FW: FIN insanity
-Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. I'm not sure what you mean here. The new brain would be the same as the old you, the old one would remain the same, the old one was destroyed, or what? As far as I understand quantum physics, this is only true if the new brain is in the same quantum state as the old one - like atoms in a bose-einstein condensate, they would then be literally, physically indistinguishable. However (also as far as I understand quantum physics) it's actually impossible to create two macroscopic objects in the same quantum state, at least, it's impossible to measure the state of one object accurately enough to create one which is idnetical in this sense (which is the only sense the universe recognises). This does not, however, prevent the universe itself from creating two objects in the same quantum state, if it's allowed to generate every conceivable arrangement of mass-energy - as may be the case in a single, infinite universe, and is definitely the case according to the MWI. Charles
RE: fin insanity
-Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] So, I would say that you will always find yourself alive somewhere. But it is interesting to consider only our universe and ignore quantum effects. Even then you will always find yourself alive somewhere, but you won't find yourself becoming infinitely old (see above). Because this is a classical continuation of you, it is much more likely than any quantum continuation that allows you to survive an atomic bomb exploding above your head. QTI can give you some idea of the size of the multiverse if you consider that there are branches in which every organism that has ever existed (including bacteria, viruses etc) are immortal - as well as every non-living configuration of matter (e.g. snowflakes, rocks, grains of sand...) - on every planet (and star, and empty space) in the universe ... According to QTI *no* observer moments ever lead to death. Every observer moment of every organism that has ever lived has timelike-infinite continuity. This leads to very very very big numbers, even if we allowed the output from the SWE to be quantised - which it isn't. Charles
Re: fin insanity
Charles Goodwin wrote: -Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] As I have written before, a person is just a computation being implemented somewhere. Suppose that the person has discovered that he suffers from a terminal ilness and he dies (the computation ends). Now in principle the person in question could have lived on if he wasn't diagnosed with this terminal ilness. Somewhere in the multiverse this person exists. Some time ago I wrote (I think on the FoR list) that the transformation from the old dying person to the new person is a continuous one. The process of death must involve the destruction of the brain. At some time the information that the person is dying will be lost to the person. The person might even think he is 20 years old while in reality he is 92. Anyway, the point is that his brain had stored so much information that adding new information would lead to an inconsistency. By dumping some of the information, the information left will be identical to the information in a similar brain somewhere else of a younger person, free from disease. Hmm.and this is a simpler theory, with more explanatory power, than that people are just material objects which eventually wear out? People are material objects, but the materials out of which people are made don't matter. If your neurons were replaced by artifiicial ones that would function in the same way, would you not be the same person? You would answer any question in the same way as the original version of you would. I conclude that it is the computation that is performed by your brain that generates you. The materials don't matter. I could just as well generate you by a primitive analog computer. What matters is the computer program that is running on the machine, not the machine itself. If you believe that all possible universes exist (universes that can be generated by a computer program), then you ``always´´ exist in some universe, because, by definition, you are a computer program. So, I would say that you will always find yourself alive somewhere. But it is interesting to consider only our universe and ignore quantum effects. Even then you will always find yourself alive somewhere, but you won't find yourself becoming infinitely old (see above). Because this is a classical continuation of you, it is much more likely than any quantum continuation that allows you to survive an atomic bomb exploding above your head. Saibal
Re: FIN insanity
Good grief - Jacques said it often enough (F)allacious (I)nsane (N)onsense! Charles Goodwin wrote: Thank you for the explanation. I think FIN stands for something derogatory - possibly invented by Jaques Mallah (in much the way that Fred Hoyle coined the term 'Big Bang' to make his opponents' views sound ridiculous, or art critics coined 'Cubism' for similar reasons, only to see the derisively-termed ideas go on to achieve fame while the original reason for the name was forgotten). The IN part of FIN is (I think) Immortality Nonsense - the F I'm not sure about although some ideas come to mind . . . so anyway, it *is* another name for QTI. I think the idea of continuity of consciousness between duplicates, no matter how widely separated in space, time or the multiverse, assumes that they are (at least momentarily) in the same quantum state. According to quantum theory this means that they are literally identical, as atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate are identical - there is no test, even in theory, that will distinguish them. The MWI postulates that the initial state of some system evolves through the schrodinger wave eqn to a continuum of derived states, and hence that a person (for example) is continuously becoming an (uncountably infinite) number of copies, all of which have continuity of consciousness with the original. Of these outcomes, we typically experience the most likely, which is to say that our experiences are normally of the laws of physics holding, including probablistic 'laws' like thermodynamics. There are SOME copies of me who are experiencing their PCs turning into a bowl of petunias, or all the air molecules rushing out of the room, but the chances that you will be getting an email from one of them rather than one in which things go on as normal is very unlikely - thermodynamically unlikely. As I understand the QTI (from your post and others) it goes on to postulate that in the event of imminent death (including the infamous quantum suicide experiment) we would start to experience *unlikely* outcomes, because in all the likely ones we'd die (which we wouldn't experience for the reasons you mention below). So if in a fit of depression I try to shoot myself, the QTI suggests that I would experience the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness. (This reminds me of a Larry Niven story in which a race of aliens discovered the meaning of life (I forget how they managed this) and promptly committed suicide en masse.) Of course the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness is unlikely to be pleasant: if I shot myself, I'd probably experience acquiring very bad injuries (and doctors exclaiming in delight over the opportunity to work out how someone can survive with half his head missing). The QTI assumes that the possibility of identical quantum states arising for any arbitrary collection of matter is 100% - which is true in the MWI (or any infinite collection of space-time slices which have the same laws of physics). So it actually seems at least a possible theory, given certain assumptions - but not easily testable in the sense that most theories try to be (i.e. third person testable, so to speak). Charles -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, 7 September 2001 7:21 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:26:24 +1200 On the other hand I can't see how FIN is supposed to work, either. I *think* the argument runs something like this... Even if you have just had, say, an atom bomb dropped on you, there's still SOME outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation which just happen to lead to you suriviving the explosion. Although these are VERY unlikely - less likely than, say, my computer turning into a bowl of petunias - they do exist, and (given the MWI) they occur somewhere in the multiverse. For some reason I can't work out, all the copies who are killed by the bomb don't count. Only the very very very (etc) small proportion who miraculously survive do, and these are the only ones you personally experience. Is that a reasonable description of FIN? Ignoring statistical arguments, what is wrong with it? Charles What does FIN stand for, anyway? Is it just another version of the quantum theory of immortality? Anyway, the idea behind the QTI is not just that we arbitrarily decide copies who die don't count, rather it has to do with some supplemental assumptions about the laws governing first-person experience, namely: 1. Continuity of consciousness is real (see my recent post on this) 2. Continuity of consciousness does not depend on spatial or temporal continuity, only on some kind of pattern continuity between different
RE: FIN insanity
Thank you for the explanation. I think FIN stands for something derogatory - possibly invented by Jaques Mallah (in much the way that Fred Hoyle coined the term 'Big Bang' to make his opponents' views sound ridiculous, or art critics coined 'Cubism' for similar reasons, only to see the derisively-termed ideas go on to achieve fame while the original reason for the name was forgotten). The IN part of FIN is (I think) Immortality Nonsense - the F I'm not sure about although some ideas come to mind . . . so anyway, it *is* another name for QTI. I think the idea of continuity of consciousness between duplicates, no matter how widely separated in space, time or the multiverse, assumes that they are (at least momentarily) in the same quantum state. According to quantum theory this means that they are literally identical, as atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate are identical - there is no test, even in theory, that will distinguish them. The MWI postulates that the initial state of some system evolves through the schrodinger wave eqn to a continuum of derived states, and hence that a person (for example) is continuously becoming an (uncountably infinite) number of copies, all of which have continuity of consciousness with the original. Of these outcomes, we typically experience the most likely, which is to say that our experiences are normally of the laws of physics holding, including probablistic 'laws' like thermodynamics. There are SOME copies of me who are experiencing their PCs turning into a bowl of petunias, or all the air molecules rushing out of the room, but the chances that you will be getting an email from one of them rather than one in which things go on as normal is very unlikely - thermodynamically unlikely. As I understand the QTI (from your post and others) it goes on to postulate that in the event of imminent death (including the infamous quantum suicide experiment) we would start to experience *unlikely* outcomes, because in all the likely ones we'd die (which we wouldn't experience for the reasons you mention below). So if in a fit of depression I try to shoot myself, the QTI suggests that I would experience the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness. (This reminds me of a Larry Niven story in which a race of aliens discovered the meaning of life (I forget how they managed this) and promptly committed suicide en masse.) Of course the most likely outcome that provides continuity of consciousness is unlikely to be pleasant: if I shot myself, I'd probably experience acquiring very bad injuries (and doctors exclaiming in delight over the opportunity to work out how someone can survive with half his head missing). The QTI assumes that the possibility of identical quantum states arising for any arbitrary collection of matter is 100% - which is true in the MWI (or any infinite collection of space-time slices which have the same laws of physics). So it actually seems at least a possible theory, given certain assumptions - but not easily testable in the sense that most theories try to be (i.e. third person testable, so to speak). Charles -Original Message- From: Jesse Mazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, 7 September 2001 7:21 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:26:24 +1200 On the other hand I can't see how FIN is supposed to work, either. I *think* the argument runs something like this... Even if you have just had, say, an atom bomb dropped on you, there's still SOME outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation which just happen to lead to you suriviving the explosion. Although these are VERY unlikely - less likely than, say, my computer turning into a bowl of petunias - they do exist, and (given the MWI) they occur somewhere in the multiverse. For some reason I can't work out, all the copies who are killed by the bomb don't count. Only the very very very (etc) small proportion who miraculously survive do, and these are the only ones you personally experience. Is that a reasonable description of FIN? Ignoring statistical arguments, what is wrong with it? Charles What does FIN stand for, anyway? Is it just another version of the quantum theory of immortality? Anyway, the idea behind the QTI is not just that we arbitrarily decide copies who die don't count, rather it has to do with some supplemental assumptions about the laws governing first-person experience, namely: 1. Continuity of consciousness is real (see my recent post on this) 2. Continuity of consciousness does not depend on spatial or temporal continuity, only on some kind of pattern continuity between different observer moments. I won't try to explain #1 any more for now, but I'll try explaining #2 (Bruno Marchal is much better at this sort of thing). Basically, you want to imagine
RE: FIN insanity
From: Charles Goodwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: FIN insanity Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:26:24 +1200 On the other hand I can't see how FIN is supposed to work, either. I *think* the argument runs something like this... Even if you have just had, say, an atom bomb dropped on you, there's still SOME outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation which just happen to lead to you suriviving the explosion. Although these are VERY unlikely - less likely than, say, my computer turning into a bowl of petunias - they do exist, and (given the MWI) they occur somewhere in the multiverse. For some reason I can't work out, all the copies who are killed by the bomb don't count. Only the very very very (etc) small proportion who miraculously survive do, and these are the only ones you personally experience. Is that a reasonable description of FIN? Ignoring statistical arguments, what is wrong with it? Charles What does FIN stand for, anyway? Is it just another version of the quantum theory of immortality? Anyway, the idea behind the QTI is not just that we arbitrarily decide copies who die don't count, rather it has to do with some supplemental assumptions about the laws governing first-person experience, namely: 1. Continuity of consciousness is real (see my recent post on this) 2. Continuity of consciousness does not depend on spatial or temporal continuity, only on some kind of pattern continuity between different observer moments. I won't try to explain #1 any more for now, but I'll try explaining #2 (Bruno Marchal is much better at this sort of thing). Basically, you want to imagine something like a star trek transporter, which disassembles me at one location and reassembles me at another. Will this mean that the original version of me died and that a doppelganger with false memories was created in his place? If computationalism/functionalism is true, it would seem the answer is no--who I am is a function of my pattern, not the particular particles I'm made of, so as long as the pattern is preserved my continuity of consciousness will be too (and after all, the molecules of my body all end up being totally replaced by new ones every few years anyway). But if this is true, the spatial/temporal separation of the two transporter chambers shouldn't matter--the imaging chamber could be on 21st century earth and the replication chamber in the Andromeda Galaxy in the year 5000, and I would still have a continuous experience of stepping into the imaging chamber and instantaneously finding myself in the replication chamber, wherever/whenever that may be. A naturally corrolary of this is that my stream of consciousness can be split--if there are two replication chambers which create copies of me just as I was when I stepped into the imaging chamber, then I before the experiment could experience becoming either of the two copies. All other things being equal, it seems reasonable to assume the chances of experiencing becoming one copy vs. the other are 50/50. But now suppose we do a similar duplication experiment, except we forget to plug in the second replication chamber, so only one copy is created. Should I assume that I have a 50% chance of becoming the real copy and a 50% chance of finding myself in an empty chamber, and thus being dead? That doesn't seem to make sense--after all, a duplication experiment where one chamber fails to create a copy is just like a standard Star-Trek-style transporter, and I assume that in that case I have a 100% chance of finding myself as the single copy. But it's easy to imagine extending this--suppose instead of failing to replicate anything, the second chamber replicates a copy of my body with the brain totally scrambled, so that the body dies pretty rapidly. Do I have a 50% chance of dying in this experiment because I become the copy with the scrambled brain? If only pattern continuity is important, the fact that this copy has a body which resembles mine shouldn't matter, its brain-pattern doesn't resemble mine in any way so there's no reason I should become that copy. It's not too hard to see how all this would be analogous to what would be happening all the time in a MWI-style multiverse. Why should I become those copies of me who experience death in various possible histories? There shouldn't be any more danger of that than there is of me suddenly becoming the dead body of a complete stranger, or of finding myself in a universe where I was never born in the first place and being dead for that reason. So, that's the basic argument for quantum immortality. The catch is in defining exactly what pattern continuity here means--what if a copy is replicated that's basically the same as me but with a few neurons scrambled, for example? Something like that happens every time I have a new experience, so it shouldn't make too much of a difference. But it's possible to imagine a continuum of cases where
Re: FIN insanity
Jacques Mallah wrote: From: Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). I'm certainly not going to call it a theory. Doing so lends it an a priori aura of legitimacy. Words mean things, as Newt Gingrich once said in one of his smarter moments. The most reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be infinite. Your version may not imply immortality, but I don't really see how it's different from other versions (and thus why it doesn't). As I have written before, a person is just a computation being implemented somewhere. Suppose that the person has discovered that he suffers from a terminal ilness and he dies (the computation ends). Now in principle the person in question could have lived on if he wasn't diagnosed with this terminal ilness. Somewhere in the multiverse this person exists. Some time ago I wrote (I think on the FoR list) that the transformation from the old dying person to the new person is a continuous one. The process of death must involve the destruction of the brain. At some time the information that the person is dying will be lost to the person. The person might even think he is 20 years old while in reality he is 92. Anyway, the point is that his brain had stored so much information that adding new information would lead to an inconsistency. By dumping some of the information, the information left will be identical to the information in a similar brain somewhere else of a younger person, free from disease. I say: 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery and you recover fully, then you are the same person. OK, that's merely a matter of definition though. 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. I'm not sure what you mean here. The new brain would be the same as the old you, the old one would remain the same, the old one was destroyed, or what? Well, suppose that the damaged brain contains enough information to reconstruct the original one. It doesn't matter if you repair the old one or create a new one. 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy. A matter of definition agin, but let me point out something important. If your brain is copied, then there is a causal link between the old brain and any copies. Thus it's quite possible for an extended implementation of a computation to start out in the old brain and end up in the copy, without violating the requirement that implementations obey the proper direct causal laws. 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist. I don't see how 4 is supposed to follow from 3. In any case, it's certainly not true that copies of you always exist. Rather, people who are structurally identical do exist, but they are not copies as they are not causally linked. Even if they were linked in the past, they have diverged on the level of causal relationships between your brain parts vs. their brain parts. I don't understand why it is necessary for one person to qualify as a copy of another iff there is a causal link. 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents. If 4 were true, I don't see how 5 could be true. 5) is true because you can survive with memory loss (see above). You would be killed, but copies of you exist that never experienced the accident. Saibal
FW: FIN insanity
-Original Message- From: Saibal Mitra [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). The most reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be infinite. Death involves the destruction of your brain. But there are many brains in the universe which are almost identical to yours. Jacques says that you can't become one of them. I say: 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery and you recover fully, then you are the same person. 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy. 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist. 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents. Saibal Ok, that's a similar argument to the one Frank Tipler used in 'The physics of immortality' (except that he allowed a simulation of a brain to have continuous consciousness with the original physical brain). Your version is more reasonable that Tiplers, imo, because it only assumes that 2 objects in the same quantum state *are* the same object (rather than an object and its simulation). There will almost certainly be objects in the same quantum state if the universe is infinite OR the MWI is correct, AND space-time really is quantised, AND quantum-identical objects really *are* the same object. This seems like a reasonable theory on the face of it. Hard to prove, though, unless you've had personal experience of living a *very* long time Charles
Re: FIN insanity
From: Saibal Mitra [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). I'm certainly not going to call it a theory. Doing so lends it an a priori aura of legitimacy. Words mean things, as Newt Gingrich once said in one of his smarter moments. The most reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be infinite. Your version may not imply immortality, but I don't really see how it's different from other versions (and thus why it doesn't). I say: 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery and you recover fully, then you are the same person. OK, that's merely a matter of definition though. 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. I'm not sure what you mean here. The new brain would be the same as the old you, the old one would remain the same, the old one was destroyed, or what? 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy. A matter of definition agin, but let me point out something important. If your brain is copied, then there is a causal link between the old brain and any copies. Thus it's quite possible for an extended implementation of a computation to start out in the old brain and end up in the copy, without violating the requirement that implementations obey the proper direct causal laws. 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist. I don't see how 4 is supposed to follow from 3. In any case, it's certainly not true that copies of you always exist. Rather, people who are structurally identical do exist, but they are not copies as they are not causally linked. Even if they were linked in the past, they have diverged on the level of causal relationships between your brain parts vs. their brain parts. 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents. If 4 were true, I don't see how 5 could be true. - - - - - - - Jacques Mallah ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Physicist / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate I know what no one else knows - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum My URL: http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: FIN insanity
Charles Goodwin wrote: -Original Message- From: Jacques Mallah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On the other hand I can't see how FIN is supposed to work, either. I *think* the argument runs something like this... Even if you have just had, say, an atom bomb dropped on you, there's still SOME outcomes of the schrodinger wave equation which just happen to lead to you suriviving the explosion. Although these are VERY unlikely - less likely than, say, my computer turning into a bowl of petunias - they do exist, and (given the MWI) they occur somewhere in the multiverse. For some reason I can't work out, all the copies who are killed by the bomb don't count. Only the very very very (etc) small proportion who miraculously survive do, and these are the only ones you personally experience. Is that a reasonable description of FIN? Ignoring statistical arguments, what is wrong with it? There are different versions of QTI (let's not call it FIN). The most reasonable one (my version, of course) takes into account the possibility that you find yourself alive somewhere else in the universe, without any memory of the atomic bomb that exploded. I totally ignore the possibility that one could survive an atomic bomb exploding above one's head. My version doesn't imply that your a priory expected lifetime should be infinite. Death involves the destruction of your brain. But there are many brains in the universe which are almost identical to yours. Jacques says that you can't become one of them. I say: 1) If you are hurt in a car accident and the surgeon performes brain surgery and you recover fully, then you are the same person. 2) You would also be the same person if the surgeon made a new brain identically to yours. 3) From 2) it follows that if your brain was first copied and then destroyed, you would become the copy. 4) From 3) you can thus conclude that you will always experience yourself being alive, because copies of you always exist. 5) It doesn't follow that you will experience surviving terrible accidents. Saibal
