the duplication is done, and it concerns where the person asked will 
 feel to be, from his first person point of view.

---

Yes, but in the responses Ive had from yourself and others the situation has 
been addressed from the situation after Helsinki. So far at least.


---

 
If one of the 'me's is asked after teleportation but before the doors are 
opened what are the chances of being in moscow, then I can see that there is 
indeterminacy.

OK. So you can derive the First Person Indeterminacy (FIP) from the Delayed 
Uncertainty Principle: If I can predict with certainty (modulo default 
hypothesis) that tomorrow I will feel to be uncertain about some outcome of 
some experience, then I am already uncertain now about that outcome.

Not sure about that Bruno. I know that if I believe I have been duplicated and 
end up at the terminal of some teleport system without knowing which terminal 
I'm at then the probabilities change from the situation before teleportation. 
At that point I believe I will be duplicated and genuinely end up at both 
terminals.

That entails there are probabilities! Indeed. 

There is one me befoe the duplication, and two me's after, from the or a third 
person point of view.

But, assuming comp, there is always only one me, from the first person points 
of view. In Helsinki, you can predict with certainty that you will write in 
your diary that you are specifically in only one precise city, and the umber of 
first-person-me has not changed, it is still one. From that view, you inherit a 
doppelganger in the other city, but it is another first-person entity, even 
if intellectually ( or from a third person view) you can consider that it is a 
you.

If I am sufficiently described by the reading process to maintain 'I'ness then 
this 'I'ness goes to washington and moscow.


That is a third person view on the first person view. You are right. But the 
question in Helsinki concerned the first person view on the first person view.


---

I think I'm beginning to see where your confusion comes from. Strictly speaking 
one can not have a first person view on a first person view. The viewing is 1 - 
p and whatever is viewed, however hard you try to fool yourself that it is also 
a 1 - p view is, in fact, 3 - p. It is the object of viewing. The object of the 
1 - p. I can imagine my self viewing Moscow or Washington, perhaps as a 1st 
person camera perspective a la Blair Witch Project - i can even split screen it 
so that I can imagine a simultaneous Washington and Moscow view. But in fact 
here the 1 -p is the imagining not the 'viewing Moscow or viewing Washington'. 
Consequently, there is nothing really to suggest that I have 'intellectualized' 
the process anymore than you have. And in fact, at this point in your informal 
'proof' you suggest people should attempt to 'feel' rather than think the point 
through. Alarm bells start ringing whenever philosophers appeal to 'feels' over 
thought. You do not present an argument for why feels should be given 
precedence and of course it is an open question as to what a comp practitioner 
would feel anyway. It is an extraordinarily tenuous 'slight of hand' at the 
crux of your informal proof.

Of course, one person can only have one 1-p view. That states the obvious. 
However, If I am one person about to be duplicated and if I believe in comp 
(and beliefs are paradigmatically 1-p phenomena) then ISTM I will also believe 
that my identity carries over to two places. This will not be an 
intellectualized think through, it will be a second nature 'feel'. Otherwise, I 
do not genuinely accept comp. And Im afraid I do not think you do accept comp.

Just to turn the screw a little tighter, I believe my description of what our 
practitioner about to be teleported would think and feel is far closer to a 1-p 
description of the feels and thoughts a comp accepter would have. That is 
precisely the point. I am trying to describe how a comp practitioner would 
feel. You on the other hand, despite proclaiming the opposite, in fact go to 
great lengths to intellectualize the situation. You fail to 'get into the head' 
of a comp practitioner prior to duplication.

All the best.

From: marc...@ulb.ac.be
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 09:17:45 +0200


On 28 Sep 2013, at 20:28, meekerdb wrote:  On 9/28/2013 12:11 AM, 
Bruno Marchal  wrote:

  On 27 Sep 2013, at 19:55, John Clark wrote:   
   
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell  Standish 
li...@hpcoders.com.au  wrote:
   
  I do

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 And cause is a complex high level notion.


A cause is complex and at a high level only if the effect is complex and at
a high level. If Z is at the fundamental level (assuming there really is
such a level and causes and effects aren't infinitely nested) then it's
quite literally the simplest thing in the world to say that Y causes Z,
because after that there is nothing more to say.

  Does comp mean every event must have a cause?



  No.


Then I do believe in comp.

 with comp every event has a reason


Then I do NOT believe in comp. And this is why I say I don't know what
comp means and neither do you.

 but not necessarily a physical cause.


Ignoring the fact that you have never satisfactorily explained what
physical means, even in pure mathematics your ideas break down. Chaitin's
constant is completely random, it has no physical cause, it has no non
physical cause, and Chaitin proved that no logical process, no function, no
infinite sequence, nothing, can produce it. Nobody knows or will ever know
the value of Chaitin's constant, all we know is that it exists and it's a
real number greater than 0 but less than 1. In fact most real numbers are
like that, unlike very rare exceptions like the rational numbers or PI or e
the shortest way to express most real numbers is to just write down all the
digits. There is no shortcut.

 Thus regardless of what comp means it is certain that if Everett is
 correct then Bruno Marchal has more than one future;



 In God' eyes, or in the 3p view, but the 1p-view remains unique.


Tell me more about this unique 1p-view; if you mean the view of Helsinki
the man is having right now then the 1p-view will never see Washington or
Moscow or anything else except the view of Helsinki as it is right now.

 the question is about what you (in Helsinki) can expect to feel.


NO!! That is NOT the question and this is the single most important thing
you're so dreadfully confused about. You want to know about the nature of
personal identity, and for that it is 100% irrelevant if your expectations
turn out to be correct or not. All that matters is if tomorrow there is a
person (or lots of persons, it doesn't matter) who remembers being you
today. Since I was a child my expectations have proven to be incorrect many
many times, yet I have always felt like me.

 In all case, he will feel to be a unique person having been selected for
 one future relatively to who he remembers to be (the guy in Helsinki).


And because there are several different people who all remember being the
guy in Helsinki it turned out that the guy in Helsinki had several
different futures. However the 1p-view of Helsinki right now no longer
exists for anyone because right now is different. But no doubt I am
confusing the first person view of the second person view of the third
person view with the second person view of the first person view of the
third person view once removed on my mother's side.

 You just continue to ignore the 1p and 3p distinction.


And I will take that into account just as soon as you figure out what the
hell that distinction is.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 2:56 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  Does comp mean every event must have a cause? That question has a
 simple yes or no answer, and you made up the word so you must know the
 answer, what is it? If it's yes then I don't believe in this thing you call
 comp.



 But the answer is yes in Everett's MWI


No, if Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation is correct them everything
MIGHT have a cause, but Everett doesn't demand it. Even in the multiverse
the sequence of questions what caused that? comes to a end or it does not
come to an end.

  you seem to like MWI.


I do like it but that doesn't mean it's correct. The universe will be the
way it will be and it doesn't give a damn if John K Clark likes it or not.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-29 Thread meekerdb


On 9/29/2013 12:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
As he knows in advance that he will feel, whoever he is, live only one (again, from The 
1-pov).


But that sentence is hard to parse.  Whoever he is implies there is only one he, as if 
he is a soul that goes to either Moscow or Washington but not both.  Yet the assumption of 
comp is that this soul is duplicated and so he has no unique reference.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 20:58, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/27/2013 10:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:50, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 14:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:47 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be  
impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer  
entails

the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under  
anesthesia?...forever?


Surely not, because from a first person perspective one just  
goes to sleep and wakes up again (or experiences dreams). No  
cul de sac implies there's no way to stop consciousness  
permanently.




I know it implies that, but I see no reason to believe it.  The  
question isn't whether consciousness continues, but whether  
*your* consciousness, a particular consciousness continues.  To  
say otherwise is like saying youcan't  
kill the guy in Moscow because he has a duplicate in Washington.


This is the Haraclitus problem (or observation, if you don't  
consider it a problem). The man can't step into the same river  
because he isn't the same man. The consciousness that continues  
after any given moment is, presumably, the next moment of  
consciousness which is the best continuation of the last one.  
This seems similar to the view in FOR that the multiverse is made  
of snapshots which give the appearance of forming continuous  
histories (ignoring whether you can slice up space-time into  
snapshots...)



But I think this is a confusion.  Because computations have states  
and nothing corresponding to transition times between states  
people are tempted to identify those states with states of  
consciousness and make an analogy with frames of film in a movie  
(hence 'the movie graph argument').  But there's a huge mismatch  
here.  A conscious thought has a lot of duration, I'd estimate  
around 0.02sec.  The underlying computation that sustains the  
quasi-classical brain at the quantum level has a time constant on  
the order of the Planck time 10^-43sec. And even if it isn't the  
quantum level that's relevant, it's obvious that most thinking is  
unconscious and a computer emulating your brain would have to go  
through many billions or trillions of states to instantiate one  
moment of consciousness.  That means that at the fundamental level  
(of say the UD) there can be huge overlap between one conscious  
thought and the next and so they can form a chain, a stream of  
consciousness.




So there's a certain amount of mini-death-and-mini-rebirth  
going on every second in the normal process of consciousness (in  
this view). Deciding what counts as a continuation and what  
doesn't seems a bit ... problematic. (And of course there are  
many continuations from any given moment.)


Not if there's nothing to overlap.  Sure there is, by some  
measure, a closest next continuation.  But when you're eighty  
years old and fading out on the operating table, it's going to be  
another eighty year old fading out on some other operating table.   
I think someone has suggested that if you fade out completely then  
the next closest continuation could be a newborn infant who is  
just 'fading in'.  Which is a nice thought - but is it you?


That happens each time you smoke salvia, you fade into your baby  
state (which makes you look like a retard, which you are, in some  
sense, or, on higher dose, well beyond the baby states (which  
actually knows already a lot, from the beyond perspective)). Then  
you fade back into the actual you, at least that is what you  
thought, but you can doubt it also.
Deep enough (in the amnesia/disconnection) you can experience a  
consciousness state which is experienced as time independent.  
Perhaps the consciousness of all simple virgin universal machine/ 
loop/numbers. It would be the roots of the consciousness flux; the  
set of all universal numbers (a non recursively enumerable set).


So what do you suppose is the physical effect of salvia in your brain?


Difficult question, but my current theory is that it simply shut down  
part of the brain. The shut down of the corpus callosum would explain  
the feminine presence, which would be how the left (analytical  
brain, [] p) perceive the right (intuitive, [] p  p) brain, for  
example. In that case the right brain is also the one specialized with  
our connection to truth (the ultimate platonic goddess!).
Other connecting parts of the brain might be shut down, making us  
disconnected from the long term memory, and eventually we would live  
the galois connection effect, and consciousness would be related to  
our possible extensions, in some direct way (linking consciousness  
with its logical ancestor: consistency).

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 20:10, David Nyman wrote:


On 27 September 2013 17:00, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


The NDAA bill is equivalent with  If you fear me, I will put you
indefinitely in jail.


I confess that I hadn't been giving this issue much attention.
However, I now read the following:

Section 1021 of the NDAA bill of 2012 allowed for the indefinite
detention of American citizens without due process at the discretion
of the President.

When David Frost challenged Richard Nixon on his illegal activities in
the 1970's, Nixon replied, in all seriousness apparently, if the
President does it, it's not illegal. Well, 40-odd years later, it
looks like he was right.



My current speculation on this is that the departure from the US  
constitution started after JFK assassination. This introduced the  
prohibitionists into power, and the making of marijuana prohibition  
could have been used as Trojan Horse to get full power.


Prohibition is only a technic to sell a lot of drugs, without quality  
control, nor price control, + the ability to directly target all kids  
on all streets, making huge black markets, and leading to important  
corruption so that prohibition is continued, and the fear selling  
business can be pursued. Nixon,  Reagan, but also Chirac and people in  
the UK, are known having ordered studies on marijuana, and put the  
result in the trash (as *all* independent studies have shown marijuana  
far less toxic and addictive than alcohol, etc.).


The society A partnership for a drug free America is financed by the  
industries of alcohol, tobacco, guns and scientology. Which says a lot.


It explains why the legal drugs are the dangerous one (oil, alcohol,  
tobacco, ...), and the illegal drugs are mostly innocuous (french  
cheese, cannabis, ...). Prohibition makes the state into a drug  
dealer, and transforms the planet into a big Chicago. Pollution and  
climate change comes from there too, as Henry Ford already asked why  
to use non sustainable oil, when hemp guarantied atmospheric  
equilibrium. The green should invest in antiprohibitionism.


After the NDAA 2012, the war on terror seems to me to be like the  
war on drugs. Pure fear selling business. It is a quasi-confession.  
Obama could have said simply we are the terrorist. Since them, I  
have few doubt that 9/11 is an inside job, and the evidences are  
rather big that this is the case, especially when you look at the NIST  
report, which is technically as convincing than the papers on the  
danger of cannabis.


Bruno







David




On 26 Sep 2013, at 12:34, David Nyman wrote:


On 26 September 2013 08:14, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


You argue, I think, that
computationalism escapes this by showing how computation and logic
emerge naturally from arithmetic.



And how this explains the appearance of discourse on  
consciousness and

matter



Yes, ISTM that this is where identity theories break down finally;  
the

explanation of the self-referential discourses is perhaps the most
persuasive aspect of comp. I was reflecting recently on panpsychist
matter theories such as those proposed by Galen Strawson (or  
Chalmers
in certain moods). ISTM that ideas like these run foul of the  
problem
of how to attribute consciousness to some intrinsic aspect of  
matter

whilst simultaneously justifying our ability to discourse about it.
Since the discourse part is rather obviously relational in nature it
is rather difficult to see how this could refer to any supposedly
intrinsic aspect of the relata. Any such aspect, even if it  
existed,

would be inaccessible to the relational level. After all, we don't
expect the characters in TV dramas to start discussing the intrinsic
qualities of the TV screen on which they are displayed!

Then I think there is a genuine concern due to the opposition  
between

life
and afterlife. may be theology is not for everybody, a bit like  
salvia:

it
asks for a genuine curiosity, and it can have some morbid aspect.  
I try

to
understand why some machines indeed want to hold a contradictory
metaphysics, even up to the point of hiding obvious fact, like  
personal

consciousness.



Yes, ISTM that there's also often a kind of reflexive self- 
abnegation,
or a shrinking back from any idea that consciousness could have a  
role

to play in the story, let alone a central one. This is perhaps
understandable in the light of historically mistaken attempts to  
place

humanity at the centre of the cosmos. Science is therefore seen as
having finally defeated religion and superstition by taking the  
human

perspective entirely out of the equation. But ironically, taken to
extremes, such a one-eyed (or no-eyed) perspective may have the  
effect

of leaving us even more blind to our true nature than we ever were
before.



Very well said.


I think that this is due in part to the fact that many humans want to
control other humans.
It is simpler to do that with fairy tales and

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 19:55, John Clark wrote:



On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago  
when you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience  
when undergoing the duplicator experiment.


Yes.

 I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in  
both places at once,


No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were  
duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington.  
I also said the vague and sloppy use of words like youand  he  
and I and the man is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion,  
and apparently yours as well.


  which does violence to the notion of survival after copying  
assumption of COMP.


Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go  
back to square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the  
first few pages that I read, I have already written about   
6.02*10^23 posts that covers the subjects in this post and most are  
in far far greater detail.


Just provide one link.

We have answered them all. You kept repeating the same confusion  
between different person points of view, or, in some post, you confuse  
the phenomenology of the indeterminacy with all their different  
logical origins. In many, you just change the definitions given.




I have come to the conclusion that logical arguments will not  
convince anybody if it is their policy to first decide what they  
want to believe and only then look for evidence to support it.



I have never met a scientist not convinced by the first person  
indeterminacy, accepting to discuss this privately or publicly.
You try to avoid the debate, and that's the only strategy used by  
philosophers to hide the (quite simple) discovery.


You act like a pseudo-religious dogmatic pseudo-philosopher, it seems  
to me. If you would have a real argument, you would take a pleasure to  
explain it calmly, and without using insults and mocking hand waving.


So, provide an argument, answer the questions, or try to admit that  
you lost your point.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 21:54, John Clark wrote:



On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought  
experiment should logically have the same problem with the MWI.


No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is  
about what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange  
to us Everett's ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's  
proof is about a feeling of identity,


Not at all. It is about a result that I can expect in an experiment.  
Like Liz and Quentin said, the situation is isomorphic with Everett  
QM. Everett mention what you call feeling of identity, which is a  
consequence of modeling the observer by a machine with personal memory.





about who you can expect to be; but you do not think you're the same  
person you were yesterday because yesterday you made a prediction  
about today that turned out to be correct, you think you are the  
same person you were yesterday for one reason and one reason only,  
you remember being Liz yesterday. It's a good thing too because I  
make incorrect predictions all the time and when I do I don't feel  
that I've entered oblivion, instead I feel like I am the same person  
I was before because I can remember being the guy who made that  
prediction that turned out to be wrong.


Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the  
future,



I insist, on the contrary, that we don't need any identity theory to  
get the FPI.




but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string and  
you can only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling  
of self has nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or  
otherwise, and in fact you might not even have a future, but you  
certainly have a past.


With comp, in all cases we have one future, in the first person pov  
(and infinitely many in the third person pov), bith in comp, and in  
Everett QM. I have explained this with many examples.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 06:27, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com 
 wrote:


 Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can  
expect to see.


And I have no objection to thought experiments of that sort, but  
Bruno is not talking about assigning the probability you will see  
Moscow or Washington,


Yes, it is. You invent thing.



he's talking about the probability you will become the Washington  
Man or the Moscow Man,


No, it is not. Please read the posts or papers, and don't make  
opportunist changes.




and the two things are not the same. He claims that if personal  
diaries were kept and predictions about the future were made in them  
it would be concrete evidence on who is who and have a bearing on  
the nature of personal identity, but that is nonsense.


Yes, I insist on that. But see above.



If yesterday I wrote in my diary that there is a 100% chance I would  
make money in the stock market tomorrow but today I lost my shirt my  
failed prediction would not destroy my identity, I would not enter  
oblivion I'd just be broke. Personal identity can only be traced  
from the past to the present, the future is unknown.


UDA is constructed in a way which avoid any concern with personal  
identity.
Like all (rare) opponents, you put in my mouth things I never said or  
write. Easy.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 06:33, chris peck wrote:


Hi Russel

Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I think  
Brent does too, because he said he had an initial reaction to the  
step like this and then offered an analysis of the probabilities to  
me all of which were certainties rather than indeterminacies. He  
didn't get back to me on that, but I think he has doubts or should  
have.


If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
experience?

a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington

Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
compatible with COMP.


You have to remember that the question is asked before the man is  
duplicated and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I hope  
Bruno's ideas are not too dependent on b being compatible with comp,  
because b is incompatible.


If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then that  
'I'ness must be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given comp,  
prior to duplication he should expect to experience both moscow and  
washington.
But do you see that none of the copy will experience both cities? Both  
will experience only one city, and by comp, they know this in advance.  
Russell is talking on the first person experience, not on the third  
person bodies.


Bruno






All the best.



 From: stath...@gmail.com
 Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 14:02:44 +1000
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

 On 28 September 2013 05:54, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought  
experiment

   should logically have the same problem with the MWI.
 
 
  No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation  
is about
  what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to  
us Everett's
  ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's proof is  
about a feeling
  of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not  
think you're the
  same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made a  
prediction about
  today that turned out to be correct, you think you are the same  
person you
  were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you remember  
being Liz
  yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make incorrect  
predictions all
  the time and when I do I don't feel that I've entered oblivion,  
instead I
  feel like I am the same person I was before because I can  
remember being the

  guy who made that prediction that turned out to be wrong.
 
  Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to  
the future,
  but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string  
and you can
  only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of  
self has
  nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise,  
and in fact

  you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.

 Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can  
expect to see.


 If you toss a coin and teleport to either Washington or Moscow  
that is

 like a single world interpretationof QM.

 If teleport to both Washington and Moscow that is like the MWI.

 It is generally accepted that you can't tell which is the case from
 experience. If you think they are different then you would have a
 proof or disproof of the MWI. Is that what you claim?


 --
 Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 07:46, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 04:33:15AM +, chris peck wrote:

Hi Russel

Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I  
think Brent does too, because he said he had an initial reaction to  
the step like this and then offered an analysis of the  
probabilities to me all of which were certainties rather than  
indeterminacies. He didn't get back to me on that, but I think he  
has doubts or should have.



If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would

experience?

a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington

Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
compatible with COMP.


You have to remember that the question is asked before the man is  
duplicated and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I hope  
Bruno's ideas are not too dependent on b being compatible with  
comp, because b is incompatible.


If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then that  
'I'ness must be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given comp,  
prior to duplication he should expect to experience both moscow and  
washington.


All the best.




Experiencing both Washington and Moscow at the same time would be a
sort of madness, a schizophrenic experience. That is why I said it did
violence to the notion of surviving the duplication. With b) on the
other hand, it matters not whether you experience Washington, or you
experience Moscow, you have survived the experience. That is why b) is
compatible.

I suppose in retrospect, strictly speaking, d) is also compatible with
COMP, but a bit of a strange choice. One wonders what you possibly  
could be

experiencing in this case, given the protocol.


I don't see how d) can be compatible with comp. Both sees one city, W  
or M. Only b is compatible, like you said.


Bruno




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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread Russell Standish

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 09:29:17AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 On 28 Sep 2013, at 07:46, Russell Standish wrote:
 
 On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 04:33:15AM +, chris peck wrote:
 Hi Russel
 
 Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I
 think Brent does too, because he said he had an initial reaction
 to the step like this and then offered an analysis of the
 probabilities to me all of which were certainties rather than
 indeterminacies. He didn't get back to me on that, but I think
 he has doubts or should have.
 
 If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
 experience?
 
 a) Nothing
 b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
 c) being in Moscow and Washington
 d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington
 
 Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
 compatible with COMP.
 
 
 You have to remember that the question is asked before the man
 is duplicated and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I
 hope Bruno's ideas are not too dependent on b being compatible
 with comp, because b is incompatible.
 
 If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then
 that 'I'ness must be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given
 comp, prior to duplication he should expect to experience both
 moscow and washington.
 
 All the best.
 
 
 
 Experiencing both Washington and Moscow at the same time would be a
 sort of madness, a schizophrenic experience. That is why I said it did
 violence to the notion of surviving the duplication. With b) on the
 other hand, it matters not whether you experience Washington, or you
 experience Moscow, you have survived the experience. That is why b) is
 compatible.
 
 I suppose in retrospect, strictly speaking, d) is also compatible with
 COMP, but a bit of a strange choice. One wonders what you possibly
 could be
 experiencing in this case, given the protocol.
 
 I don't see how d) can be compatible with comp. Both sees one city,
 W or M. Only b is compatible, like you said.
 
 Bruno

You survive the experience, but it is not the experience you
expect. Maybe you end up dreaming that you are on Mars, for example.

Its an odd choice, as I said, but I can't see how the COMP postulates
rule it out.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 06:02, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Quentin Anciaux  
allco...@gmail.com wrote:


 I said that if Russell Standish were duplicated then Russell  
Standish would be in Moscow and Washington.


 This is only true from the POV of an external observer which is  
not Russell Standish


Don't give me that pee pee POV bullshit, Russell Standish will see  
Moscow and Washington PERIOD.


You say I is ambiguous, and then you call pov bs the nuances which  
are given.


To say here that Russell will see W and M, is a 3-pov view on the 1- 
pov, not the 1-pov views, on which the question was bearing.


It is really mysterious why you act like that.





 both Russell will only feel from their *own* POV to be in one and  
only one place (either washington or moscow).


How in the world does that conflict with my statement that Russell  
Standish would be in Moscow and Washington? It says so plain as day  
but for some reason people just keep ignoring the fact that RUSSELL  
STANDISH HAS BEEN DUPLICATED and keep on using pronouns like I and  
he just as they always have as if nothing unusual has happened.


Good, but that makes our point, not your's.





  that's the *main* point.

Yes, and I realized very early that if Bruno's main point was as  
worthless as that then there was no reason to keep reading his  
proof.


Why? If you see it, just proceed in the proof. You oscillate again  
between too much simple and wrong. This seems to illustrate also  
that your goal is not in understanding a point, but demolishing a  
person. Why? Have you bet your entire fortune that I am a crackpot or  
what?


Bruno





  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread LizR

On 23 September 2013 13:16, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 12:29:30PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
 
  Bruno, if you have something new to say about this proof of yours then
  say it, but don't pretend that 2 years of correspondence and hundreds of
  posts in which I list things that I didn't understand about the first 3
  steps didn't exist. If you can repair the blunders made in the first 3
  steps then I'll read step 4, until then doing so would be ridiculous.
 
John K Clark
 

 John, for the sake of the rest of us, it would be useful for you to
 summarise just what the problems were that you found with the first
 three steps.

 I have been on everything list since almost the beginning, and on FoR
 (on and off) most of the time of its existence, too. I don't ever
 remember a post from you along those lines, although I do recall
 several references to it by Bruno, so no doubt it exists, and I just
 missed it. I'm sceptical of the hundreds of posts claim, though.

 For me, my stopping point is step 8. I do mean to summarise the
 intense discussion we had earlier this year on this topic, but that
 will require an uninterrupted period of a day or two, just to pull it all
 into a comprehensible document.

 I'm just now reading a reading a very long paper (more of a short
 book, actually) by Scott Aaronson, on the subject of free will, which
 is one of those rare works in that topic that is not
 gibberish. Suffice it to say, that if he is ultimately convincing, he
 would get me to stop at step 0 (ie COMP is false), but more on that
 later when I finish it.

 Bruno, I think you would be interested in this (if you haven't already
read it)

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.0159v2.pdf

I am working my way through it slowly, and I just came upon this delightful
statement:

Thus, the idea that we can “escape all that philosophical crazy-talk” by
 declaring that the
 human mind is a computer program running on the hardware of the brain, and
 that’s all there
 is to it, strikes me as ironically backwards. Yes, we can say that, and we
 might even be right.
 But far from bypassing all philosophical perplexities, such a move lands
 in a swamp of them!


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 10:17, LizR wrote:

On 23 September 2013 13:16, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au  
wrote:

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 12:29:30PM -0400, John Clark wrote:

 Bruno, if you have something new to say about this proof of  
yours then
 say it, but don't pretend that 2 years of correspondence and  
hundreds of
 posts in which I list things that I didn't understand about the  
first 3
 steps didn't exist. If you can repair the blunders made in the  
first 3
 steps then I'll read step 4, until then doing so would be  
ridiculous.


   John K Clark


John, for the sake of the rest of us, it would be useful for you to
summarise just what the problems were that you found with the first
three steps.

I have been on everything list since almost the beginning, and on FoR
(on and off) most of the time of its existence, too. I don't ever
remember a post from you along those lines, although I do recall
several references to it by Bruno, so no doubt it exists, and I just
missed it. I'm sceptical of the hundreds of posts claim, though.

For me, my stopping point is step 8. I do mean to summarise the
intense discussion we had earlier this year on this topic, but that
will require an uninterrupted period of a day or two, just to pull  
it all

into a comprehensible document.

I'm just now reading a reading a very long paper (more of a short
book, actually) by Scott Aaronson, on the subject of free will, which
is one of those rare works in that topic that is not
gibberish. Suffice it to say, that if he is ultimately convincing, he
would get me to stop at step 0 (ie COMP is false), but more on that
later when I finish it.

Bruno, I think you would be interested in this (if you haven't  
already read it)


http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.0159v2.pdf

I am working my way through it slowly, and I just came upon this  
delightful statement:


Thus, the idea that we can “escape all that philosophical crazy- 
talk” by declaring that the
human mind is a computer program running on the hardware of the  
brain, and that’s all there
is to it, strikes me as ironically backwards. Yes, we can say that,  
and we might even be right.
But far from bypassing all philosophical perplexities, such a move  
lands in a swamp of them!



Good remark. It is my main meta-point. Comp makes possible to  
formulate philosophical theological questions. But materialists indeed  
use comp to push the question under the rug, and that might explain  
why such work makes them nervous (so much to ignore it completely, or  
defame, etc.). But Scott is still unaware of the FPI, the reversal,  
the logical coming back of Plato and Plotinus, etc. He does not really  
push the logic far enough.


Bruno







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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread LizR

On 26 September 2013 17:27, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Hi Liz

 Interesting. There's another thought experiment, or gambit, MWIers raise
 involving quantum immortality.

 In this, some quantum event at time t triggers a gun to shoot (or not
 shoot) the MWIer.

 Traditionally, MWIers argue the only reason they would not take the gambit
 is because they would leave behind grieving family in one MWI branch. They
 are not in any doubt over whether they would survive in the other branch.
 Thus, in this case the probabilities are governed by a conjunction. They
 are both convinced they will be killed and convinced they will survive.
 There is no 1-p indeterminacy about either prior to the quantum event.

 Now the logic of q-immortality and your MWI analog of Bruno's thought
 experiment seem to me to be the same. But, the MWIers apparently treat the
 two inconsistently. How can one be uncertain about whether one will be in
 Moscow in one experiment but certain about surviving in the other? Do you
 see my problem?


Hi Chris

Yes, I think I see the problem. I have other problems with the QI gambit
anyway - decoherence probably happens far faster than the time it takes a
bullet to reach you, so maybe you need a nuclear bomb to do this properly
(as first suggested by Fred Hoyle when he came up with the idea, I
believe). Plus the QTI suggests that you will survive being shot anyway, so
you might just end up horribly disfigured, but alive... ditto for a nuclear
bomb, come to think of it.

Actually, that might answer your point. The QI gambit doesn't work as
MWIers believe, even assuming QTI is true. Hence the probability of finding
yourself experiencing either branch is 50-50 (in a sense. Actually,
assuming the MWI you experience both branches, but you have split in
the meantime).

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 28 Sep 2013, at 09:44, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 09:29:17AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 28 Sep 2013, at 07:46, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 04:33:15AM +, chris peck wrote:

Hi Russel

Thank goodness Clarcky has the same/similar complaint as me. I
think Brent does too, because he said he had an initial reaction
to the step like this and then offered an analysis of the
probabilities to me all of which were certainties rather than
indeterminacies. He didn't get back to me on that, but I think
he has doubts or should have.


If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would

experience?

a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington

Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only  
b) is

compatible with COMP.


You have to remember that the question is asked before the man
is duplicated and consequently only c is compatible with comp. I
hope Bruno's ideas are not too dependent on b being compatible
with comp, because b is incompatible.

If the scan of the man successfully copies the 'I'ness, then
that 'I'ness must be sent to washington AND moscow. And, given
comp, prior to duplication he should expect to experience both
moscow and washington.

All the best.




Experiencing both Washington and Moscow at the same time would be a
sort of madness, a schizophrenic experience. That is why I said it  
did

violence to the notion of surviving the duplication. With b) on the
other hand, it matters not whether you experience Washington, or you
experience Moscow, you have survived the experience. That is why  
b) is

compatible.

I suppose in retrospect, strictly speaking, d) is also compatible  
with

COMP, but a bit of a strange choice. One wonders what you possibly
could be
experiencing in this case, given the protocol.


I don't see how d) can be compatible with comp. Both sees one city,
W or M. Only b is compatible, like you said.

Bruno


You survive the experience, but it is not the experience you
expect. Maybe you end up dreaming that you are on Mars, for example.

Its an odd choice, as I said, but I can't see how the COMP postulates
rule it out.


By the default hypothesis that your brain has been copied at the right  
level, in the you Helsinki-state, and that it is that state which is  
copied in the cities. Dreaming that you are in mars cannot be  
instantiated in the copies, nor more than for *any*  experimental  
procedure. You can also track the Higgs boson with the LARC, and end  
up dreaming on pink elephants, but the probability of this is throw  
out by the usual default hypothesizing.


Bruno





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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 28 September 2013 14:27, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to
  see.


 And I have no objection to thought experiments of that sort, but Bruno is
 not talking about assigning the probability you will see Moscow or
 Washington, he's talking about the probability you will become the
 Washington Man or the Moscow Man, and the two things are not the same. He
 claims that if personal diaries were kept and predictions about the future
 were made in them it would be concrete evidence on who is who and have a
 bearing on the nature of personal identity, but that is nonsense. If
 yesterday I wrote in my diary that there is a 100% chance I would make money
 in the stock market tomorrow but today I lost my shirt my failed prediction
 would not destroy my identity, I would not enter oblivion I'd just be broke.
 Personal identity can only be traced from the past to the present, the
 future is unknown.

We have evolved to believe at a gut level that we are a single entity
travelling forward through time, and when faced with a situation where
this is not the case, like duplication, our minds adjust by assigning
probabilities. The objective truth is that there is a version of me in
Washington, a version in Moscow, and the original version destroyed;
but that is not what we are asking when we want to know what to expect
when we step into the teleporter.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


  Everett mention what you call feeling of identity, which is a
 consequence of modeling the observer by a machine


It doesn't matter if modeling the observer by a machine is valid or not,
if tomorrow somebody remembers being  Bruno Marchal today then Bruno
Marchal has a future, if not then Bruno Marchal has no future, and Quantum
Mechanics or a understanding of Everett's Many Worlds is not needed for any
of it. Period. However in a completely different unrelated matter, if you
want to assign a probability that tomorrow Bruno Marchal will observe a
electron move left or right then you will need Quantum Mechanics, and some
(including me) feel that Everett's interpretation is a convenient way to
think about it, although there are other ways.



  With comp [...]


Does comp mean every event must have a cause? That question has a simple
yes or no answer, and you made up the word so you must know the answer,
what is it? If it's yes then I don't believe in this thing you call comp.

 in all cases we have one future, in the first person pov


It is revealing that in explaining the theory of personal identity Bruno
Marchal must always insert vague undefined personal pronouns like we or
you or I at key points despite the fact that if it were already clear
what those pronouns referred to then the entire matter would already be
settled. Thus regardless of what comp means it is certain that if Everett
is correct then Bruno Marchal has more than one future; as to the question
does he have more than one future?, well, that has the same answer as
the question how long is a piece of string?. But no doubt I am confusing
the first person view of the second person view of the third person view
with the second person view of the first person view of the third person
view once removed on my mother's side.

By the way, exactly when does this first person pov occur in a given
experiment and how long does it last? If it's what I'm feeling right now
then it's not going to last for long because right now doesn't last for
long.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 9/28/2013 12:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

...
Prohibition is only a technic to sell a lot of drugs, without quality control, nor price
control, + the ability to directly target all kids on all streets, making huge black
markets, and leading to important corruption so that prohibition is continued, and the
fear selling business can be pursued. Nixon, Reagan, but also Chirac and people in the
UK, are known having ordered studies on marijuana, and put the result in the trash (as
*all* independent studies have shown marijuana far less toxic and addictive than
alcohol, etc.).

The society A partnership for a drug free America is financed by the industries of
alcohol, tobacco, guns and scientology. Which says a lot.

It explains why the legal drugs are the dangerous one (oil, alcohol, tobacco, ...), and
the illegal drugs are mostly innocuous (french cheese, cannabis, ...). Prohibition makes
the state into a drug dealer, and transforms the planet into a big Chicago. Pollution
and climate change comes from there too, as Henry Ford already asked why to use non
sustainable oil, when hemp guarantied atmospheric equilibrium. The green should invest
in antiprohibitionism.

After the NDAA 2012, the war on terror seems to me to be like the war on drugs. Pure
fear selling business. It is a quasi-confession. Obama could have said simply we are
the terrorist. Since them, I have few doubt that 9/11 is an inside job, and the
evidences are rather big that this is the case, especially when you look at the NIST
report, which is technically as convincing than the papers on the danger of cannabis.

I agree with most of what you wrote above, but that last is nonsense. There is no way the
government could have engineered the 9/11 attacks without it being leaked even before it
happened. Remember Occam, you need to take the simplest explanation.

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/28/2013 12:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 19:55, John Clark wrote:



On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au 
mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:


 I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when 
you were
discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing the 
duplicator
experiment.


Yes.

 I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both places at once, 



No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were duplicated then 
Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington. I also said the vague and sloppy 
use of words like youand  he and I and the man is at the root of Bruno's 
intense confusion, and apparently yours as well.


  which does violence to the notion of survival after copying assumption 
of COMP.


Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go back to square one 
and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the first few pages that I read, I have 
already written about 6.02*10^23 posts that covers the subjects in this post and most 
are in far far greater detail.


Just provide one link.

We have answered them all. You kept repeating the same confusion between different 
person points of view, or, in some post, you confuse the phenomenology of the 
indeterminacy with all their different logical origins. In many, you just change the 
definitions given.




I have come to the conclusion that logical arguments will not convince anybody if it is 
their policy to first decide what they want to believe and only then look for evidence 
to support it.



I have never met a scientist not convinced by the first person indeterminacy, accepting 
to discuss this privately or publicly.
You try to avoid the debate, and that's the only strategy used by philosophers to hide 
the (quite simple) discovery.


You act like a pseudo-religious dogmatic pseudo-philosopher, it seems to me. If you 
would have a real argument, you would take a pleasure to explain it calmly, and without 
using insults and mocking hand waving.


So, provide an argument, answer the questions, or try to admit that you lost 
your point.


I'm not sure you even need to convince JC of the FPI due to duplication.  He already 
believes there is uncertainty due to MWI of QM.  Isn't that enough for your argument to 
proceed.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/28/2013 7:58 AM, John Clark wrote:
Does comp mean every event must have a cause? That question has a simple yes or no 
answer, and you made up the word so you must know the answer, what is it? If it's yes 
then I don't believe in this thing you call comp.


But the answer is yes in Everett's MWI (if you take 'event' to be something you can 
measure, record, or experience).  Yet you seem to like MWI.


Brent

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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread Chris de Morsella

 I agree with most of what you wrote above, but that last is nonsense.
There is no way the government could have engineered the 9/11 attacks
without it being leaked even before it happened. Remember Occam, you need to
take the simplest explanation.

 

Brent I agree that logically it would seem so, but recent history has shown
that, in fact, very large scale conspiracies CAN be kept hidden  operate in
the occult worlds, over long duration periods spanning many decades, with
any leaks and discoveries – and they did happen from time to time -- being
successfully managed (by simply ignoring them, sowing a plethora of
misinformation, misdirection, and alternate false “theories”, and of course
by the time honored practice of bald faced lying)

 

I suggest you read up on the now more widely known history of Operation
Gladio. It is a morbidly fascinating subject matter. Gladio (and its sister
paramilitaries) was a secret stay behind clandestine CIA/NATA founded and
run multi-national paramilitary organization that was successfully hidden
away from public knowledge for many decades and would in all likelihood
still be a hidden part of history -- unknown to all, but the inner circles
of conspirators -- where it not for the testimony provided by the Italian
prime minister and perennial post war political figure in Italy -- Giulio
Andreotti -- during his trial in the Italian Parliament in the 1990. 

 

According to former CIA director William Colby, Operation Gladio was 'a
major program'; this was not some small fringe operation (it was a large
multinational paramilitary organization with active branches in several
European countries, operating under different code names).  From Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio : Belgium, the secret NATO
army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BJD, in Greece
LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands IO, in Norway ROC, in
Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Özel Harp Dairesi, In Sweden
AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning), and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code
names of the secret armies in France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.

 

Operation Gladio has been linked to many terrorist operations conducted
during the 1980s, especially in Germany and Italy. Perhaps the most damning
terrorist operation, it has been implicated in, is the Bologna train station
massacre of 1980 (in which 85 Italian civilians waiting in the Bologna
station were brutally murdered and another 200 seriously wounded, and that
was, by many measures, the most deadly mass terrorist attack in the post
WWII Western world -- up until 911) 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#1980_Bologna_massacre

The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according
to a parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the
Bologna massacre is potentially the most serious of all the accusations
levelled against Gladio, and comes just two days after the Italian Prime
Minister, Giulio Andreotti, cleared Gladio's name in a speech to parliament,
saying that the secret army did not drift from its formal Nato military
brief.

 

Brent – the facts basically speak for themselves. The government (or rather
occult elements in the government) DID engineer the creation and maintenance
of a clandestine secret paramilitary force, complete with large arms caches
and an organizational command structure and thousands of members, across
many European nations (and in the US – from where it was largely run out of
Langley Virginia). Invoking the principle of Occam’s razor, while usually
valid, does not always mean that the actual reality is more complex and
convoluted than the simple (but perhaps naïve ) explanation suggested by
applying this principle.

 

-Chris

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/28/2013 12:37 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:


 I agree with most of what you wrote above, but that last is nonsense.  There is no 
way the government could have engineered the 9/11 attacks without it being leaked even 
before it happened. Remember Occam, you need to take the simplest explanation.


Brent I agree that logically it would seem so, but recent history has shown that, in 
fact, very large scale conspiracies CAN be kept hidden  operate in the occult worlds, 
over long duration periods spanning many decades, with any leaks and discoveries -- and 
they did happen from time to time -- being successfully managed (by simply ignoring 
them, sowing a plethora of misinformation, misdirection, and alternate false theories, 
and of course by the time honored practice of bald faced lying)


I suggest you read up on the now more widely known history of Operation Gladio. It is 
a morbidly fascinating subject matter. Gladio (and its sister paramilitaries) was a 
secret stay behind clandestine CIA/NATA founded and run multi-national paramilitary 
organization that was successfully hidden away from public knowledge




Not in the newspapers, doesn't mean it was unknown.  Obviously many thousands of people 
knew of the organizations intended to form an underground resistance if Europe were 
overrun by Soviet forces.


for many decades and would in all likelihood still be a hidden part of history -- 
unknown to all, but the inner circles of conspirators -- where it not for the testimony 
provided by the Italian prime minister and perennial post war political figure in Italy 
-- Giulio Andreotti -- during his trial in the Italian Parliament in the 1990.


According to former CIA director William Colby, Operation Gladio was 'a major program'; 
this was not some small fringe operation (it was a large multinational paramilitary 
organization with active branches in several European countries, operating under 
different code names). From Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio: 
Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD 
BJD, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands IO, in Norway ROC, in 
Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Özel Harp Dairesi, In Sweden AGAG 
(Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning), and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the 
secret armies in France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.


Operation Gladio has been linked to many terrorist operations conducted during 
the 1980s,




Linked is the weakest from of innuendo.  Bruno's post claiming the 9/11 acts were false 
flag attacks can be read as linking the Bush administration to the attack.


especially in Germany and Italy. Perhaps the most damning terrorist operation, it has 
been implicated in, is the Bologna train station massacre of 1980 (in which 85 Italian 
civilians waiting in the Bologna station were brutally murdered and another 200 
seriously wounded, and that was, by many measures, the most deadly mass terrorist attack 
in the post WWII Western world -- up until 911)




The attack has been materially attributed to the neo-fascist 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-fascism terrorist organization /Nuclei Armati 
Rivoluzionari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclei_Armati_Rivoluzionari/. Suspicions of 
the Italian secret service's involvement emerged shortly after, due to the explosives used 
for the bomb and the political climate in which the massacre 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre occurred (the strategy of tension 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension), but have never been proven.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#1980_Bologna_massacre

The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according to a 
parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the Bologna massacre is 
potentially the most serious of all the accusations levelled against Gladio, and comes 
just two days after the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, cleared Gladio's name 
in a speech to parliament, saying that the secret army did not drift from its formal 
Nato military brief._^_


Brent -- the facts basically speak for themselves. The government (or rather occult 
elements in the government) DID engineer the creation and maintenance of a clandestine 
secret paramilitary force, complete with large arms caches and an organizational command 
structure and thousands of members, across many European nations (and in the US -- from 
where it was largely run out of Langley Virginia). Invoking the principle of Occam's 
razor, while usually valid, does not always mean that the actual reality is more complex 
and convoluted than the simple (but perhaps naïve ) explanation suggested by applying 
this principle.




But supposing this giant and very loosely organized group is, as a group, responsible for 
a bombing because some of it's explosives were used, is a very big stretch.  It's much 
simpler and more likely that a

RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread Chris de Morsella

 the preponderance of both circumstantial evidence,
as well as subsequent sworn testimony of multiple powerful individuals
contradicts your suggestion that this was some lonely rogue act. I suggest
you step back from the one single act horrible act in Bologna and look at
all of the numerous various terrorist acts and political assassinations
going on then – and not just in Italy, but in Germany  Belgium as well. 

 

When taken altogether the evidence suggests this was not some rogue
operation, unknown to the sweet innocent CIA lambs of Langley Virginia (and
the vertices of NATO). The entire strategy of tension seems rather more
likely to have been crafted instead in Langley Virginia (or perhaps, in
off-site meetings on one of the exclusive horse farms that are located near
there, including some that quite conveniently have their own private jet
runways… for unseen coming and going.)  

-Chris

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 2:23 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

 

On 9/28/2013 12:37 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:

 I agree with most of what you wrote above, but that last is nonsense.
There is no way the government could have engineered the 9/11 attacks
without it being leaked even before it happened. Remember Occam, you need to
take the simplest explanation.

 

Brent I agree that logically it would seem so, but recent history has shown
that, in fact, very large scale conspiracies CAN be kept hidden  operate in
the occult worlds, over long duration periods spanning many decades, with
any leaks and discoveries – and they did happen from time to time -- being
successfully managed (by simply ignoring them, sowing a plethora of
misinformation, misdirection, and alternate false “theories”, and of course
by the time honored practice of bald faced lying)

 

I suggest you read up on the now more widely known history of Operation
Gladio. It is a morbidly fascinating subject matter. Gladio (and its sister
paramilitaries) was a secret stay behind clandestine CIA/NATA founded and
run multi-national paramilitary organization that was successfully hidden
away from public knowledge 


Not in the newspapers, doesn't mean it was unknown.  Obviously many
thousands of people knew of the organizations intended to form an
underground resistance if Europe were overrun by Soviet forces.




for many decades and would in all likelihood still be a hidden part of
history -- unknown to all, but the inner circles of conspirators -- where it
not for the testimony provided by the Italian prime minister and perennial
post war political figure in Italy -- Giulio Andreotti -- during his trial
in the Italian Parliament in the 1990. 

 

According to former CIA director William Colby, Operation Gladio was 'a
major program'; this was not some small fringe operation (it was a large
multinational paramilitary organization with active branches in several
European countries, operating under different code names).  From Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio : Belgium, the secret NATO
army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BJD, in Greece
LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands IO, in Norway ROC, in
Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Özel Harp Dairesi, In Sweden
AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning), and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code
names of the secret armies in France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.

 

Operation Gladio has been linked to many terrorist operations conducted
during the 1980s, 



Linked is the weakest from of innuendo.  Bruno's post claiming the 9/11
acts were false flag attacks can be read as linking the Bush
administration to the attack.




especially in Germany and Italy. Perhaps the most damning terrorist
operation, it has been implicated in, is the Bologna train station massacre
of 1980 (in which 85 Italian civilians waiting in the Bologna station were
brutally murdered and another 200 seriously wounded, and that was, by many
measures, the most deadly mass terrorist attack in the post WWII Western
world -- up until 911) 


The attack has been materially attributed to the neo-fascist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-fascism  terrorist organization Nuclei
Armati Rivoluzionari
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclei_Armati_Rivoluzionari . Suspicions of
the Italian secret service's involvement emerged shortly after, due to the
explosives used for the bomb and the political climate in which the massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre  occurred (the strategy of tension
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension ), but have never been
proven.




 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#1980_Bologna_massacre

The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according
to a parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the
Bologna massacre is potentially

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/28/2013 4:28 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:


But supposing this giant and very loosely organized group is, as a group, responsible 
for a bombing because some of it's explosives were used, is a very big stretch.  It's 
much simpler and more likely that a rouge element in one small group, maybe even one 
man, stole the explosive for use in the attack.  Just as it is much more plausible that 
19 Saudi's, inspired by Bin Laden, carried out an attack on the World Trade Center by 
hijacking airliners after a previous attack by Bin Laden's followers using a truck bomb 
on the same building had failed.


Come on man be serious -- the explosive material used to blow 85 people to pieces and 
shred the lives of 200 more people has been linked to this occult secret paramilitary 
force that has deep -- and now -- well-known ties to the far right fascist fringe in 
Italy directly implicated in the bombing. But the evidence does not just stop there -- 
and the fact that the explosive material used in this mass terror atrocity comes from a 
secret Operation Gladio explosive cache is really damning hard physical evidence -- in 
any court of law -- no matter what you may say to the contrary.


If you have evidence that it was some non-sanctioned rogue operation and that the 
shadowy secret group was mostly unaware and innocent then by all means make it known.


What I am trying to demonstrate is that the bombing was NOT a rogue act -- as you imply 
of possibly just one man acting on their own. Instead it was the end result of a 
cohesive and premeditated strategy of tension that was adopted at the very highest 
levels of operation Gladio, and this strategy was sanctioned by the CIA (which did not 
want the compromesso storico with the Italian Communist Party that  Aldo Moro -- 
leader of a powerful wing in the Christian Democratic Party -- was considering)


Conveniently, as things happened to turn out -- Aldo Moro was quite soon kidnapped and 
then later murdered by the brigate rosse, solving that particular problem. Intriguingly 
a few short weeks before his kidnap he had said -- in a television interview -- were 
infiltrated by the Mossad and the CIA. Aldo Moro's widow has publicly alleged that Henry 
Kissinger himself warned Aldo Moro, again shortly before he was kidnapped and then 
murdered, that he would be severely punished if he continued to consider the compromesso 
storico (though trustworthy Kissinger himself denies he ever said that)


What I am telling you is that this was not just one single act Horrible as the 
Bologna terrorist act was. It was an entire series of serious acts orchestrated through 
penetrated organizations on the right AND on the left... the P2 (and analogous secretive 
organizations in Germany, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe) were pulling the levers in 
all the dark occult corners.


In fact there are quite a number of other circumstances linking operation Gladio -- and 
crucially the people now known to have been at the vertices of this shadowy paramilitary 
 terror network -- to the strategy of terrorism and to the attempted military coup de 
tat in 1972 as well, which came closer than most people are aware to happening. This was 
debated internally and the pre-meditated decision to this path -- known as the strategy 
of tension -- was taken at the very highest levels. It was based on cold blooded, cold 
war driven, political calculus.


http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html

Links between Gladio, Italian secret service bosses and the notorious P2 masonic lodge 
are manifold. The chiefs of all three secret services - Generals Santovito (SISMI), 
Grassini (SISDE) and Cellosi (CESSIS) - were members of the lodge. In the year that 
Andreotti denied Gladio's existence, the P2 treasurer, General Siro Rosetti, gave a 
generous account of a secret security structure made up of civilians, parallel to the 
armed forces.


And fromwiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

And even in 1990, Testimonies collected by the two men (judges Felice Casson 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Casson and Carlo Mastelloni investigating the 1972 
Peteano fascist car bomb) and by the Commission on Terrorism on Rome, and inquiries by 
/The Guardian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian/, indicate that Gladio was 
involved in activities which do not square with Andreotti's account. Links between 
Gladio, Italian secret services bosses and the notorious P2 Masonic lodge are manifold 
(...) In the year that Andreotti denied Gladio's existence, the P2 treasurer, General 
Siro Rosetti, gave a generous account of 'a secret security structure made up of 
civilians, parallel to the armed forces' There are also overlaps between senior Gladio 
personnel and the committee of military men, Rosa dei Venti 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rosa_dei_Ventiaction=editredlink=1 (Wind 
Rose), which tried to stage a coup in 1970.^[5]

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread LizR

On 23 September 2013 13:16, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 12:29:30PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
 
  Bruno, if you have something new to say about this proof of yours then
  say it, but don't pretend that 2 years of correspondence and hundreds of
  posts in which I list things that I didn't understand about the first 3
  steps didn't exist. If you can repair the blunders made in the first 3
  steps then I'll read step 4, until then doing so would be ridiculous.
 
John K Clark
 

 John, for the sake of the rest of us, it would be useful for you to
 summarise just what the problems were that you found with the first
 three steps.

 I have been on everything list since almost the beginning, and on FoR
 (on and off) most of the time of its existence, too. I don't ever
 remember a post from you along those lines, although I do recall
 several references to it by Bruno, so no doubt it exists, and I just
 missed it. I'm sceptical of the hundreds of posts claim, though.

 For me, my stopping point is step 8. I do mean to summarise the
 intense discussion we had earlier this year on this topic, but that
 will require an uninterrupted period of a day or two, just to pull it all
 into a comprehensible document.

 I'm just now reading a reading a very long paper (more of a short
 book, actually) by Scott Aaronson, on the subject of free will, which
 is one of those rare works in that topic that is not
 gibberish. Suffice it to say, that if he is ultimately convincing, he
 would get me to stop at step 0 (ie COMP is false), but more on that
 later when I finish it.

 I am still reading this, but I am a little disappointed that as far as I
can see he hasn't mentioned Huw Price and John Bell's alternative
formulation of Bell's Inequality, namely that it can be explained using
microscopic time-symmetry. (This is despite mentioning Huw Price in the
acknowledgements.) Maybe I will come across a mention somewhere as I
continue, but I've been reading the section on Bell's Inequality and it
doesn't seem that this potentially highly fruitful explanation - all the
more so in that it doesn't require any new physics or even any new
interpretations of existing physics - doesn't merit a mention, which is a
shame because without taking account of that potential explanation, any
subsequent reasoning that relies on Bell's Inequality is potentially flawed.

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RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-28 Thread Chris de Morsella

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 4:45 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 9/28/2013 4:28 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:

 But supposing this giant and very loosely organized group is, as a group,
responsible for a bombing because some of it's explosives were used, is a
very big stretch.  It's much simpler and more likely that a rouge element in
one small group, maybe even one man, stole the explosive for use in the
attack.  Just as it is much more plausible that 19 Saudi's, inspired by Bin
Laden, carried out an attack on the World Trade Center by hijacking
airliners after a previous attack by Bin Laden's followers using a truck
bomb on the same building had failed.

Come on man be serious - the explosive material used to blow 85 people to
pieces and shred the lives of 200 more people has been linked to this occult
secret paramilitary force that has deep -- and now -- well-known ties to the
far right fascist fringe in Italy directly implicated in the bombing. But
the evidence does not just stop there - and the fact that the explosive
material used in this mass terror atrocity comes from a secret Operation
Gladio explosive cache is really damning hard physical evidence - in any
court of law -- no matter what you may say to the contrary. 

If you have evidence that it was some non-sanctioned rogue operation and
that the shadowy secret group was mostly unaware and innocent then by all
means make it known.

What I am trying to demonstrate is that the bombing was NOT a rogue act - as
you imply of possibly just one man acting on their own. Instead it was the
end result of a cohesive and premeditated strategy of tension that was
adopted at the very highest levels of operation Gladio, and this strategy
was sanctioned by the CIA (which did not want the compromesso storico with
the Italian Communist Party that  Aldo Moro - leader of a powerful wing in
the Christian Democratic Party -- was considering) 

Conveniently, as things happened to turn out -- Aldo Moro was quite soon
kidnapped and then later murdered by the brigate rosse, solving that
particular problem. Intriguingly a few short weeks before his kidnap he had
said - in a television interview -- were infiltrated by the Mossad and the
CIA. Aldo Moro's widow has publicly alleged that Henry Kissinger himself
warned Aldo Moro, again shortly before he was kidnapped and then murdered,
that he would be severely punished if he continued to consider the
compromesso storico (though trustworthy Kissinger himself denies he ever
said that)

What I am telling you is that this was not just one single act.. Horrible as
the Bologna terrorist act was. It was an entire series of serious acts
orchestrated through penetrated organizations on the right AND on the left.
the P2 (and analogous secretive organizations in Germany, Belgium and
elsewhere in Europe) were pulling the levers in all the dark occult corners.

In fact there are quite a number of other circumstances linking operation
Gladio - and crucially the people now known to have been at the vertices of
this shadowy paramilitary  terror network -- to the strategy of terrorism
and to the attempted military coup de tat in 1972 as well, which came closer
than most people are aware to happening. This was debated internally and the
pre-meditated decision to this path -- known as the strategy of tension -
was taken at the very highest levels. It was based on cold blooded, cold war
driven, political calculus. 

http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec
1990.html

Links between Gladio, Italian secret service bosses and the notorious P2
masonic lodge are manifold. The chiefs of all three secret services -
Generals Santovito (SISMI), Grassini (SISDE) and Cellosi (CESSIS) - were
members of the lodge. In the year that Andreotti denied Gladio's existence,
the P2 treasurer, General Siro Rosetti, gave a generous account of a secret
security structure made up of civilians, parallel to the armed forces.

And from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

And even in 1990, Testimonies collected by the two men (judges Felice
Casson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Casson  and Carlo Mastelloni
investigating the 1972 Peteano fascist car bomb) and by the Commission on
Terrorism on Rome, and inquiries by The Guardian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian , indicate that Gladio was
involved in activities which do not square with Andreotti's account. Links
between Gladio, Italian secret services bosses and the notorious P2 Masonic
lodge are manifold (...) In the year that Andreotti denied Gladio's
existence, the P2 treasurer, General Siro Rosetti, gave a generous account
of 'a secret security structure made up of civilians, parallel to the armed
forces' There are also overlaps between senior Gladio

RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread chris peck

 If there is an entity that remembers being me at time t1 then the me
at time t1 survives. For example, if I fall asleep on a plane and wake
up on another continent 8 hrs later, I have survived despite the time
and space gap and despite the fact that the matter in metabolically
active parts of my brain has changed. The principle is the same with
larger discontinuities in time, space and matter.

If you and Liz fall asleep on a plane and I come along and read your memories 
and put them in Liz, and take Liz's memories and put them in you, who;s who?

What if I take your memory of being you and put it in Liz, without erasing her 
memory of being her, so that when she wakes up she remembers being her and 
being you? Who's she?

Ultimately these are just discontinuities in space and matter.


 From: stath...@gmail.com
 Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 15:25:17 +1000
 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 On 27 September 2013 13:30, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
  On 9/26/2013 8:02 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
  On 27 September 2013 12:52, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 
  On 9/26/2013 7:48 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
  On 27 September 2013 12:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 
  On 9/26/2013 7:15 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
  On 27 September 2013 11:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 
  On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 
  This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible to
  create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer entails
  the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).
 
 
  So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
  anesthesia?...forever?
 
  It makes permanent loss of consciousness (which is what death is)
  impossible.
 
 
  How?  If temporary loss of consciousness is possible, what puts a time
  limit
  on it?  What is the limit? an hour?  a day?  a year?  a billion years?
 
  If you're unconscious for a trillion years or a minute it's all the
  same. Death is when you never, ever wake up.
 
  OK.  So why is that impossible?
 
  It's not impossible if you lose consciousness and there are no
  conscious entities with your memories and mental states just before
  you lost consciousness.
 
 
  ??  But I'm a conscious entity with my memories and mental states just
  before I lost consciousness.  Did you mean just after?
 
  Are you saying something depends on a time gap?  But what time?...the
  computed physical time?
 
 If there is an entity that remembers being me at time t1 then the me
 at time t1 survives. For example, if I fall asleep on a plane and wake
 up on another continent 8 hrs later, I have survived despite the time
 and space gap and despite the fact that the matter in metabolically
 active parts of my brain has changed. The principle is the same with
 larger discontinuities in time, space and matter.
 
 
 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou
 
 -- 
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 9/26/2013 10:25 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:30, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 8:02 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:52, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 7:48 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 7:15 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 11:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer entails
the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).

So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
anesthesia?...forever?

It makes permanent loss of consciousness (which is what death is)
impossible.

How? If temporary loss of consciousness is possible, what puts a time
limit
on it? What is the limit? an hour? a day? a year? a billion years?

If you're unconscious for a trillion years or a minute it's all the
same. Death is when you never, ever wake up.

OK. So why is that impossible?

It's not impossible if you lose consciousness and there are no
conscious entities with your memories and mental states just before
you lost consciousness.

?? But I'm a conscious entity with my memories and mental states just
before I lost consciousness. Did you mean just after?

Are you saying something depends on a time gap? But what time?...the
computed physical time?

If there is an entity that remembers being me at time t1 then the me
at time t1 survives.

So neither before or after matters, as I thought.

For example, if I fall asleep on a plane and wake
up on another continent 8 hrs later, I have survived despite the time
and space gap and despite the fact that the matter in metabolically
active parts of my brain has changed. The principle is the same with
larger discontinuities in time, space and matter.

And also large discontinuities in mental state and memories. After 8hrs of sleep, or
anesthesia, your mental state is going to be quite different than before. As for
memories, since you will not access more than a tiny fraction of them on waking how could
it matter if the other 99.9% were different? In fact you mainly continue to think your
model of yourself is right because you remember why you are where you are and perhaps some
other details such as who you are with, etc. It is is very small part of you memories but
it is enough to make it very improbable you are anyone else you know of. And so your
self-model seems to be confirmed.

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

 trying to assume comp and that this  
description is being sent to both places, 'I' (an illicit I) only  
ends up at one.


Formally you identify Bp with Bp  p (I will not insist on this right  
now).


You make complex something simple, and which can entirely be explained  
in third person terms, in iterating the experience. So both the W-guy  
and the M-guy come back (by usual planes) in Helsinki, and do the WM- 
duplication again. This will generate four diaries: WW, WM, MW, MM.
In helsinki, at the start, you can say, I will be the four guys, but  
each guys, and you know this in advance, will *feel* to be one among  
those four.
If you iterate the experience a great number of time, it is a exercise  
in combinatoric and computer science to show that the vast majority of  
the sequences will be incompressible (and so, strongly random).







That's one of the troubles with intuition pumps. To be quite honest,
that intuition pump fails me

Perhaps you don't, but it isn't important. I think it is generally  
accepted, perhaps not on this list, that one would be banging at the  
walls of the teleporter, screaming to be released, certain of  
impending death. That kind of intuition. The kind it has been  
fruitful not to ignore in our evolutionary past. ;)



In this case, it is simple logic and arithmetic, and grasping the  
definition.


I hope you are not stuck, like John Clark, on the 3-view on the 1- 
views, after the duplication. It is nice of you, and Clark,  to  
attribute consciousness to each copies, but to get the FPI, you have  
still to listen to them, and get the 1-view on the 1-view, and  
understand that what they *each* say is the only coherent (with comp)  
things to say: I am in only one city, I got one bit of information,  
etc. You have to put yourself in the shoes of each copy.


In the iterated experience, you can guess, I hope, that the guy having  
written in the diary:


WWMWWWMWWMMWWWMWW

might recognize he was unable to predict that very sequence in Helsinki.

OK?

Bruno










Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:35:58 +1200
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
From: lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

The MWI first made me realise that my notion of I might be  
inadequate in more ways than I'd previously imagined. For a while I  
went around thinking there's a version of me - and it IS me - who's  
spontaneously combusting at this moment. And I can't say thank God  
I'm not her, because I *am* - or the me of a moment ago was  
(meanwhile another version of me has just mysteriously gained  
godlike powers...)


These thoughts used to freak me out a bit. When I later discovered  
comp it was just ohsame old, same old... :)



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 02:51, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 5:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/26/2013 4:51 PM, chris peck wrote:
Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the experiencer  
must confess he cannot predict with certainty the personal outcome  
of the experiment. He is confronted to an unavoidable uncertainty.


And the situations are very different because prior to  
teleportation there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent  
to both locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one at  
either location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


Mainly because it makes I ambiguous.  One answer would be the  
probability of me being in Moscow is zero and the probability of me  
being in Washington is zero, because I am going to be destroyed.


Another answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is  
one and the probability of me being in Washington is one, because  
there are going to be two of me.


Surely this is directly analogous to the situation in the MWI.


The only difference I can see is that in MWI the whole world splits,  
and by this I mean that in each branch your body maintains all the  
quantum entanglements.  In the teleporter it is only the classical  
structure of you that can be duplicated (no cloning) and so all the  
entanglements are not duplicated (which why you can end up in two  
classically different places).  Of course that all depends on  
assuming MWI is true.  Sometimes I think it is a little ironic that  
the advocates of MWI reduce everything to computation/information -  
but they reject the Bayesian/epistemic interpretation of QM in order  
to support it.



I agree. Comp, and QM needs the epistemic interpretation of QM (that's  
even why we can suspect the quantization brought by Bp  Dt  p, to be  
closer to Everett QM, that the quantization brought by Bp  Dt, or Bp  
 p (which exists when p is restricted to the sigma_1 sentences, that  
the is the UD in arithmetic).


We have both the many worlds, and a quantum wave describing relative  
internal (but plural) first person views.


Bruno





Brent

If I measure a quantum event like a photon bouncing off / through a  
semi-silvered mirror, the chances of each result is 50%. In  
classic qnautum theory I say there is a 50% chance of seeing the  
photon reflect, say. In the MWI I do the same, but I am now aware  
that the probabilities work out as they do because I'm duplicated  
in the process (or two pre-existing but fungible versions of me  
have now become distinct - or perhaps 2 lots of infinite numbers of  
copies...)


Ignoring the teleporter and just looking at the MWI gives the same  
results but is perhaps a bit more intuitive. In the MWI I am also  
destroyed from moment to moment (or even in classical single- 
universe physics, if you attach me to a brain state it all gets  
very Heraclitean), and/or I am also duplicated from moment to  
moment (at least).


But the probabilities still work - I have a 50-50 chance of seeing  
the photon bouncing or transmitting, and equivalently I have a  
50-50 chance to end up in Moscow or Washington. It just seems less  
obvious when I'm the particle in the experiment.


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 03:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 6:00 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:51, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/26/2013 5:40 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 12:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/26/2013 4:51 PM, chris peck wrote:
Giving the built-in symmetry of this experiment, if asked before  
the experiment about his personal future location, the  
experiencer must confess he cannot predict with certainty the  
personal outcome of the experiment. He is confronted to an  
unavoidable uncertainty.


And the situations are very different because prior to  
teleportation there is one me, waiting to be duplicated and sent  
to both locations. After teleportation there are two 'me's, one  
at either location. That effects the probabilities, surely?


Mainly because it makes I ambiguous.  One answer would be the  
probability of me being in Moscow is zero and the probability of  
me being in Washington is zero, because I am going to be destroyed.


Another answer would be the probability of me being in Moscow is  
one and the probability of me being in Washington is one, because  
there are going to be two of me.


Surely this is directly analogous to the situation in the MWI.


The only difference I can see is that in MWI the whole world  
splits, and by this I mean that in each branch your body maintains  
all the quantum entanglements.  In the teleporter it is only the  
classical structure of you that can be duplicated (no cloning) and  
so all the entanglements are not duplicated (which why you can end  
up in two classically different places).  Of course that all  
depends on assuming MWI is true.  Sometimes I think it is a little  
ironic that the advocates of MWI reduce everything to computation/ 
information - but they reject the Bayesian/epistemic interpretation  
of QM in order to support it.


Good point, which I would say depends on exactly how the teleporter  
actually works. (Are we, for the sake of argument, assuming  
Heisenberg compensators ? :-)


I assume that in comp the substitution level is assumed to be above  
the level of quantum entanglement - indeed, all that has to be  
duplicated is the data structure that is (supposedly) stored in  
your brain. That is presumably classical data, not qubits. So the  
same argument would apply if a copy of you is made in a computer.


That's what must be assumed for the teleporter to work.  But then  
Bruno hypothesizes that the world is made of computations (by the UD)


Not really. I assume only that our brain is Turing emulable (in a  
large sense of brain). Then I explain why if that is the case, there  
is no world made of computations, there are only computations,  
determining consciousness flux, and physical realities are invariant  
pattern in such consciousness flux. I take into account that a  
universal turing machine cannot distinguish anything (computable or  
not) from a diophantine approximation of its local history, so that  
physics is build from the statistical appearance on infinities of  
diophantine equations, or more simply any one universal.





at the most fundamental level which means at the quantum level (or  
lower) and the quantum uncertainty comes from the uncertainty of you  
being 'duplicated' in MW.


More precisely, of you multiplied in infinities  of solutions of a  
Diophantine universal equation (to put it in this way).


The point being that this is not true, but that 1) it follows from  
comp, and 2) it is testable/refutable.









This is of course pushing the idea of the brain as digital computer  
(or emulable by one) as far as it will go, to see if the wheels  
come off. The question is, do they?




I don't think so, but it's not completely clear to me.  For one  
thing both the brain and the digital computer are (if comp is right)  
classical objects.


Only above the substitution level (an that's part of hat we have still  
to justify, the apparent winning of many classical universal machines).





That means from a quantum view they must be represented by bundles  
or threads of computations (like Feynmanpaths) to take account  
of all the entanglement with the environment that makes them (quasi)  
classical.  This entanglement will be different when you plug and  
electronic artificial neuron in place of a biological one.   
Presumably this doesn't make any significant difference in 'you',  
but it *could* make a difference in some circumstance and the  
arguments to dispense with the physical seems to rely on  
anticipating all those possible counterfactuals.  Which is why I  
suspect you can't dispense with the physical even if it's not  
fundamental.


Absolutely. Although with comp this is not entirely clear in near  
death state and in some possible persistent dreamy states.
At some point physical has to be made more precise, and for the  
machine, I suspect three different notions of physical. Life and  
(some) afterlife may have

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?



On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:48, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 27 September 2013 12:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 7:15 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 27 September 2013 11:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible  
to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer  
entails

the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
anesthesia?...forever?

It makes permanent loss of consciousness (which is what death is)
impossible.


How?  If temporary loss of consciousness is possible, what puts a  
time limit
on it?  What is the limit? an hour?  a day?  a year?  a billion  
years?


If you're unconscious for a trillion years or a minute it's all the
same. Death is when you never, ever wake up.


Death is when you are a zombie.

(Hell is more like when you are considered as a zombie).

Such absolute death does not make sense, I think (without comp). (with  
comp I am pretty sure).


Bruno



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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 You make a big deal about duplicating chambers and what city you end up
 in and make all sorts of mystical conclusions from it; but all it comes
 down to is the fact that different data streams (like one coming from
 Washington and another from Moscow)  will result in different conclusions
 (like I am in Washington or I am in Moscow) when the calculation is
 concluded.



 It just boils down to: if you can be duplicated


Well of course you can be duplicated!! I find it astonishing that in the
21'st century the average person still thinks this question deserves
further debate.

 Scott Aaronson dismisses the problem by concentrating on the idea that
 duplication must be duplication of the quantum state, so that the
 no-cloning theorm applies.


If you need to stay in the same quantum state to retain your identity then
you would be changing into a different person many millions of trillions a
time a second. And if you never changed, if you always remained in the same
quantum state, then you couldn't think, thought needs change.

  John K Clark







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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
 you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
 the duplicator experiment.


Yes.

 I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
 places at once,


No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington. I also
said the vague and sloppy use of words like youand  he and I and the
man is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently yours as
well.

  which does violence to the notion of survival after copying assumption
 of COMP.


Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go back to
square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the first few pages
that I read, I have already written about  6.02*10^23 posts that covers the
subjects in this post and most are in far far greater detail. I have come
to the conclusion that logical arguments will not convince anybody if it is
their policy to first decide what they want to believe and only then look
for evidence to support it.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/9/27 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com


 On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

  I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
 you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
 the duplicator experiment.


 Yes.


  I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
 places at once,


 No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
 duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington.


This is only true from the POV of an external observer which is not Russell
Standish... both Russell will only feel from their *own* POV to be in one
and only one place (either washington or moscow)... I know you'll still
hand wave that, but that's the *main* point.

Quentin


 I also said the vague and sloppy use of words like youand  he and I
 and the man is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently
 yours as well.

   which does violence to the notion of survival after copying
 assumption of COMP.


 Bullshit. And this beautifully illustrates why I am reluctant to go back
 to square one and list all the blunders Bruno made in just the first few
 pages that I read, I have already written about  6.02*10^23 posts that
 covers the subjects in this post and most are in far far greater detail. I
 have come to the conclusion that logical arguments will not convince
 anybody if it is their policy to first decide what they want to believe and
 only then look for evidence to support it.

   John K Clark


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread David Nyman

On 27 September 2013 17:00, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 The NDAA bill is equivalent with  If you fear me, I will put you
 indefinitely in jail.

I confess that I hadn't been giving this issue much attention.
However, I now read the following:

Section 1021 of the NDAA bill of 2012 allowed for the indefinite
detention of American citizens without due process at the discretion
of the President.

When David Frost challenged Richard Nixon on his illegal activities in
the 1970's, Nixon replied, in all seriousness apparently, if the
President does it, it's not illegal. Well, 40-odd years later, it
looks like he was right.

David



 On 26 Sep 2013, at 12:34, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 September 2013 08:14, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 You argue, I think, that
 computationalism escapes this by showing how computation and logic
 emerge naturally from arithmetic.


 And how this explains the appearance of discourse on consciousness and
 matter


 Yes, ISTM that this is where identity theories break down finally; the
 explanation of the self-referential discourses is perhaps the most
 persuasive aspect of comp. I was reflecting recently on panpsychist
 matter theories such as those proposed by Galen Strawson (or Chalmers
 in certain moods). ISTM that ideas like these run foul of the problem
 of how to attribute consciousness to some intrinsic aspect of matter
 whilst simultaneously justifying our ability to discourse about it.
 Since the discourse part is rather obviously relational in nature it
 is rather difficult to see how this could refer to any supposedly
 intrinsic aspect of the relata. Any such aspect, even if it existed,
 would be inaccessible to the relational level. After all, we don't
 expect the characters in TV dramas to start discussing the intrinsic
 qualities of the TV screen on which they are displayed!

 Then I think there is a genuine concern due to the opposition between
 life
 and afterlife. may be theology is not for everybody, a bit like salvia:
 it
 asks for a genuine curiosity, and it can have some morbid aspect. I try
 to
 understand why some machines indeed want to hold a contradictory
 metaphysics, even up to the point of hiding obvious fact, like personal
 consciousness.


 Yes, ISTM that there's also often a kind of reflexive self-abnegation,
 or a shrinking back from any idea that consciousness could have a role
 to play in the story, let alone a central one. This is perhaps
 understandable in the light of historically mistaken attempts to place
 humanity at the centre of the cosmos. Science is therefore seen as
 having finally defeated religion and superstition by taking the human
 perspective entirely out of the equation. But ironically, taken to
 extremes, such a one-eyed (or no-eyed) perspective may have the effect
 of leaving us even more blind to our true nature than we ever were
 before.


 Very well said.


 I think that this is due in part to the fact that many humans want to
 control other humans.
 It is simpler to do that with fairy tales and associative tricks
 (propaganda, the confusion between p-q and q-p) than with logic and common
 sense. The controller minded person fear the inconceivable freedom of the
 rigorous, honest, self-observing machine.

 But fear sellers invest in ignorance, and certainties are only wall
 solidifying the ignorance, even from generations to generations.

 Institutionalized religions make, often, the root of science, doubt, into
 the devil, making inquiry impossible.
 Another typical (and frightful) example is the NDAA 2012 bill, which is
 formulated in such a way that if you doubt the consistency of that very
 bill, makes you suspect of terrorism, and thus in risk to be detained
 indefinitely without trial. It is equivalent logically with you cannot
 doubt me, it is about of the type [] t, it entails, [] f, whose fuzzy
 type is promised catastrophes.

 Some laws make inquiries about the very law impossible. The making of
 cannabis into schedule one is an example, as it forbids research on
 cannabis. The NDAA is another one. I think only bandits does that. I
 discovered that the founders of the American constitution were aware of such
 possibility and tried to prevent such laws, but apparently they failed. I
 heard that the supreme court judged the NDAA unconstitutional, but
 apparently the unnerving ambiguity remained in the NDAA 2013.

 The NDAA bill is equivalent with  If you fear me, I will put you
 indefinitely in jail. It is bit like if you don't love me, I will send you
 to hell for eternity. That's powerful self-replicating memes, which
 prevents thinking, and make other people controlling you by fears. To make
 this into a law is a mistake or a tyranny trick.


 Bruno



 David


 On 25 Sep 2013, at 20:51, David Nyman wrote:

 On 25 September 2013 15:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I agree. It is in that sense that we can say that modern biophysics
 makes
 vitalism irrelevant.

 (I am actually

Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On 9/26/2013 9:28 PM, LizR wrote:

I'm not sure that it's clear using the contents of consciousness, either. The thing is,
if comp is right then there are definite computational steps that can be talked about,
analysed and so on, but thoughts might be a long way above them. Thoughts may be huge
constructs relative to the computational underpinnings, each one (perhaps) an ocean full
of computational fish. But it isn't easy to imagine or discuss the computational steps
down there at the Planck length (or whevever)... one can't get one's head around it.

But you'd have to measure the states, and what counts as a closest continuation, using
those steps, ultimately - wouldn't you?

My idea is that all those computational underpinnings are instantiating the physics of
your brain, body, environment and are necessary to support the constructs of conscious
thought, which are more like little waves on the surface of the ocean of unconsciousness
(i.e. physics). So your continuity of memory resides in this subconscious level, memories
are stored in the physical structure of the brain. That's why I think the physical is
necessary to underpin consciousness, whether the physical is fundamental or not.

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/27/2013 10:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 27 Sep 2013, at 04:50, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/26/2013 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 27 September 2013 14:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 9/26/2013 6:47 PM, LizR wrote:

On 27 September 2013 13:03, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 9/26/2013 6:05 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

This is a sort of cul de sac experience, which has to be impossible to
create if QTI is true. The existence of a universal dovetailer entails
the lack of all cul de sac experiences (Comp immortality).


So does it make loss of consciousness impossible? under
anesthesia?...forever?


Surely not, because from a first person perspective one just goes to sleep 
and
wakes up again (or experiences dreams). No cul de sac implies there's no 
way to
stop consciousness permanently.



I know it implies that, but I see no reason to believe it.  The question 
isn't
whether consciousness continues, but whether *your* consciousness, a 
particular
consciousness continues.  To say otherwise is like saying you can't kill 
the guy
in Moscow because he has a duplicate in Washington.

This is the Haraclitus problem (or observation, if you don't consider it a problem). 
The man can't step into the same river because he isn't the same man. The 
consciousness that continues after any given moment is, presumably, the next moment of 
consciousness which is the best continuation of the last one. This seems similar to 
the view in FOR that the multiverse is made of snapshots which give the appearance 
of forming continuous histories (ignoring whether you can slice up space-time into 
snapshots...)



But I think this is a confusion.  Because computations have states and nothing 
corresponding to transition times between states people are tempted to identify those 
states with states of consciousness and make an analogy with frames of film in a movie 
(hence 'the movie graph argument').  But there's a huge mismatch here.  A conscious 
thought has a lot of duration, I'd estimate around 0.02sec.  The underlying computation 
that sustains the quasi-classical brain at the quantum level has a time constant on the 
order of the Planck time 10^-43sec. And even if it isn't the quantum level that's 
relevant, it's obvious that most thinking is unconscious and a computer emulating your 
brain would have to go through many billions or trillions of states to instantiate one 
moment of consciousness.  That means that at the fundamental level (of say the UD) 
there can be huge overlap between one conscious thought and the next and so they can 
form a chain, a stream of consciousness.




So there's a certain amount of mini-death-and-mini-rebirth going on every second in 
the normal process of consciousness (in this view). Deciding what counts as a 
continuation and what doesn't seems a bit ... problematic. (And of course there are 
many continuations from any given moment.)


Not if there's nothing to overlap.  Sure there is, by some measure, a closest next 
continuation.  But when you're eighty years old and fading out on the operating table, 
it's going to be another eighty year old fading out on some other operating table.  I 
think someone has suggested that if you fade out completely then the next closest 
continuation could be a newborn infant who is just 'fading in'.  Which is a nice 
thought - but is it you?


That happens each time you smoke salvia, you fade into your baby state (which makes you 
look like a retard, which you are, in some sense, or, on higher dose, well beyond the 
baby states (which actually knows already a lot, from the beyond perspective)). Then 
you fade back into the actual you, at least that is what you thought, but you can 
doubt it also.
Deep enough (in the amnesia/disconnection) you can experience a consciousness state 
which is experienced as time independent. Perhaps the consciousness of all simple 
virgin universal machine/loop/numbers. It would be the roots of the consciousness flux; 
the set of all universal numbers (a non recursively enumerable set).


So what do you suppose is the physical effect of salvia in your brain?

Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?


On 9/27/2013 10:31 AM, John Clark wrote:


On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 You make a big deal about duplicating chambers and what city you end 
up in
and make all sorts of mystical conclusions from it; but all it comes 
down to is
the fact that different data streams (like one coming from Washington 
and
another from Moscow)  will result in different conclusions (like I am in
Washington or I am in Moscow) when the calculation is concluded.

 It just boils down to: if you can be duplicated


Well of course you can be duplicated!! I find it astonishing that in the 21'st century 
the average person still thinks this question deserves further debate.


 Scott Aaronson dismisses the problem by concentrating on the idea that 
duplication
must be duplication of the quantum state, so that the no-cloning theorm 
applies.


If you need to stay in the same quantum state to retain your identity then you would be 
changing into a different person many millions of trillions a time a second. And if you 
never changed, if you always remained in the same quantum state, then you couldn't 
think, thought needs change.


But there could be a difference between unitary evolution of your state (which presumably 
Scott considers to still be you) and a non-unitary duplication.


Brent

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought experiment
 should logically have the same problem with the MWI.


No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is about
what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to us
Everett's ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's proof is
about a feeling of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not
think you're the same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made
a prediction about today that turned out to be correct, you think you are
the same person you were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you
remember being Liz yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make
incorrect predictions all the time and when I do I don't feel that I've
entered oblivion, instead I feel like I am the same person I was before
because I can remember being the guy who made that prediction that turned
out to be wrong.

Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the
future, but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string
and you can only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of
self has nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise, and
in fact you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 27 September 2013 16:08, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote:
 If there is an entity that remembers being me at time t1 then the me
 at time t1 survives. For example, if I fall asleep on a plane and wake
 up on another continent 8 hrs later, I have survived despite the time
 and space gap and despite the fact that the matter in metabolically
 active parts of my brain has changed. The principle is the same with
 larger discontinuities in time, space and matter.

 If you and Liz fall asleep on a plane and I come along and read your
 memories and put them in Liz, and take Liz's memories and put them in you,
 who;s who?

We swap bodies.

 What if I take your memory of being you and put it in Liz, without erasing
 her memory of being her, so that when she wakes up she remembers being her
 and being you? Who's she?

 Ultimately these are just discontinuities in space and matter.

We become one melded person. Ultimately, there are objective facts
about which body is where, which memories and other mental attributes
are attached to which body, but there are no objective facts about
personal identity.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 01:55:40PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
 On Wed, Sep 25, 2013  Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 
  I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when
  you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when undergoing
  the duplicator experiment.
 
 
 Yes.
 
  I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both
  places at once,
 
 
 No, that is NOT what I said! I said that if Russell Standish were
 duplicated then Russell Standish would be in Moscow and Washington. I also
 said the vague and sloppy use of words like youand  he and I and the
 man is at the root of Bruno's intense confusion, and apparently yours as
 well.

If that is not what you said, what do you think that man would
experience?

a) Nothing
b) being in Moscow xor being in Washington
c) being in Moscow and Washington
d) being in neither Moscow nor Washington

Logically, these four possibilities exhaust the situation. Only b) is
compatible with COMP.




 
   which does violence to the notion of survival after copying assumption
  of COMP.
 
 
 Bullshit. 

Which is bullshit? That you subscribed to option c) above (I did
qualify that claim with an I seem to recall), or that option c) is
contra COMP?


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:

 I said that if Russell Standish were duplicated then Russell Standish
 would be in Moscow and Washington.


  This is only true from the POV of an external observer which is not
 Russell Standish


Don't give me that pee pee POV bullshit, Russell Standish will see Moscow
and Washington PERIOD.

 both Russell will only feel from their *own* POV to be in one and only
 one place (either washington or moscow).


How in the world does that conflict with my statement that Russell Standish
would be in Moscow and Washington? It says so plain as day but for some
reason people just keep ignoring the fact that RUSSELL STANDISH HAS BEEN
DUPLICATED and keep on using pronouns like I and he just as they always
have as if nothing unusual has happened.

  that's the *main* point.


Yes, and I realized very early that if Bruno's main point was as worthless
as that then there was no reason to keep reading his proof.

  John K Clark

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?

2013-09-27 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On 28 September 2013 05:54, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

  Anyone who has a problem with Bruno's teleportation thought experiment
  should logically have the same problem with the MWI.


 No, you are entirely incorrect. The Many World's Interpretation is about
 what you can expect to see, and although it may seem strange to us Everett's
 ideas are 100% logically self consistent. Bruno's proof is about a feeling
 of identity, about who you can expect to be; but you do not think you're the
 same person you were yesterday because yesterday you made a prediction about
 today that turned out to be correct, you think you are the same person you
 were yesterday for one reason and one reason only, you remember being Liz
 yesterday. It's a good thing too because I make incorrect predictions all
 the time and when I do I don't feel that I've entered oblivion, instead I
 feel like I am the same person I was before because I can remember being the
 guy who made that prediction that turned out to be wrong.

 Bruno thinks you can trace personal identity from the present to the future,
 but that is like pushing on a string. You can only pull a string and you can
 only trace identity from the past to the present. A feeling of self has
 nothing to do with predictions, successful ones or otherwise, and in fact
 you might not even have a future, but you certainly have a past.

Teleportation thought experiments are also about what you can expect to see.

If you toss a coin and teleport to either Washington or Moscow that is
like a single world interpretationof QM.

If teleport to both Washington and Moscow that is like the MWI.

It is generally accepted that you can't tell which is the case from
experience. If you think they are different then you would have a
proof or disproof of the MWI. Is that what you claim?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?