Superdeterminism in comics

[John Clark]

Superdeterminism in comics 

John K Clark

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 10:25, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Superdeterminism in comics 

Isn’t that what Many Worlds says? The entangled particles are correlated because they are in the same world. The mysterious instantaneous interaction appears that way because of apparent randomness due to the impossibility of the observer knowing which world he is in. The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 10:25, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Superdeterminism in comics 

Isn’t that what Many Worlds says? The entangled particles are correlated because they are in the same world.

That isn't an explanation of the correlation. That is just the fact of the correlation. 

The mysterious instantaneous interaction appears that way because of apparent randomness due to the impossibility of the observer knowing which world he is in.

That makes no sense.

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Super determinism works only in single world models. There can be no true or apparent randomness in a super deterministic setting. So many-worlds, since it encompasses apparent randomness in every branch, is ruled out.

Likewise, EPR correlations are observed in every branch of the wave function, so ignorance as to which branch you are on can form no part of the explanation of those correlations.

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Superdeterminism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism - though apparently is a "One World" theory.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 7 Nov 2019, at 02:50, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 12:27 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 10:25, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Superdeterminism in comics 

Isn’t that what Many Worlds says? The entangled particles are correlated because they are in the same world.

That isn't an explanation of the correlation. That is just the fact of the correlation. 

The mysterious instantaneous interaction appears that way because of apparent randomness due to the impossibility of the observer knowing which world he is in.

That makes no sense.

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

Super determinism works only in single world models. There can be no true or apparent randomness in a super deterministic setting. So many-worlds, since it encompasses apparent randomness in every branch, is ruled out.

In the WM mechanist self-duplication, there is no super-determinism, no true randomness, but there is still apparent randomness in the two branches.

Likewise, EPR correlations are observed in every branch of the wave function, so ignorance as to which branch you are on can form no part of the explanation of those correlations.

The question “which branches am I on” does not make sense. We are always on many branches at once.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 7 Nov 2019, at 09:21, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019 at 7:27:32 PM UTC-6, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

For the same reason that it is simpler to believe in all (natural, or real) numbers, than in any particular number. The mechanist has no choice, and this explains both qualia and quanta (thanks to the Solovay separation of G* and G) without adding any ontological commitment other than in a universal machinery (needed to define what a computer is).

So the answer is conceptual simplicity, or Occam razor. Using the less assumptions as possible.

Superdeterminism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism - though apparently is a "One World" theory.

Yes, you get super determinism from the many-worlds less all worlds but ours. That is just an abandon or rationality. Something implicitly illustrated in the aforementioned comics.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Brent Meeker]

On 11/7/2019 12:21 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019 at 7:27:32 PM UTC-6, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Because it treats measurement as just another physical interaction of quantum systems obeying the same evolution equations as other interactions.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

Really? That's why physicists and others are today (as it's reported in science news stories) adopting 

    Many Worlds

as their perspective of reality?

@philipthrift

 

[Bruce Kellett]

But you can do that (viz. accept that people, and measuring instruments, and everything else are basically quantum mechanical) without adopting the "many worlds" philosophy. Most contemporary physicists adopt such a view of the quantum origin of everything without taking Bohr's "primacy of the classical" seriously. So this is not a sound reason for adopting many worlds.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

On 11/7/2019 1:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 6:35 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 12:21 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019 at 7:27:32 PM UTC-6, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Because it treats measurement as just another physical interaction of quantum systems obeying the same evolution equations as other interactions.

But you can do that (viz. accept that people, and measuring instruments, and everything else are basically quantum mechanical) without adopting the "many worlds" philosophy.

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

Brent

Most contemporary physicists adopt such a view of the quantum origin of everything without taking Bohr's "primacy of the classical" seriously. So this is not a sound reason for adopting many worlds.

Bruce

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 1:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

 

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 6:35 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 12:21 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019 at 7:27:32 PM UTC-6, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Because it treats measurement as just another physical interaction of quantum systems obeying the same evolution equations as other interactions.

But you can do that (viz. accept that people, and measuring instruments, and everything else are basically quantum mechanical) without adopting the "many worlds" philosophy.

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

Yeah, I like Omnes' dictum, "It's a probabilistic theory, so it predicts probabilities.  What more do you want?" 

But it still leaves that gap between the density matrix becoming diagonal FAPP and one subspace becoming actual FR (for real), not just FAPP.  If you take a purely epistemic view the gap is just in your belief changing.  But if you keep an ontological view the matrix is only diagonal in some preferred basis and it's not necessarily even approximately diagonal in some other basis.  It seems the other bases are an inconvenient fiction. :-)  It seems to come down to explaining that Zurek's quantum Darwinism necessarily picks out the basis in which our brains will form beliefs and they will agree on that belief as to what "really happened".

Brent

If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

Bruce

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[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 3:53:12 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

On 11/7/2019 1:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 6:35 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 12:21 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Because it treats measurement as just another physical interaction of quantum systems obeying the same evolution equations as other interactions.

But you can do that (viz. accept that people, and measuring instruments, and everything else are basically quantum mechanical) without adopting the "many worlds" philosophy.

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

Brent

I studied probability theory - and statistics - through the 70s - my thesis was in random fields [ def: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_field ] - and T've read much on 'interpretations' of probability and statistics.

I'll just say that the vocabulary I see with 'probability' in the way some are describing things like Many Worlds are just baffling to me - probability theory-wise.

I know one can have a Bayesian probabilities sense of 'a probability becomes 1.0' as in a prior to posterior probability updating, but I don't think the Many Worlds people are doing this. It's like a hybrid of QBI and MWI maybe.

@philipthrift

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 9:26 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 1:58 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 1:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

 

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 6:35 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 11/7/2019 12:21 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019 at 7:27:32 PM UTC-6, stathisp wrote:

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 11:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The universe as a whole is determined in every detail, and random choice of the observer in measuring a particle is not really a random choice.

If you believe that, you believe in magic sauce.

It is a consequence of Many Worlds that there is no true randomness, but only apparent randomness. If Many Worlds is wrong, then this may also be wrong. Randomness in choice of measurement is required for the apparent nonlocal effect when considering entangled particles.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

That's what Many Worlds implies.

The mystery is: Why do (according to the science press in the wake of Sean Carroll's book) so many people think Many Worlds is a good scientific idea (or the best idea, according to the author).

Because it treats measurement as just another physical interaction of quantum systems obeying the same evolution equations as other interactions.

But you can do that (viz. accept that people, and measuring instruments, and everything else are basically quantum mechanical) without adopting the "many worlds" philosophy.

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction.

Yeah, I like Omnes' dictum, "It's a probabilistic theory, so it predicts probabilities.  What more do you want?" 

But it still leaves that gap between the density matrix becoming diagonal FAPP and one subspace becoming actual FR (for real), not just FAPP.  If you take a purely epistemic view the gap is just in your belief changing.  But if you keep an ontological view the matrix is only diagonal in some preferred basis and it's not necessarily even approximately diagonal in some other basis.  It seems the other bases are an inconvenient fiction. :-)  It seems to come down to explaining that Zurek's quantum Darwinism necessarily picks out the basis in which our brains will form beliefs and they will agree on that belief as to what "really happened".

Maybe our brains see it in this way because "that is really what happened". It is stochastic, but so what?  We are used to updating probabilities on the basis of new evidence. Quantum Darwinism is a way of explaining that the world itself determines what is real.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

I think of probability as an abstract quantity like "energy".  It's a useful concept because it has different interpretations that can be translated from one context to another.  So the Born rule gives a measure that satisfies the Kolmogorov axioms, and it's useful because in an operational context it translates into the frequentist meaning, and that's useful because it tells you how to bet in a decision theory problem. 

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

As long as QMists are clear about what type of 'probabilities' they are referring from one day (or paragraph) to the next, It's OK I guess. (I always think first: What is the sample space [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_space ]? What are the elements of the sample space?)

I've always been a propensitist [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#ProInt ].

@philipthrift

 

[Brent Meeker]

A sample space implies statistics and a frequentist interpretation of probability.

I've always been a propensitist [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#ProInt ].

Fine.  But my point is that to connect beliefs, predictions, mathematical theory, observations,...you need to be able to transfer one meaning of probability to another.

Brent

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 11:16 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Fine.  But my point is that to connect beliefs, predictions, mathematical theory, observations,...you need to be able to transfer one meaning of probability to another.

I think the simplest solution is just to treat probability as an undefined primitive, and interpret it as is appropriate for the given situation.

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 6:16:45 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

A sample space implies statistics and a frequentist interpretation of probability.

No.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_space

A probability space consists of three parts:

1. 1. A sample space, {\displaystyle \Omega }, which is the set of all possible outcomes.
2. 
   
3. 2. A set of events {\displaystyle {\mathcal {F}}}, where each event is a set containing zero or more outcomes.
4. 
   
5. 3. The assignment of probabilities to the events; that is, a function {\displaystyle P} from events to probabilities.

@philipthrift

[Philip Thrift]

I really don't see why.

(When the weatherman says there's a 17% probability of rain tomorrow, I don't translate - nor do I think many viewers out there translate - anything at all!)

@philipthrift 

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 6:27:49 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 6:16:45 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

A sample space implies statistics and a frequentist interpretation of probability.

No.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_space

...

The point is that sample space is defined in probability theory - whatever probability theory is applied to - or whether probability theory is studied as a subject in pure mathematics. 

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

Of course you can ignore anything you hear.  But if you're going to make use of the information you will translate into something related to a decision, i.e. what's your expect loss due to getting we tomorrow?  Should you cancel the department picnic?

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

Maybe some people do.

I just translate it:

           A rain prediction program was run and it output this: 17%.

And that's all I know.

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

Zurek uses quantum Darwinism and envariance to show there's a preferred basis and the Born rule is the way to assign probabilities to them once decoherence has acted.  But he doesn't seem to say that one result or another is realized via the quantum Darwinism.  Rather he's satisfied like Omnes' to say "It's a probabilistic theory so you get predictions of probabilities."  Then observing one, you discard the others as failed predictions.  He doesn't think of the quantum Dawinism as competition between different preferred basis outcomes to select one as realized.  At least that's what I think he says.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort? There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

It is more a selection by consciousness than a competition in some precise Darwinian sense I would say, like in the sigma_1 (partial computable) frame.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 7 Nov 2019, at 22:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort?

I did not say that they disappeared: merely that they do not play any role in explaining our experience. If you can point to any such role, then fine. But I doubt that you can do this.

 

There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Again you appear to ignore the primary role of science is in explaining our experience. In our experience, there most certainly is a preferred basis -- the world around us has not dissolved into the "mush" that Schroedinger feared so much. If there is only a "personal basis", explain to me why your personal basis does not include superpositions of live and dead cats.

Bruce

[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Nov 2019, at 22:24, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 7 Nov 2019, at 22:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort?

I did not say that they disappeared: merely that they do not play any role in explaining our experience.

Then you agree with the, or some, form of the Many-Histories/World theory.

If you can point to any such role, then fine. But I doubt that you can do this.

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

 

There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Again you appear to ignore the primary role of science is in explaining our experience. In our experience, there most certainly is a preferred basis -- the world around us has not dissolved into the "mush" that Schroedinger feared so much. If there is only a "personal basis", explain to me why your personal basis does not include superpositions of live and dead cats.

For exactly the same reason that when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

The linearity of the evolution of the wave + the linearity of the tensor product entails that if a robot observe a cat in the state a + d, and this with a ad-measuring device, he ends up into a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is alive, and a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is dead. 

Once we have a body, evolution has chosen the “preferred base”, but it does not play a fundamental role in the fundamental equation. We need some base to have a perspective, like in Mechanist philosophy of mind we need some universal machinery to be able to talk on all of them.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, November 11, 2019 at 3:18:48 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Nov 2019, at 22:24, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 7 Nov 2019, at 22:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort?

I did not say that they disappeared: merely that they do not play any role in explaining our experience.

Then you agree with the, or some, form of the Many-Histories/World theory.

If you can point to any such role, then fine. But I doubt that you can do this.

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

 

There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Again you appear to ignore the primary role of science is in explaining our experience. In our experience, there most certainly is a preferred basis -- the world around us has not dissolved into the "mush" that Schroedinger feared so much. If there is only a "personal basis", explain to me why your personal basis does not include superpositions of live and dead cats.

For exactly the same reason that when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

The linearity of the evolution of the wave + the linearity of the tensor product entails that if a robot observe a cat in the state a + d, and this with a ad-measuring device, he ends up into a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is alive, and a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is dead. 

Once we have a body, evolution has chosen the “preferred base”, but it does not play a fundamental role in the fundamental equation. We need some base to have a perspective, like in Mechanist philosophy of mind we need some universal machinery to be able to talk on all of them.

Bruno

If reality is pure "information" (as a lot of physicists today seem to believe, and that belief is required for Many Worlds), than copying (branching) is free.

But if all is matter, then there cannot be Many Worlds - or Many "You"s.

@philipthrift

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 8:18 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 10 Nov 2019, at 22:24, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 7 Nov 2019, at 22:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort?

I did not say that they disappeared: merely that they do not play any role in explaining our experience.

Then you agree with the, or some, form of the Many-Histories/World theory.

If you can point to any such role, then fine. But I doubt that you can do this.

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

That is not scientific realism -- that is metaphysical mysticism.

 

There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Again you appear to ignore the primary role of science is in explaining our experience. In our experience, there most certainly is a preferred basis -- the world around us has not dissolved into the "mush" that Schroedinger feared so much. If there is only a "personal basis", explain to me why your personal basis does not include superpositions of live and dead cats.

For exactly the same reason that when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

So you are in the Washington/Moscow basis -- not the( W+/- M) basis. That is a preferred basis.

The linearity of the evolution of the wave + the linearity of the tensor product entails that if a robot observe a cat in the state a + d, and this with a ad-measuring device, he ends up into a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is alive, and a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is dead.

That is exactly the definition of a preferred basis -- which you appear to want to deny even exists.

Once we have a body, evolution has chosen the “preferred base”, but it does not play a fundamental role in the fundamental equation.

Evolution has precisely nothing to do with it. The preferred basis is determined by quantum Darwinism acting on the normal physical interactions between quantum objects. Being human or sentient is totally irrelevant.. The preferred basis plays a fundamental role in the explanation of the world as we perceive it -- we do not directly perceive Hilbert space. And explaining our experience is the aim of science -- other things fall into the realm of metaphysics, which is not science.

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

Journal of Quantum Information Science

No Quantum Process Can Explain the Existence of the Preferred Basis:

Decoherence Is Not Universal

Hitoshi Inamori

https://file.scirp.org/Html/3-1300204_70108.htm

Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection―out of the many mathematically eligible bases―of a privileged measurement basis that corresponds to what we actually observe. This paper describes such processes, and demonstrates that―contrary to common belief―no such process can actually lead to a preferred basis in general. 

The key observation is that environment induced decoherence implicitly assumes a prior independence of the observed system, the observer and the environment. However, such independence cannot be guaranteed, and we show that environment induced decoherence does not succeed in establishing a preferred measurement basis in general. 

We conclude that the existence of the preferred basis must be postulated in quantum mechanics, and that changing the basis for a measurement is, and must be, described as an actual physical process.

@philipthrift 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 10:58 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, November 11, 2019 at 5:45:45 AM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

Evolution has precisely nothing to do with it. The preferred basis is determined by quantum Darwinism acting on the normal physical interactions between quantum objects. Being human or sentient is totally irrelevant.. The preferred basis plays a fundamental role in the explanation of the world as we perceive it -- we do not directly perceive Hilbert space. And explaining our experience is the aim of science -- other things fall into the realm of metaphysics, which is not science.

Bruce

Journal of Quantum Information Science

No Quantum Process Can Explain the Existence of the Preferred Basis:

Decoherence Is Not Universal

Hitoshi Inamori

https://file.scirp.org/Html/3-1300204_70108.htm

Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection―out of the many mathematically eligible bases―of a privileged measurement basis that corresponds to what we actually observe. This paper describes such processes, and demonstrates that―contrary to common belief―no such process can actually lead to a preferred basis in general. 

The key observation is that environment induced decoherence implicitly assumes a prior independence of the observed system, the observer and the environment. However, such independence cannot be guaranteed, and we show that environment induced decoherence does not succeed in establishing a preferred measurement basis in general. 

We conclude that the existence of the preferred basis must be postulated in quantum mechanics, and that changing the basis for a measurement is, and must be, described as an actual physical process.

Where do you find these idiots, Phil?

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

https://www.scirp.org/journal/JQIS/

@philipthrift 

[John Clark]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 4:18 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

Then what one and only one city do "you" personally feel to be in? If you can not clearly answer that question, and the history of this list provides overwhelming evidence that you cannot, then the statement "I don’t personally feel to be in both cities at once" has no meaning. The personal pronoun "I" that you're in the habit of using without thinking has no meaning due to the fact that a "I" duplication machine is a key part of the thought exparament. So what we end up with is a thought exparament that lacks any thought.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Nov 2019, at 14:59, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 4:18 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

Then what one and only one city do "you" personally feel to be in?

In the third person view on the first person view, you can say that I am in both city, and you can join me by phone at both places. But in Helsinki, I can only predict with certainties that I will feel to be in once city, and I am unable to say which one in advance. After the split, each “I” representing me know very well which one just by looking around. 

If you can not clearly answer that question,

The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will feel with to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow. The situation is similar with someone deciding to take a look at the Schroedinger cat: in the “3p” picture I will be both seeing a dead cat, and an alive cat, but before I can only predict that I will see one of the outcome, without assessing which one.

If I was able to answer your question, you would win the debate, given that I assert that in Helsinki, nobody can predict what he will feel after the split in W and M.

and the history of this list provides overwhelming evidence that you cannot, then the statement "I don’t personally feel to be in both cities at once" has no meaning.

*that* has no meaning. And in that case Everett QM has no meaning either.

The personal pronoun "I" that you're in the habit of using without thinking has no meaning due to the fact that a "I" duplication machine is a key part of the thought exparament. So what we end up with is a thought exparament that lacks any thought.

“I” is an indexical. Study the mathematical treatment if you have a problem with the version of the argument I made for non mathematicians. The 3p indexical “I” is obtained by the Kleene’s second recursion theorem, and the 1p indexical is given by the Theaetetus’ technic, literally imposed by incompleteness in this setting. That works very well. We find an intuitionistic logic for the first person notion, and diverses quantum logics for the physical prediction.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 8:14 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Then what one and only one city do "you" personally feel to be in?

 

> In the third person view on the first person view, you can say [...]

What about the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about the third person view of the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about....

>> If you can not clearly answer that question,

> The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will [...]  

 

By casually throwing in the personal pronoun "I" in a thought experiment that contains a "I" duplicating machine you have already demonstrated you are unable to clearly answer the question.  

> [...] feel to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow.

Forget prediction!! Even AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what city did you turn out to see?" and the reason you can't answer it is because it contains the personal pronoun "you"; and if personal pronoun duplicating machines are involved that means it is not a question at all, it's just gibberish with a question mark at the end.  

If you can't even clearly say what happened yesterday then you can't have had been expected to make a clear prediction on the day before yesterday about what would happen the next day.

 John K Clark 

[Quentin Anciaux]

Le jeu. 28 nov. 2019 à 15:50, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 8:14 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Then what one and only one city do "you" personally feel to be in?

 

> In the third person view on the first person view, you can say [...]

What about the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about the third person view of the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about....

>> If you can not clearly answer that question,

> The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will [...]  

 

By casually throwing in the personal pronoun "I" in a thought experiment that contains a "I" duplicating machine you have already demonstrated you are unable to clearly answer the question.  

> [...] feel to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow.

Forget prediction!! Even AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what city did you turn out to see?"

Wait... what ? Sure you can, if you are the one who ended up in moscow... you answer moscow and write it in the diary... if you're the one who end up in washington, you answer washington. Easy.

 

and the reason you can't answer it is because it contains the personal pronoun "you"; and if personal pronoun duplicating machines are involved that means it is not a question at all, it's just gibberish with a question mark at the end.  

If you can't even clearly say what happened yesterday then you can't have had been expected to make a clear prediction on the day before yesterday about what would happen the next day.

 John K Clark 

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[John Clark]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 10:01 AM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Forget prediction!! Even AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what city did you turn out to see?"

> Wait... what ? Sure you can, if you are the one who ended up in moscow... you answer moscow and write it in the diary... if you're the one who end up in washington, you answer washington. Easy.

OK, but then what did the correct answer to the question asked the day before yesterday in Helsinki turn out to be? What one and only one city did "you" end up seeing yesterday, was it Washington or Moscow? 

What can be predicted is that the man that sees Moscow will turn from the Helsinki Man into the Moscow Man, and the man that sees Washington will turn from the Helsinki Man into the Washington Man. This banality is what Bruno calls first person indeterminacy.

 John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

Almost. Mechanism predicts that you will see only one city, for the same reason that you can predict with certainty that you will have a cup of coffee. Indeed “seing one city” will be true in both places, like drinking the cup of coffee. What you cannot predict in Helsinki is the particular city you will feel to end in.

I agree that this is still rather banal, but if you agree now, you can move to the next step, and eventually grasp that when we assume mechanism, the physical laws have to emerge from the statistics on all computations. Then the math explains a testable quantum aspect of nature from this, so we can say that, thanks to (Everett-like) formulation of QM, nature confirms the mechanist theory of mind. 

Bruno

 John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Nov 2019, at 15:49, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 8:14 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Then what one and only one city do "you" personally feel to be in?

 

> In the third person view on the first person view, you can say [...]

What about the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about the third person view of the first person view of the third person view of the first person view? And what about….

Intuitively, that is rather simple, although a long nesting of such will be as hard as a nesting of quantifiers in logic.

Technically you can treat this by working in the polymodal logic G, where you can define [1]p by [0]p & p, with [0] being Gödel’s arithmetical predicate of provability. The first person view of the third person view of the first person view is given by [1][0][1]p, which becomes  [0]{[0]([0]p & p) & ([0]p & p)} & {[0]([0]p & p) & ([0]p & p)}.

>> If you can not clearly answer that question,

> The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will [...]  

 

By casually throwing in the personal pronoun "I" in a thought experiment that contains a "I" duplicating machine you have already demonstrated you are unable to clearly answer the question.  

You have claim this without ever saying what is unclear, except that you missed the distinction in the question, which is strange because in other context you show to understand it. 

> [...] feel to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow.

Forget prediction!! Even AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what city did you turn out to see?" and the reason you can't answer it is because it contains the personal pronoun "you"; and if personal pronoun duplicating machines are involved that means it is not a question at all, it's just gibberish with a question mark at the end.  

If you can't even clearly say what happened yesterday then you can't have had been expected to make a clear prediction on the day before yesterday about what would happen the next day.

See my previous answer, just sent some minutes ago.

Bruno

 John K Clark 

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[Bruno Marchal]

But many physicists who claim that there is only information usually think about quantum information, and they takes this (physical) notion for granted. It is still a form of materialism, as it assumes some quantum formalism, instead of deriving it from arithmetic (or from any universal machinery) as it should.

But if all is matter, then there cannot be Many Worlds - or Many "You”s.

I don’t know what is matter, nor what is a “world”. That is why I work on this.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Nov 2019, at 12:45, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 8:18 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 10 Nov 2019, at 22:24, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 7 Nov 2019, at 22:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:53 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

ISTM that creates problem for defining a point where one of the probabilities becomes actualized.  MWI tries to avoid this by supposing that all probabilities are "actualized" in the sense of becoming orthogonal subspaces.  There are some problems with this too, but I see the attraction.

You can always find problems with any approach. What I particularly dislike about MW advocates (like Sean Carroll) is that they are dishonest about the number of assumptions they have to make to get the SWE to "fly". Particularly over the preferred basis problem and Born rule. Zurek comes closer, and he effectively dismisses the "other branches" as a convenient fiction. If these other branches play no effective role in explaining our experience, then why have them there?

How could some terms in a wave expansion disappear without assuming some non unitary collapse of some sort?

I did not say that they disappeared: merely that they do not play any role in explaining our experience.

Then you agree with the, or some, form of the Many-Histories/World theory.

If you can point to any such role, then fine. But I doubt that you can do this.

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

That is not scientific realism -- that is metaphysical mysticism.

Hmm… You *can* say that, but then you need to assess that your invocation of physical brain is such metaphysical mysticism. The point is that this version of metaphysical mysticism is incompatible with the mechanist assumption.

 

There is no preferred basis, only personal basis to be able to interact locally in between us.

Again you appear to ignore the primary role of science is in explaining our experience. In our experience, there most certainly is a preferred basis -- the world around us has not dissolved into the "mush" that Schroedinger feared so much. If there is only a "personal basis", explain to me why your personal basis does not include superpositions of live and dead cats.

For exactly the same reason that when I am duplicated in Washington and Moscow, I don’t feel personally to be in both cities at once.

So you are in the Washington/Moscow basis -- not the( W+/- M) basis. That is a preferred basis.

The linearity of the evolution of the wave + the linearity of the tensor product entails that if a robot observe a cat in the state a + d, and this with a ad-measuring device, he ends up into a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is alive, and a robot observing the evolution of a cat which is dead.

That is exactly the definition of a preferred basis -- which you appear to want to deny even exists.

Once we have a body, evolution has chosen the “preferred base”, but it does not play a fundamental role in the fundamental equation.

Evolution has precisely nothing to do with it. The preferred basis is determined by quantum Darwinism

You can’t invoke quantum mechanics when using Mechanism, unless you explain why the quantum formalism emerges from the statistics on all computations (realised in arithmetic) seen from inside (a notion handled by the self-referential logic, but some thought experience can give the main ideas without delving too much in the provability logics).

acting on the normal physical interactions between quantum objects. Being human or sentient is totally irrelevant.. The preferred basis plays a fundamental role in the explanation of the world as we perceive it -- we do not directly perceive Hilbert space. And explaining our experience is the aim of science -- other things fall into the realm of metaphysics, which is not science.

Then you should not invoke your ontological commitment in a physical universe that you present as irreducible. You contradict yourself here.

Bruno

Bruce

We need some base to have a perspective, like in Mechanist philosophy of mind we need some universal machinery to be able to talk on all of them.

Bruno

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[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 5:42:23 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 Nov 2019, at 10:58, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

If reality is pure "information" (as a lot of physicists today seem to believe, and that belief is required for Many Worlds), than copying (branching) is free.

But many physicists who claim that there is only information usually think about quantum information, and they takes this (physical) notion for granted. It is still a form of materialism, as it assumes some quantum formalism, instead of deriving it from arithmetic (or from any universal machinery) as it should.

Bruno

Basically "quantum formalism" [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/ ] is just a lot of goofing around with complex numbers instead of real numbers. It's still numbers.

And that "they [physicists] takes this (physical) notion for granted" doesn't seem right, as you watch many of them in the media talk.

@philipthrift

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 10:48 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 11 Nov 2019, at 12:45, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 8:18 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

That is not scientific realism -- that is metaphysical mysticism.

Hmm… You *can* say that, but then you need to assess that your invocation of physical brain is such metaphysical mysticism. The point is that this version of metaphysical mysticism is incompatible with the mechanist assumption.

It is not a metaphysical to believe in the existence of a physical brain underlying our conscious minds -- it is the result of solid scientific evidence. If it is incompatible with the mechanist assumption, then that is because the mechanist assumption is useless rubbish.

Evolution has precisely nothing to do with it. The preferred basis is determined by quantum Darwinism

You can’t invoke quantum mechanics when using Mechanism, unless you explain why the quantum formalism emerges from the statistics on all computations (realised in arithmetic) seen from inside (a notion handled by the self-referential logic, but some thought experience can give the main ideas without delving too much in the provability logics).

I can invoke quantum mechanics when doing physics. The trouble with your rubric "the quantum formalism emerges from the statistics on all computations seen from the inside..." is that is precisely meaningless. You have never given any indication of what "The statistics on all computations" might mean. How do you select "all computations", and what "statistics" do you use on them? And what might that give you, if anything?

Your grand promises have never actually delivered anything, Bruno. You seem to think that you can lay down the law about quantum mechanics, but you have no idea how to get even the Schroedinger equation from your "statistics over computations". Until you can actually produce something that even vaguely approaches an account of the physical world we see around us, you can be safely ignored. 

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

Something close:

The universal path integral supports a quantum theory of the universe in which the world that we see around us arises out of the interference between all computable structures.

The universal path integral

Seth Lloyd, Olaf Dreyer

(Submitted on 12 Feb 2013)

Path integrals represent a powerful route to quantization: they calculate probabilities by summing over classical configurations of variables such as fields, assigning each configuration a phase equal to the action of that configuration. This paper defines a universal path integral, which sums over all computable structures. This path integral contains as sub-integrals all possible computable path integrals, including those of field theory, the standard model of elementary particles, discrete models of quantum gravity, string theory, etc. The universal path integral possesses a well-defined measure that guarantees its finiteness, together with a method for extracting probabilities for observable quantities. The universal path integral supports a quantum theory of the universe in which the world that we see around us arises out of the interference between all computable structures.

Comments:	10 pages, plain TeX
Subjects:	Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Cite as:	arXiv:1302.2850 [quant-ph]
	(or arXiv:1302.2850v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 4 Dec 2019, at 23:43, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 10:48 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 11 Nov 2019, at 12:45, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 8:18 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

That is the whole point of realism. To believe in things despite we can not access to them. The belief that reality is bigger than the reality we can personally observe.

That is not scientific realism -- that is metaphysical mysticism.

Hmm… You *can* say that, but then you need to assess that your invocation of physical brain is such metaphysical mysticism. The point is that this version of metaphysical mysticism is incompatible with the mechanist assumption.

It is not a metaphysical to believe in the existence of a physical brain underlying our conscious minds -- it is the result of solid scientific evidence.

I agree, especially if you define the brain by some equivalence class of some number relation, like mechanism enforces us to do. And that is indeed con firmed by Quantum mechanics in the many worlds formulation (where we accept the existence of macroscopic superposition).

If it is incompatible with the mechanist assumption, then that is because the mechanist assumption is useless rubbish.

No, it is a consequence of the Mechanist assumption, unless you postulate that a brain is made of irreducible physical elements (energy, matter, space-time, etc.).

Evolution has precisely nothing to do with it. The preferred basis is determined by quantum Darwinism

You can’t invoke quantum mechanics when using Mechanism, unless you explain why the quantum formalism emerges from the statistics on all computations (realised in arithmetic) seen from inside (a notion handled by the self-referential logic, but some thought experience can give the main ideas without delving too much in the provability logics).

I can invoke quantum mechanics when doing physics. The trouble with your rubric "the quantum formalism emerges from the statistics on all computations seen from the inside..." is that is precisely meaningless. You have never given any indication of what "The statistics on all computations" might mean. How do you select "all computations", and what "statistics" do you use on them? And what might that give you, if anything?

All computations exists provably, with the same relative statistics in all universal machineries (Turing complete set, Turing universal theories, etc.). The precise Turing complete formalism is irrelevant. All universal machineries gives rise to the same theology (and thus to the same physics, qualia included). Very elementary arithmetic is such a Turing complete formalism and it has to be assumed (up to a Turing-equivalence) if we want to be able to define what is a computation. 

Your grand promises have never actually delivered anything, Bruno.

I predicted the “many world” from this well before I knew anything of Quantum Mechanics (except as a tool in the study of enzyme behaviour at that time). Then it took me 30 years to prove that the physics of all universal machine or number is quantum like. The theory explains consciousness and the appearance of matter, and this in a completely testable way, and well tested up to now. It is the Aristotelian materialism which explains nothing (despite given a good frame to do physics, but not to understand it as our discussion and other many debate illustrate). I did not promise anything. I submit a new formulation of a lasting problem (the mind-body problem) and I found the propositional part of the solution. It explains where the physical appearances come from, and why it divides into a sharable public domain, and a non sharable private domain.

Non mechanism, on the contrary, invoke personal ontological commitment for which there are no evidences at all.

You seem to think that you can lay down the law about quantum mechanics, but you have no idea how to get even the Schroedinger equation from your "statistics over computations”.

That is wrong. I explain exactly how to do it. The mathematics is just complicated, but that does not make it wrong, and what has already been derived is more than what physics has ever explained. Physicists use an implicit mind-brain identity criteria which works very well FAPP, but is inconsistent with Mechanism, and might be consistent with some theory of mind, which is still not there. Physicalism is highly speculative, in metaphysics.

Until you can actually produce something that even vaguely approaches an account of the physical world we see around us, you can be safely ignored. 

You are the one speculating on some ontology without any evidence, and this just to avoid that a machine could be able to think (be conscious). You speculate on some non mechanist theory of mind, and thus on some actual physical infinities, just to get a unique world in which the machine cannot think. You remind me Jacques Arsac who wrote a book to demolish Artificial Intelligence and computationalism. The first sentence is “I am catholic, so I cannot believe that a machine can think”. Your argument seems to proceed in a similar way. That is what the materialist do since more than 1500 years. 

Why not listen to the machine? There are good books on this subject, like Smullyan’s "forever Undecided”, or the more technical books by George Boolos. They contain a chapter on the ([]p & p) mode of self-reference already. It would help you to understand better the technical part of the extraction of physics from arithmetic. This is not done to replace physics by theology, just to make physics coherent with psychology, biology and (platonician) theology.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

Not sure what they mean by computable structure. But that is the kind of physics which get closer and closer to being consistent with mechanism, but they still assumes a physical reality and even some big part of quantum mechanics making this not usable to solve the mind-body problem. It does progress in the tools needed to test Digital Mechanism though.

Bruno

Comments:	10 pages, plain TeX
Subjects:	Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Cite as:	arXiv:1302.2850 [quant-ph]
	(or arXiv:1302.2850v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

@philipthrift

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 6:31 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 >>what did the correct answer to the question asked the day before yesterday in Helsinki turn out to be? What one and only one city did "you" end up seeing yesterday, was it Washington or Moscow? 

> Almost.

Almost my ass, that's all that's going on and it's pretty damn banal. 

> Mechanism predicts [...]

Translation from the original Brunospeak: A very silly theory predicts.

 

> that you will see only one city,

And that very silly theory can not say who that shadowy mysterious person called Mr.You is, nor can it say what the correct answer to a obvious question turned out to be, "what one and only one city did Mr.You end up seeing??". It can't say what the correct answer was EVEN AFTER the "experiment" is long over. And that means it was not an experiment at all, and it also shows that a question mark does not possess magical powers, it shows that no punctuation mark can turn gibberish into a question, not even if is placed at the very end.  

 

> What you cannot predict in Helsinki is the particular city you will feel to end in.

It can not be pre-dicted and it can not be post-dicted either because Bruno Marchal does not know what "it" is, or know what exactly the question was, or know who the hell Mr. You is.

> The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will [...]  

 

By casually throwing in the personal pronoun "I" in a thought experiment that contains a "I" duplicating machine Bruno has already demonstrated that Bruno is unable to clearly ask the question much less answer it.  

> You have claim this without ever saying what is unclear,

WHAT THE HELL?! For over 5 years I have been asking the same question, the most recent time was just a few days ago in the very post you're responding to!  I asked and I quote  "what did the correct answer to the question asked the day before yesterday in Helsinki turn out to be? What one and only one city did "you" end up seeing yesterday, was it Washington or Moscow?".  You claim to have derived all sorts of cosmic significant things from the fact that BEFORE the event it can not be predicted what some mysterious person named Mr. You will see, but EVEN AFTER the event nobody knows anything more than what was known BEFORE the event. So the outcome of the "experiment"  has produced precisely ZERO bits of new information because everybody already know the man who saw Moscow would become the Moscow Man and the man who say Washington would become the Washington Man.

> > [...] feel to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow.

Forget prediction!! EVEN AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what one and only one city did you turn out to see, Washington or Moscow?" and the reason you can't answer it is because it contains the personal pronoun "you"; and if personal pronoun duplicating machines are involved that means it is not a question at all, it's just gibberish with a question mark at the end.  

 

If you can't even clearly say what happened yesterday then you can't have had been expected to make a clear prediction on the day before yesterday about what would happen the next day.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 5 Dec 2019, at 18:30, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 6:31 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 >>what did the correct answer to the question asked the day before yesterday in Helsinki turn out to be? What one and only one city did "you" end up seeing yesterday, was it Washington or Moscow? 

> Almost.

Almost my ass, that's all that's going on and it's pretty damn banal. 

> Mechanism predicts [...]

Translation from the original Brunospeak: A very silly theory predicts.

 

> that you will see only one city,

And that very silly theory can not say who that shadowy mysterious person called Mr.You is,

The mechanist hypothesis assures that both copy have the right to be qualified as you.

nor can it say what the correct answer to a obvious question turned out to be, "what one and only one city did Mr.You end up seeing??”

Indeed. That is the point. That is the first person indeterminacy, that you are using each time you defend Everett. But with Mechanism, you have to derive the phenomenological collapse *and* the wave itself. Or you are using a magical conception of matter, having the magical ability to make something real or more real. Your use of matter is similar to the pseudo-explanation “God did it”.

. It can't say what the correct answer was EVEN AFTER the "experiment" is long over.

That is where you forget to put yourself in the shoes of the guy making the experience. After the experiment, it is easy to understand that both know very well the answer, despite having been unable to predict it, for simple logical reason.

And that means it was not an experiment at all,

It is both an experiment, and an experience. Once we distinguish 1p and 3p modes, that distinction is of course crucial.

and it also shows that a question mark does not possess magical powers, it shows that no punctuation mark can turn gibberish into a question, not even if is placed at the very end.  

 

> What you cannot predict in Helsinki is the particular city you will feel to end in.

It can not be pre-dicted and it can not be post-dicted either because Bruno Marchal does not know what "it" is, or know what exactly the question was, or know who the hell Mr. You is.

> The clear answer is the prediction I have made in Helsinki: with certainty, I will [...]  

 
By casually throwing in the personal pronoun "I" in a thought experiment that contains a "I" duplicating machine Bruno has already demonstrated that Bruno is unable to clearly ask the question much less answer it.  

> You have claim this without ever saying what is unclear,

WHAT THE HELL?! For over 5 years I have been asking the same question, the most recent time was just a few days ago in the very post you're responding to!  I asked and I quote  "what did the correct answer to the question asked the day before yesterday in Helsinki turn out to be? What one and only one city did "you" end up seeing yesterday, was it Washington or Moscow?".  You claim to have derived all sorts of cosmic significant things from the fact that BEFORE the event it can not be predicted what some mysterious person named Mr. You will see, but EVEN AFTER the event nobody knows anything more than what was known BEFORE the event. 

In the 3p description, you are correct, but the question is about your 1p experience.

Let us iterate it ten times, starting like always in Helsinki, where the question is asked before the experience, of course.

We get the 2^10 first person histories. Imagine that there is no first person indeterminacy. That would mean you can predict your future experience in Helsinki; Imagine that you predict 

WMWWWWMMWM

Now, the question is about the personal experience, so we have to ask all copies if they agree, and a good answer is when they all agree. So here, clearly (2^10 - 1) copies disagrees.

Yet, if the guy say in Helsinki “I don’t know, except that it will be a sequence of “W” and “M”, then every copies get the confirmation. If they work together, they can verify that they have been distributed following the normal distribution exactly, and can use this to predict P = 1/2 for the next experience.

So the outcome of the "experiment"  has produced precisely ZERO bits of new information because everybody already know the man who saw Moscow would become the Moscow Man and the man who say Washington would become the Washington Man.

But that is tautological. After the experience, each copy get one bit of information. The fact that this is not a verifiable 3p bit of information is rather welcome, as it illustrated the non justifiability of the personal individuality, which is so well illustrate by this.

You ask for a 3p answer, like if someone was claiming to have found a 3p indeterminacy. But that is why I call it 1p-indeterminacy, to avoid this mistake.

> > [...] feel to be in only one city, but I cannot predict which one among Washington and Moscow.

Forget prediction!! EVEN AFTER the experiment is long over you STILL can not answer the question "what one and only one city did you turn out to see, Washington or Moscow?”

Nobody can answer this, except the copies, which are the one you need to ask to get their personal result, which is all what the predication was about. Just put your shoes at their places. You are just “eliminating” the 1p experience without saying, apparently. 

Bruno

and the reason you can't answer it is because it contains the personal pronoun "you"; and if personal pronoun duplicating machines are involved that means it is not a question at all, it's just gibberish with a question mark at the end.  

 

If you can't even clearly say what happened yesterday then you can't have had been expected to make a clear prediction on the day before yesterday about what would happen the next day.

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 8:43 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> that very silly theory can not say who that shadowy mysterious person called Mr.You is,

> The mechanist hypothesis assures that both copy have the right to be qualified as you.

So yesterday before the duplication when there was only one it would be idiotic to ask which one of the one will see Moscow!

 

>> nor can it say what the correct answer to a obvious question turned out to be, "what one and only one city did Mr.You end up seeing??”

> Indeed. That is the point. That is the first person indeterminacy,

I agree that is the point, and that's exactly why first person indeterminacy is complete gibberish,  as rational a concept as asking " How many blitzphits will a klogknee have tomorrow?"

> that you are using each time you defend Everett.

Yes, with Everett if you ask me which version of me will be the man that sees the coin come up heads when the coin is tossed tomorrow I will say it will be the version of me that sees heads. And yes the answer is banal, but then it was a banal question.  

>> It can't say what the correct answer was EVEN AFTER the "experiment" is long over.

> That is where you forget to put yourself in the shoes of the guy making the experience.

It's physically impossible to put myself in the shoes of the guys having the experiences because 4 feet are involved and I only have 2, there are 2 guys having A first person experience.

> After the experiment, it is easy to understand that both know very well the answer,

Forget the answer, both before and after the "experiment" nobody even knew what the hell the question was!

>> So the outcome of the "experiment"  has produced precisely ZERO bits of new information because everybody already know the man who saw Moscow would become the Moscow Man and the man who say Washington would become the Washington Man.

> But that is tautological.

DUH, I KNOW! But it's your scenario not mine, something that is not an experiment and something that contains very little thought. 

> After the experience, each copy get one bit of information.

Before the experience everybody and everything already knew that the man who saw Moscow would be the Moscow Man and the man who saw Washington would become the Washington Man, so after the experience everybody received precisely ZERO bits of new information.

> Your use of matter is similar to the pseudo-explanation “God did it”.

And that is my cue to say goodnight because i know from experience you never say anything of interest after you invoke that word.

John K Clark

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 7 Dec 2019, at 18:56, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 8:43 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> that very silly theory can not say who that shadowy mysterious person called Mr.You is,

> The mechanist hypothesis assures that both copy have the right to be qualified as you.

So yesterday before the duplication when there was only one it would be idiotic to ask which one of the one will see Moscow!

That does not follow, given that the question is on the first person experience, and the Helsinki guy know that he will survive (as he believes in Mechanism and we assume mechanism to be correct), he know that whoever he will be, he will only been able to see one city, and so he know, in Helsinki, that he cannot have any certainty if he will live personally the experience “I see M” or the experience “I see W”.

 

>> nor can it say what the correct answer to a obvious question turned out to be, "what one and only one city did Mr.You end up seeing??”

> Indeed. That is the point. That is the first person indeterminacy,

I agree that is the point, and that's exactly why first person indeterminacy is complete gibberish,  

Only because you forget that the mechanist believes that he will survive the duplication, and that in all accessible situation, he will live a unique singular experience.

as rational a concept as asking " How many blitzphits will a klogknee have tomorrow?"

> that you are using each time you defend Everett.

Yes, with Everett if you ask me which version of me will be the man that sees the coin come up heads when the coin is tossed tomorrow I will say it will be the version of me that sees heads. And yes the answer is banal, but then it was a banal question.  

That makes my point.

>> It can't say what the correct answer was EVEN AFTER the "experiment" is long over.

> That is where you forget to put yourself in the shoes of the guy making the experience.

It's physically impossible to put myself in the shoes of the guys having the experiences because 4 feet are involved and I only have 2, there are 2 guys having A first person experience.

In the 3p description. But that is not what is asked.

> After the experiment, it is easy to understand that both know very well the answer,

Forget the answer, both before and after the "experiment" nobody even knew what the hell the question was!

The question was “where do you expect to survive”. The sewer is plain, simple and banal: I expect to find myself feeling having arrived in Moscow, or in Washington, and never in both.  And both copies can assess that fact, which would not be the case if he claim that he would have lived both. As you say, two feet cannot get four shoes, indeed. That’s the point.

>> So the outcome of the "experiment"  has produced precisely ZERO bits of new information because everybody already know the man who saw Moscow would become the Moscow Man and the man who say Washington would become the Washington Man.

> But that is tautological.

DUH, I KNOW! But it's your scenario not mine,

The point is not on the scenario, but on the question.

something that is not an experiment and something that contains very little thought. 

> After the experience, each copy get one bit of information.

Before the experience everybody and everything already knew that the man who saw Moscow would be the Moscow Man and the man who saw Washington would become the Washington Man,

Indeed. And the guy expect a probability one for “drinking a cup of coffee in a unique city”.

so after the experience everybody received precisely ZERO bits of new information.

In the 3p description, but obviously not in each 1p description of the result. The W guy will say, NOW I see that I see W, but I could not have guess that in Helsinki, and similarly for the M guy. So, FROM THEIR FIRST PERSON VIEW,  they did get one bit of information.

You just keep moving from what is asked, which concerns the 1p many resulting views after the self duplication/multiplication, to the third person description of the experience, which is, tautologically, the description of the protocol of the experience.

It is easy to understand that in the iterated self-duplication experience, not only the majority of copies will assess to be unable to make definite prediction, but the majority will assess the P(W) = 1/2 prediction correctly.

Bruno

> Your use of matter is similar to the pseudo-explanation “God did it”.

And that is my cue to say goodnight because i know from experience you never say anything of interest after you invoke that word.

John K Clark

 

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:20 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> the question is on the first person experience,

For the 998th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a first person experience duplicating machine is invoked there is no such thing as THE first person experience; so if the "question" is about THE first person then the "question" is about absolutely positively nothing.

 

> he cannot have any certainty if he will live personally the experience “I see M” or the experience “I see W”.

That's 4 personal pronouns with no referent in just 21 words, and that rate is not unusual, such flagrant use of personal pronouns is typical in Bruno's entire thought "experiment" even though the entire purpose of the thing is to discover new stuff about personal identity and forms the foundation of the entire "proof". And yet you ask with a straight face why I stopped reading it!

Yes, with Everett if you ask me which version of me will be the man that sees the coin come up heads when the coin is tossed tomorrow I will say it will be the version of me that sees heads. And yes the answer is banal, but then it was a banal question.  

> That makes my point.

Then we agree, when your conclusions are not dead wrong they are banal.

It's physically impossible to put myself in the shoes of the guys having the experiences because 4 feet are involved and I only have 2, there are 2 guys having A first person experience.

 

> In the 3p description. But that is not what is asked.

It's impossible to say if that's true or not because nobody knows what question was asked, certainly Bruno doesn't.

 

> The question was “where do you expect to survive”.

And my question is who exactly is the referent to the personal pronoun "you" in the above? If the referent is the man that is experiencing H right now on December 9 then obviously even without duplicating machines we can say with absolute certainty "you" will not survive tomorrow because on December 10 nobody will be experiencing H on December 9. But if we take the everyday meaning of the personal pronoun, somebody who remembers being the H man of December 9, then "you" will survive in December 10. And if a you duplicating machine is thrown into the mix then the "you" as used in the above is ambiguous and any question involving it that demands a single answer is ridiculous.  

 

> The sewer is plain, simple and banal: I expect to [...]

And that word "expect" is irrelevant. Who knows what Mr.You expects to happen, perhaps Mr.You expects to end up in Santa Claus's workshop, I neither know or care. I'm interested in what will happen not what somebody expects to happen, and basing personal identity on expectations of the future is nuts.

> FROM THEIR FIRST PERSON VIEW,  they did get one bit of information.

And what was that one bit of information that the W Man got?
That he ended up seeing W.
And what is the referent to the personal pronoun "he" in the above?
"He" refers to the W Man.
And what is the W man?
The man who sees W.
And who is the man who sees W?
The W man.
And yesterday did the H man already know that all tautologies are true?
Yes.

So how many new bits of information were learned from this "experiment?
Zero bits.
Are you sure?
Yes, I counted them twice.

> the description of the protocol [...]

Wow protocol, that sounds sooo oficial and scientific, but the reality is to call it amateurish would be to unfairly categorize amateurs.

> You just keep moving from what is asked, which concerns the 1p [...]

 

For the 999th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a 1p duplicating machine is involved there is no such thing THE 1p, there is only A 1p. The fact is I have no idea what exactly is asked and you know even less about it than I do.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 9 Dec 2019, at 18:58, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:20 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> the question is on the first person experience,

For the 998th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a first person experience duplicating machine is invoked there is no such thing as THE first person experience;

There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience. In Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because you believe in Mechanism, say), and you know with certainty that you will bring a cup of coffee, because this has been promised by both the Washingtonians and the Moscowians. But for that same reason, you know in Helsinki that both copies will have incompatible first person experience, as none will feel to drink Russian and American coffee simultaneously. So in H, you know that (always assuming Mechanism of course) whatever happens, you will feel to find yourself in one city, and you know that it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person diary (the one embarked in the annihilation-copy box).

so if the "question" is about THE first person then the "question" is about absolutely positively nothing.

Then you admit that you die in that experience, but that contradicts Mechanism.

 

> he cannot have any certainty if he will live personally the experience “I see M” or the experience “I see W”.

That's 4 personal pronouns with no referent in just 21 words,

We did agree on the reference of the pronouns. The first “he” is the guy, when unique, in Helsinki. The second “he” refers to each copies’ first person experience accessible from H in this setting. We agree that in the 3p description, the guy finds himself in both places (indeed, that is part of the protocol). We did agree that each first person experience is felt as a well definite experience of feeling to be in a well determined city. It can only be W or M.

Just do the thought experience. 

Imagine that in H, the guy write “W and M”. Then both copies refute the prediction, given that one lives “W but not M” and the other lives “M but not W”.

Imagine that in H, the guy write “W”. Then the W guy get his prediction confirmed, but the guy in M refutes the prediction, and that makes the prediction false. (We agreed that both copies are digne successor of the guy in H, by Mechanism). It is the same if the guy predicts “M”.

Imagine that the guy in H write “W or M”. Then both copies get the prediction confirms. Success!.

It is as simple and banal as that. Your semantical trick reminds me the GOP republicans, so brilliant in evading the questions they dislike. 

and that rate is not unusual, such flagrant use of personal pronouns is typical in Bruno's entire thought "experiment" even though the entire purpose of the thing is to discover new stuff about personal identity and forms the foundation of the entire "proof". And yet you ask with a straight face why I stopped reading it!

Yes, with Everett if you ask me which version of me will be the man that sees the coin come up heads when the coin is tossed tomorrow I will say it will be the version of me that sees heads. And yes the answer is banal, but then it was a banal question.  

> That makes my point.

Then we agree, when your conclusions are not dead wrong they are banal.

You have often agreed. So now, move to step 4, perhaps. The banality of a result does not make it wrong, and it is just a passage toward something more interesting: the necessity to derive physics from arithmetic when we assume computationalism (aka indexical digital mechanism).

It's physically impossible to put myself in the shoes of the guys having the experiences because 4 feet are involved and I only have 2, there are 2 guys having A first person experience.

 

> In the 3p description. But that is not what is asked.

It's impossible to say if that's true or not because nobody knows what question was asked, certainly Bruno doesn’t.

The question is simple, and most people get the answer by themselves when asked (and when they have a bit of training in reasoning with mechanism). The question is asked to any candidate to a duplication, or a superposition, about what they expect to live. There is no ambiguity about who is who. The only difficulty is that in the duplication experience, we need to be clear is the question is about *THE* possible first experience that the candidate will live just after having push the button. We know that this experience has to be “I am in once city right now and it is W”, or “ am in once city right now and it is M”.

 

> The question was “where do you expect to survive”.

And my question is who exactly is the referent to the personal pronoun "you" in the above?

The guy in Helsinki, before the experience.

If the referent is the man that is experiencing H right now on December 9 then obviously even without duplicating machines we can say with absolute certainty "you" will not survive tomorrow because on December 10 nobody will be experiencing H on December 9.

Nobody has ever considered such useless identity criterion.

But if we take the everyday meaning of the personal pronoun, somebody who remembers being the H man of December 9, then "you" will survive in December 10.

That’s far better.

And if a you duplicating machine is thrown into the mix then the "you" as used in the above is ambiguous

No it is not. We have agreed that both copies have the right identity. It is just that the prediction is impossible to make. 

and any question involving it that demands a single answer is ridiculous.  

That is contradicted by all copies. If they predicted W or M, they both get the confirmation, and that is not the case with other prediction. If you prefer “ambiguous” to “not determined”, there is no problem. The followup of the reasoning will make physics into an ambiguity calculus”. That does not touch the substance of the reasoning, just the vocabulary.

 

> The sewer is plain, simple and banal: I expect to [...]

And that word "expect" is irrelevant. Who knows what Mr.You expects to happen, perhaps Mr.You expects to end up in Santa Claus's workshop, I neither know or care. I'm interested in what will happen not what somebody expects to happen, and basing personal identity on expectations of the future is nuts.

We have never based “personal identity” of expectation of the future. We do the exact contrary: we compute the expectation of the future based on a machine which respect our identity, by copying us at the relevant substitution level.

> FROM THEIR FIRST PERSON VIEW,  they did get one bit of information.

And what was that one bit of information that the W Man got?
That he ended up seeing W.

Yes, he, who remember that he was in Helsinki before pushing the button. He looks at his diary and if the prediction was “W or M”, he write success, and if it was anything else, he write “non-success”.

And what is the referent to the personal pronoun "he" in the above?
"He" refers to the W Man.

Who is also the H-man, like the M-man is a&lso the H-man, despite the M-man &nd the W-man have diverging incompatible experience, which explains the indetermination predicted in H.

And what is the W man?
The man who sees W.
And who is the man who sees W?
The W man.
And yesterday did the H man already know that all tautologies are true?
Yes.

So how many new bits of information were learned from this "experiment?
Zero bits.

Then you deny both personal experience of the M and W people. Which makes my point. You follow the 1500 years of tradition to put the mind-)body problem under the rug. But you illustrate your inconsistency by using it in Everett QM.

Bruno

Are you sure?
Yes, I counted them twice.

> the description of the protocol [...]

Wow protocol, that sounds sooo oficial and scientific, but the reality is to call it amateurish would be to unfairly categorize amateurs.

> You just keep moving from what is asked, which concerns the 1p [...]

 

For the 999th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a 1p duplicating machine is involved there is no such thing THE 1p, there is only A 1p. The fact is I have no idea what exactly is asked and you know even less about it than I do.

John K Clark

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[Brent Meeker]

On 12/10/2019 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience.
> In Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because you believe in
> Mechanism, say), and you know with certainty that you will bring a cup
> of coffee, because this has been promised by both the Washingtonians
> and the Moscowians. But for that same reason, you know in Helsinki
> that both copies will have incompatible first person experience, as
> none will feel to drink Russian and American coffee simultaneously. So
> in H, you know that (always assuming Mechanism of course) whatever
> happens, you will feel to find yourself in one city, and you know that
> it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person
> diary (the one embarked in the annihilation-copy box).

Aside from the silly back and forth over pronouns, I wonder how the
copies in Moscow and Washington can believe they were the man in
Helsinki?  Of course the easy answer is they remember being the man in
Helsinki.  But given this copying ability, they could have been given
false memories of being in Helsinki, and in fact they cannot be made of
the same atoms as the Helsinki man.  So maybe there was no Helsinki man
and their "memories" are just fictions.  Are they then conscious of
things that never happened?

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Dec 2019, at 21:50, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/2019 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience. In Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because you believe in Mechanism, say), and you know with certainty that you will bring a cup of coffee, because this has been promised by both the Washingtonians and the Moscowians. But for that same reason, you know in Helsinki that both copies will have incompatible first person experience, as none will feel to drink Russian and American coffee simultaneously. So in H, you know that (always assuming Mechanism of course) whatever happens, you will feel to find yourself in one city, and you know that it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person diary (the one embarked in the annihilation-copy box).
>
> Aside from the silly back and forth over pronouns,

What is silly? The only silly things appears when 1p and 3p views are obliterated. I am not sure what you are alluding too.

> I wonder how the copies in Moscow and Washington can believe they were the man in Helsinki? Of course the easy answer is they remember being the man in Helsinki.

That is the easy and correct answer indeed, when of course we assume Mechanism, and all the default hypothesis included in the protocol of the experience.

> But given this copying ability, they could have been given false memories of being in Helsinki,

Yes, that is why your answer above is correct, and explain why they believe correctly they were the Helsinki guy. No one claimed that they knew for sure to have been the H-guy, although we could decide that the identity is only in that memory,, in which case they remain correct. With mechanism, we know that the truth is only in the number relation, and the memories are always interpretation.

> and in fact they cannot be made of the same atoms as the Helsinki man.

But of course, that is entirely irrelevant when we assume Digital Mechanism.

> So maybe there was no Helsinki man and their "memories" are just fictions. Are they then conscious of things that never happened?

If you can build the memories of some happening, it happened from the first person view related to those memories. Beliefs come from such memories, and what you are doing here is just a remind of the dream argument which shows that no experiences nor memories can prove anything about what is real or not. But we can make theories, and test them, locally. As I said often, the only certainty is consciousness here and now, all the rest is “dreamable", and as such, subject to caution when taken as evidence of a reality.

Bruno



>
> Brent

>
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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 8:59 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> For the 998th time, given that in Bruno's scenario a first person experience duplicating machine is invoked there is no such thing as THE first person experience;

> There is. It is what you can expect to feel when doing the experience.

 Bruno Marchal would be utterly lost without his best friend, good old Mr.You.

 

> In Helsinki, you believe that you will survive (because [...]

In Helsinki John Clark can make a educated guess about what will happen to John Clark tomorrow, but no living thing has a clue what Mr.You's fate will be because thanks to Bruno's "You Duplicating Machine" nobody has a clue who Mr.You is.

> you know that it is impossible in Helsinki to write its name in the first person [...]

In a world that contains a "THE Duplicating Machine" there is no such thing as "THE first person"

 

> The first “he” is the guy, when unique, in Helsinki.

If that's what it means then "he" will not survive because tomorrow nobody will be unique in Helsinki because tomorrow nobody will be in Helsinki. That doesn't contradict Mechanism it just shows that you've made yet another goofy definition and I'm sure it won't be your last.

 

> The second “he” refers to each copies’ first person experience accessible

And now in addition to goofiness we have ambiguity, the same personal pronoun referring to two different people.

 

> So now, move to step 4

You must be joking!

>> It's impossible to say if that's true or not because nobody knows what question was asked, certainly Bruno doesn’t.

> The question is simple,

The question is not simple, the question is retarded.

> and most people get the answer by themselves

Most people, including a certain Mr.Marchal, just assumes that articles "the" and "a" and common personal pronouns can keep on being used in exactly the same way as they always have been even in the presence of something that has never existed before like a "Matter Duplicating Machine", a "People Duplicating Machine", a "First Person View Duplicating Machine", a "THE Duplicating Machine". And a few years ago John Clark would have just assumed that a professional logician would know better than to make the same sort of silly mistake that most people make, but John Clark's assumption turned out to be wrong.

>> If the referent is the man that is experiencing H right now on December 9 then obviously even without duplicating machines we can say with absolute certainty "you" will not survive tomorrow because on December 10 nobody will be experiencing H on December 9.

> Nobody has ever considered such useless identity criterion.

 WHAT?! You said just a few lines before that "The first “he” is the guy, when unique, in Helsinki."!

 >> But if we take the everyday meaning of the personal pronoun, somebody who remembers being the H man of December 9, then "you" will survive in December 10.

> That’s far better.

Yes, but December 10 is after the duplication so the personal pronoun "he" is now open to more than one meaning, in other words "he" is ambiguous.

>> And if a you duplicating machine is thrown into the mix then the "you" as used in the above is ambiguous

> No it is not. We have agreed that both copies have the right identity.

Sometimes John agrees with Bruno for half a sentence but then in the second half Bruno contradicts the first half. If today both remember being the Helsinki man yesterday and that is when the question was asked, and if today, to nobody's surprise, both answer to the name Mr.You, then yesterday it would be ambiguous to ask about what Mr.You would or would not see on the next day.  If that's not a example of ambiguity what is?

 

> It is just that the prediction is impossible to make. 

If you've found something where the prediction is impossible and the postdiction is impossible too then what you have found is not profound, it's just stupid.

>>> FROM THEIR FIRST PERSON VIEW,  they did get one bit of information.

 

>>  And what was that one bit of information that the W Man got?

That he ended up seeing W.

> Yes,

So the "experiment" provided zero bits of new information because yesterday before the "experiment" everybody already knew that would happen, even Mr.You (whoever that is) knew it because everybody knows that tautologies are always true. 

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

You keep confusing the indexical third person self, that in my thesis is defined with the second recursion theorem, and the  indexical first person self, which know very well who he is, and, once he accept that he survives a duplication, know that he survives in both places from a third person view, but only in one non ambiguous place (Washington OR Moscow) from any first person reality where surviving met the mechanist sense of surviving such an experience.

You put the indeterminacy into a tautology by ignoring the diverging content of the 1p experience of the copies. You talk like if the guy could feel to be in the two places at once, which is pure nonsense.

When you agree that the guy in M does not feel to be the guy in W, and vice versa, you need to just take into account that in H, he is unable to write down in its diary (taken with him in the duplication experience) the particular outcome he can expect, except using an “or” (I will feel myself to be in W, or in M, but I cannot say which for now). That will be confirmed by both, and that makes the point, if we don’t change the definition, of course.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[Philip Thrift]

I've realized that (in panpsychist/materialist view at least) there are no first-persons, second-persons, third-persons, fourth-persons, etc. That's all philosophical nonsense. Just selves (persons) in the midst of everything.

@philipthrift

[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 7:06 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> the  indexical first person self, which know very well who he is,

Yes indeed, Mr.He knows who he is, Mr.He knows he is the man who saw W and also knows that the man who sees W is the W man, and both those things could be predicted long ago back in H.

 

> You talk like if the guy could feel to be in the two places at once, which is pure nonsense.

THE guy can't even be at one place at once because the entire concept of "THE guy" becomes pure nonsense in a world that has guy duplicating machines.

 

> in H, he is unable to write down in its diary (taken with him in the duplication experience) the particular outcome he can expect,

Bruno.... I don't know or care what Mr.He expects but I do know one thing, there can not be a "particular outcome" because Mr.He HAS BEEN DUPLICATED! That's what the word "duplicated" means.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

When we assume Digital Mechanism, we are duplicable, and in that setting, a good first approximation of the difference between 3p and 1p is the content of the diary that the candidate (for duplication) take with him in the cut-read-copy box. I don’t see the non-sense you allude too. It helps the intuition about the fact that a machine cannot know which computations (in arithmetic or any model of a first order Turing-complete theory) is running him/her.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Dec 2019, at 19:43, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 7:06 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> the  indexical first person self, which know very well who he is,

Yes indeed, Mr.He knows who he is, Mr.He knows he is the man who saw W and also knows that the man who sees W is the W man, and both those things could be predicted long ago back in H.

But in H, it was still impossible to predict any of the two outcomes lived individually, as both copies confirm.

 

> You talk like if the guy could feel to be in the two places at once, which is pure nonsense.

THE guy can't even be at one place at once because the entire concept of "THE guy" becomes pure nonsense in a world that has guy duplicating machines.

After duplication “the” refer to both guys, obviously. And both knows very well who they are. Both know that they are the H-guy, and that both are the H-gy, but now just put in different contexts, Although both are the H-guy, none of them is the other guy, in the indexical sense of the “you” or “I” we could use when we talk with them. We have already agreed that the personal identity is not a transitive notion. It does not obey to the Leibniz law (and that is confirmed in the mathematical treatment of the 1p and 3p selves).

 

> in H, he is unable to write down in its diary (taken with him in the duplication experience) the particular outcome he can expect,

Bruno.... I don't know or care what Mr.He expects

That is the problem. Because that is all what the question is about.

but I do know one thing, there can not be a "particular outcome" because Mr.He HAS BEEN DUPLICATED! That's what the word "duplicated" means.

That does not make any sense, as you have agreed that the H-guy does not die, and that in both city, both copies FEEL that they live a particular outcome (and given that the question is about the 1p feeling that they can expect, it is more than worse to say “W or M” instead of any other solutions.

Bruno 

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 10:16 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Yes indeed, Mr.He knows who he is, Mr.He knows he is the man who saw W and also knows that the man who sees W is the W man, and both those things could be predicted long ago back in H.

> But in H, it was still impossible to predict any of the two outcomes.

Please explain exactly what those two outcomes turned out to be and please do not use personal pronouns when doing so, instead use the referent those personal pronouns would have had. And if the term "first person perspective" is mentioned please make it clear who's first person perspective is being referred to.

 John K Clark

[Quentin Anciaux]

You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment, imagine you in front of the button, what do you expect after pushing it... 

But I know it's a waste of time, dodging Clark's coming.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it... 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W.  If "you" means the M Man I expect to be experiencing M.  If "you" means the H Man I expect to be experiencing nothing at all because after that button is pushed nobody will be in H. Any other questions?

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man.  And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

Brent

If "you" means the M Man I expect to be experiencing M.  If "you" means the H Man I expect to be experiencing nothing at all because after that button is pushed nobody will be in H. Any other questions?

John K Clark

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 2:35 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man.  And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

But Quentin did say "expect AFTER pushing it". Not BEFORE pushing it. So after pushing the button, H-man is duplicated to both W and M: So the W copy expects Washington, and the M copy expects Moscow.

Bruce

[Quentin Anciaux]

No I mean is in front of the button ready to be pushing it, what does he expect will happen, what does he expect he will see the next moment after pushingit, the question is asked by the Helsinki man to himself... Wilk he vanish from existence ? Will he see m or w ? Will he see m and w ? The question is clear, has been for more than twenty years now, only bad faith has make it go through 2019 again... And will through 2029.

Bruce

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 5:01 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Le mar. 17 déc. 2019 à 04:54, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 2:35 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man.  And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

But Quentin did say "expect AFTER pushing it". Not BEFORE pushing it. So after pushing the button, H-man is duplicated to both W and M: So the W copy expects Washington, and the M copy expects Moscow.

No I mean is in front of the button ready to be pushing it, what does he expect will happen, what does he expect he will see the next moment after pushingit, the question is asked by the Helsinki man to himself... Wilk he vanish from existence ? Will he see m or w ? Will he see m and w ? The question is clear, has been for more than twenty years now, only bad faith has make it go through 2019 again... And will through 2029.

H-man will not see anything after pushing the button -- according to the protocol he will be eliminated. He can have no particular expectations for what his subsequent experiences will be because the probabilities of future experiences are not well defined. The only rational account is that since he is eliminated, two new persons are created, one seeing M and one seeing W. These are new persons -- maybe sharing some memories with H-man, but neither can claim uniquely to BE H-man.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

But each can claim to be H-man.  And each could report what the H-man was thinking just before he pushed the button.  I don't know what JKC thinks he's proving by pretending this question can't be answered.

Brent

Bruce

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 10:35 PM 'Brent Meeker'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

> Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man. 

OK, but the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today. Or at least that's the definition on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, but on other days of the week the definition is the man who REMEMBERS experiencing Helsinki today, and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.  

 

> And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed. "Expecting" is having a thought about the future. 

Right, and John Clark expects that tomorrow nobody will be experiencing Helsinki today. It may seem like John Clark is being overly pedantic but Brent Meeker needs to be that way too if the conversation is about the nature of personal identity and personal identity duplicating machines are involved.

But all this confusion could be totally avoided if people on this list would simply STOP USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS and replace them with their proper noun referent; they don't need to do this all the time, only when personal pronoun duplicating machines are thrown into the hypothetical mix. The very fact that nobody, absolutely positively nobody on this list except for John Clark is able to stop themselves from continuing to use them is clear indication to John Clark that they cannot because personal pronouns are being used to cover up multiple holes in the logical structure of their argument.  

John K Clark  

[Quentin Anciaux]

John Clark is not human and not conscious, as he is unable to ask expectation questions about the next moment of his own live without proper pronouns...  Personnally I can, I have my little voice in my head, and It's thinking it will hit send button in the next few seconds... maybe I'll be duplicated in the process... still I expect to see this computer screen after hitting send.. who knows, I'll be wrong, maybe I'll see the giant spaghetti or vanish from existence.

Quentin

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 7:47 AM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John Clark is not human and [...]

I think your obvious rage and frustration comes from the fact that you are unable to coherently express your views no matter how fast you wave your arms around. 

 

> he is unable to ask expectation questions about the next moment of his own live without proper pronouns...

In my everyday life I have no problem with using personal pronouns, I use them all the time, but in my everyday life I do not have access to one of Bruno's Personal Pronoun Duplicating Machines and most of the time I am not contemplating the nature of personal identity.

John K Clark

[Quentin Anciaux]

So ad I said, you're not conscious... Me in front of a duplicating button or a send email button, i'm as able to talk about my future expectations as I am now, duplication or not change absolutely nothing about that, neither pronouns.

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 11:32 AM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  i'm as able to talk about my future expectations as I am now, duplication or not change absolutely nothing about that,

OK I have no problem with that, I can accept the fact that you are going to be duplicated but that will not change your expectations. And perhaps your expectation is to see Santa Claus's workshop but I really don't care. I don't care about what you expect to happen, I'm interested it what actually turned out to have happened.

 John K Clark

[Quentin Anciaux]

But as I see it, I must be superhuman to be able to do what you can't. So with my superhuman ability, I see four possible outcomes:

A. I'll vanish from existence

B. I'll see washington or I'll see moscow, still feeling to be in one and only one place after pushing the button (even if I'll know intellectually I'll have a doppelganger with the same feeling but in the other city)

C. I'll see washington and moscow feeling to be in both place at once

D. Obiwan Kenobi

Je vais choisir D Jean-Pierre.

Quentin 

 John K Clark

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[Brent Meeker]

On 12/17/2019 3:54 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 10:35 PM 'Brent Meeker'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

> Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man. 

OK, but the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today. Or at least that's the definition on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, but on other days of the week the definition is the man who REMEMBERS experiencing Helsinki today, and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.  

I did use proper nouns.  So what is John Clark's answer to the question what did the Helsinki man expect regarding his future just before he pushed the button?  My guess would be that he expected to experience being in either Moscow or in Washington, just as if H-man were going to be anesthetized and flown to one or the other city.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 12:23 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 >> I can accept the fact that you are going to be duplicated but that will not change your expectations. And perhaps your expectation is to see Santa Claus's workshop but I really don't care. I don't care about what you expect to happen, I'm interested it what actually turned out to have happened.

> But as I see it, I must be superhuman to be able to do what you can't.

Yes, and the superhuman ability that you have and I lack is the ability not to be bothered by logical self contradictions, such as demanding to know what one and only one thing will happen to one thing after one thing becomes two things.

John K Clark

[Quentin Anciaux]

No, that's only the strawman you've invented...

Dodging Clark is in the house...

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 2:32 PM 'Brent Meeker'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>> OK, but the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today. Or at least that's the definition on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, but on other days of the week the definition is the man who REMEMBERS experiencing Helsinki today, and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.  

> I did use proper nouns.  So what is John Clark's answer to the question what did the Helsinki man expect regarding his future just before he pushed the button? 

There are a lot of generic men in Helsinki so John Clark neither knows or cares what a random sample of one of them would expect to happen in that very odd circumstance, but if John Clark were the Helsinki Man then John Clark would expect that John Clark would see both Moscow and Washington.

> My guess would be that he expected to experience being in either Moscow or in Washington,

Some Helsinki men might expect that, and some Helsinki men might expect to see Santa Claus's workshop. Who cares? Some crewmen on Christopher Columbus's ship expected the ship to fall off the edge of the world but I don't care because despite expectations that isn't what turned out to have happened.

 John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Dec 2019, at 04:35, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man. 

Exactly. We rarely ask to the winner of the lottery if he expect to win the lottery. We can at most ask him ig he expected to win the lottery.

And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

Yes, especially that John Clark did agree that the H-guy remains alive through the process. If he meant that he expect nothing, he meant that he dies in the duplication, which means he abandons the Mechanist Assumption. That makes the point. If Indexical Digital Mechanism is correct, the H-guy knows that he will feel to survive in one city, and know that he cannot logically predict which one he (in its 1p-indexical sense) will feel to experience.

Bruno

Brent

If "you" means the M Man I expect to be experiencing M.  If "you" means the H Man I expect to be experiencing nothing at all because after that button is pushed nobody will be in H. Any other questions?

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Dec 2019, at 07:29, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 10:15 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 5:01 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Le mar. 17 déc. 2019 à 04:54, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 2:35 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man.  And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

But Quentin did say "expect AFTER pushing it". Not BEFORE pushing it. So after pushing the button, H-man is duplicated to both W and M: So the W copy expects Washington, and the M copy expects Moscow.

No I mean is in front of the button ready to be pushing it, what does he expect will happen, what does he expect he will see the next moment after pushingit, the question is asked by the Helsinki man to himself... Wilk he vanish from existence ? Will he see m or w ? Will he see m and w ? The question is clear, has been for more than twenty years now, only bad faith has make it go through 2019 again... And will through 2029.

H-man will not see anything after pushing the button -- according to the protocol he will be eliminated. He can have no particular expectations for what his subsequent experiences will be because the probabilities of future experiences are not well defined. The only rational account is that since he is eliminated, two new persons are created, one seeing M and one seeing W. These are new persons -- maybe sharing some memories with H-man, but neither can claim uniquely to BE H-man.

But each can claim to be H-man. 

Given the protocol, and the fact that we assume Digital Mechanism. Each copies are the H-guy. But oc course, not in a connected unique first person experience. The 3p description is symmetrical, but the 1p description get asymmetrical after pushing the button.

And each could report what the H-man was thinking just before he pushed the button.  I don't know what JKC thinks he's proving by pretending this question can't be answered.

It is just bad faith. A bit like Barr, McConnell and other members of the GOP. If you are listening to the Trump impeachment hearings, you can see how far bad faith can develop. It is a mystery for me how a universal machine can ever behave that way. 

Bruno

Brent

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Dec 2019, at 07:01, Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Le mar. 17 déc. 2019 à 04:54, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 2:35 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/16/2019 6:31 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:29 PM Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

> You're so absurd after so many years... Just put your shoes in the experiment,

Who's shoes should I put my feet into, the H Man's the W Man's, or the M Man's?

> imagine you in front of the button,

OK

 

> what do you expect after pushing it.. 

If "you" means the W Man I expect to be experiencing W. 

Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man.  And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed.  "Expecting" is having a thought about the future.  So the question is clear enough.

But Quentin did say "expect AFTER pushing it". Not BEFORE pushing it. So after pushing the button, H-man is duplicated to both W and M: So the W copy expects Washington, and the M copy expects Moscow.

No I mean is in front of the button ready to be pushing it, what does he expect will happen, what does he expect he will see the next moment after pushingit, the question is asked by the Helsinki man to himself... Wilk he vanish from existence ? Will he see m or w ? Will he see m and w ? The question is clear, has been for more than twenty years now, only bad faith has make it go through 2019 again... And will through 2029.

It is a mystery. Camus said that stupidity always persists. That is clearly the case for bad faith. 

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

Then you don’t care about any laws in quantum physics.

Bruno

 John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Dec 2019, at 12:54, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 10:35 PM 'Brent Meeker'  <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

> Expecting what you will experience after pushing the button must refer to thoughts before the button is pushed, so "you" must refer to the Helsinki man. 

OK, but the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today.

That definition has never been adopted by anyone, and is non sensical when we assume mechanism, as mechanism is defined by a bet on surviving a special experience, and with the definition above, no one survives any experience.

Or at least that's the definition on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, but on other days of the week the definition is the man who REMEMBERS experiencing Helsinki today,

That is ambiguous. It is the guy who remember having been the guy in Helsinki, today, tomorrow, and for the rest of his life, by default (i.e. assuming no amnesia or Alzheimer, ...).

and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.

Yet, he can predict, when still in Helsinki (as always since day one), that he will feel to live being in only one city. Both copies confirms that fact. If he was just asked “do you predict that you will feel to be in W and in M, or do you predict that you will feel to be in M or in M, but not in both at once”, the obvious correct (with resect to mechanism) is the first one.

 

 

> And the answer is not "Nothing" because the Helsinki man exists before the button is pushed. "Expecting" is having a thought about the future. 

Right, and John Clark expects that tomorrow nobody will be experiencing Helsinki today.

But tomorrow, both copies will say “I experience only one city”. Both will be unsure of the existence of the doppelganger without some added clues, like a phone call.

Or you assume telepathy.

It may seem like John Clark is being overly pedantic but Brent Meeker needs to be that way too if the conversation is about the nature of personal identity and personal identity duplicating machines are involved.

But all this confusion could be totally avoided if people on this list would simply STOP USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS and replace them with their proper noun referent;

The very existence of those thought experience explains entirely why this is just logically impossible. The first person pronoun is an indexical. 

That will eventually lead to open individualism (the idea that there is only one person, just living unconnected experience).

Personal identity is not the subject of the discussion, as we have adopted the natural mechanist definition: the owner of the personal history memory, or the content of the diary taken during the cut and copies.

In Helsinki, nobody needs to know who you are to ask you “what do you expect?”, and a child can predict that if you expect to survive (mechanism), you can be sure that you will feel to be in once city. Both copies will obviously confirm that prediction.

they don't need to do this all the time, only when personal pronoun duplicating machines are thrown into the hypothetical mix. The very fact that nobody, absolutely positively nobody on this list except for John Clark is able to stop themselves from continuing to use them is clear indication to John Clark that they cannot because personal pronouns are being used to cover up multiple holes in the logical structure of their argument.  

Because the “I” pronoun, lost all its ambiguity if we Ade clear what the question is about. I survive means I will live some experience, and mechanism forbid to live the experience of feeling to be in two places when obtained after a duplication.

Bruno

John K Clark  

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 10:44 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 >> the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today.

 

> That definition has never been adopted by anyone,

You use it in the very post I'm responding to! See the next line!:

> he can predict, when still in Helsinki (as always since day one), that he will [...]

John Clark doesn't think there is any way Bruno Marchal can ever be weaned off of personal pronouns. Is Mr.He the same Mr.He that is "still in Helsinki"? If it is then today Mr.He is experiencing nothing at all because today nobody is "still in Helsinki". But if Mr.He is somebody who remembers being in Helsinki yesterday then today 2 people in 2 different cities fit that description. So yesterday it would be logical to say Mr.He will either experience zero cities or two cities depending on who the hell Mr.He is.

And upon this ridiculous mismash you have built your entire philosophy.

 

> the “I” pronoun, lost all its ambiguity

If that were true Bruno could prove it by simply replacing the personal pronoun "I" with its referent, but John Clark knows that will never happen because then the gaping logical holes in the argument would stand out like a sore thumb. 

> you assume telepathy.

And that bit of silliness is my cue to say goodnight.

 John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/18/2019 7:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.

Yet, he can predict, when still in Helsinki (as always since day one), that he will feel to live being in only one city.

That's where you introduce amibiguities.  "he...when still in Helsinki", i.e. H-man can predict many things.  H-man might predict he will feel being in both cites.  Whether that will be borne out depends on how consciousness works and what "he" refers to in "he will feel".  If it he=whom ever remembers being H-man I think that it is likely true that he will feel being in both cities.  If he=either M-man or W-man, then he will either experience M or experience W.

Both copies confirms that fact. If he was just asked “do you predict that you will feel to be in W and in M, or do you predict that you will feel to be in M or in M, but not in both at once”, the obvious correct (with resect to mechanism) is the first one.

That's far from obvious to me.  It's possible, but the second answer, "...you predict that you will feel to be in M or in M, but not in both at once." seems more likely.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 Dec 2019, at 20:57, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 10:44 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 >> the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today.

 

> That definition has never been adopted by anyone,

You use it in the very post I'm responding to! See the next line!:

> he can predict, when still in Helsinki (as always since day one), that he will [...]

John Clark doesn't think there is any way Bruno Marchal can ever be weaned off of personal pronouns. Is Mr.He the same Mr.He that is "still in Helsinki”?

Of course. That follows directly from the fact that Mr He keeps his identity intact in both W and M. Both are the same guy than the one who was in Helsinki. That is the reason why in Helsinki he cannot predict which version he will feel to be. The identity is defined by the memory of his past, and that is why in self-duplication he (the guy we all know very well) is unable, at the time where he is still in Helsinki, what experience to be expected, except that it is the experience of seeing W, or M and not both;

If it is then today Mr.He is experiencing nothing at all because today nobody is "still in Helsinki”.

It is enough that he remember having been the guy in Helsinki. Unless you think that the guy in Helsinki (the one referred by “he”) dies in the process, but, as said many times, this makes Mechanism wrong, and that makes the point.

But if Mr.He is somebody who remembers being in Helsinki yesterday then today 2 people in 2 different cities fit that description.

Exactly. 

So yesterday it would be logical to say Mr.He will either experience zero cities

An idea abandoned since before this list begun.

or two cities depending on who the hell Mr.He is.

Of course here you make again the confusion between 3p and 1p. 

There is simply no 1p experience of being in two cities, and I recall you that the question asked concerns the future 1p experience.

And upon this ridiculous mismash you have built your entire philosophy.

 

> the “I” pronoun, lost all its ambiguity

If that were true Bruno could prove it by simply replacing the personal pronoun "I" with its referent, but John Clark knows that will never happen because then the gaping logical holes in the argument would stand out like a sore thumb. 

I have done this many times. 

> you assume telepathy.

And that bit of silliness is my cue to say goodnight.

Try perhaps to answer this question. You are read and cut in Helsinki again, but you are reconstituted in Moscow well before being reconstituted in Washington. 

In that case, Nozick’s closer continuer theory predicts that the original guy survives in Moscow, and that the guy in Washington is some other (new)  guy. Do you agree with this?

 My point here is that the 1p cannot be aware ofbthe delay of reconstitution, ans so that mechanism entails that whatever we quantify the indeterminacy in Helsinki, it does not change when such delay are introduced.

You did have shown many times, including recently that you do get the point (you want just change the vocabulary from 1p indeterminacy to 1p-ambiguity). My question is “does the delay resolves the ambiguity, as Nozick would say, or not, as a mechanist has to accept.

Bruno

 John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 Dec 2019, at 23:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/18/2019 7:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.

Yet, he can predict, when still in Helsinki (as always since day one), that he will feel to live being in only one city.

That's where you introduce amibiguities.  "he...when still in Helsinki", i.e. H-man can predict many things.  H-man might predict he will feel being in both cites. 

That the correct 3p prediction (it follows directly from the protocol + the mechanist assumption).

But the question is about the prediction of his future 1p-experience. Here the guy can assert that he (in Helsinki) can predict with certainty that he will feel to be in only one place, but he cannot, for obvious reason, write dow which one in his diary.

Whether that will be borne out depends on how consciousness works and what "he" refers to in "he will feel”.

Keep in mind that we assume Mechanism. So we know that in both cities, both individuals have the whole memory of the H-Guy, + the experience of seeing one city. 

  If it he=whom ever remembers being H-man I think that it is likely true that he will feel being in both cities.  If he=either M-man or W-man, then he will either experience M or experience W.

Both copies confirms that fact. If he was just asked “do you predict that you will feel to be in W and in M, or do you predict that you will feel to be in M or in M, but not in both at once”, the obvious correct (with resect to mechanism) is the first one.

That's far from obvious to me. 

But do you agree that it follows from Mechanism? 

It's possible, but the second answer, "...you predict that you will feel to be in M or in M, but not in both at once." seems more likely.

It is obligatory, if the question is well understood as being about the future experience lived, and not on a description where such experience can be said to be lived from an outsider point of view.

I think we agree.

Bruno 

Brent

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[Bruce Kellett]

Philip Ball, in his recent book "Beyond Weird" (2018) addresses a similar issue of personal duplication in a quantum many-worlds setting. He remains unconvinced by the rhetoric....

"Imagine that our observer, Alice, is playing a quantum version of a simple coin-toss gambling game ... that hinges on measurement of the spin state of an atom prepared in a 50:50 superposition of 'up' and 'down'. If the measurement elicits 'up', she doubles her money. If it's 'down', she loses it all.

"If the MWI is correct, the game seems pointless -- for Alice will, with certainty, both win and lose. And there's no point in her saying 'Yes, but which world will I end up in?' Both of the two Alices that exist once the measurement is made are in some sense present in the 'her' before the toss.

"But now let's do the sleeping trick. Alice is put to sleep before the measurement is made, knowing she will be wheeled into one of two identical rooms depending on the outcome. Both rooms contain a chest -- but inside one is twice her stake, while the other is empty. When she wakes, she has no way of telling, without opening the chest, whether it contains the winning money. But she can then meaningfully say that there is a 50% probability that it does. What's more, she can say 'before the experiment' that when she wakes, these will be the odds deduced by her awakened self as she contemplates the still-closed chest. Is 'that' a meaningful concept of probability?

"The notion here is that quantum events that occur for certain in the MWI can still elicit probabalistic beliefs in observers simply because of their ignorance of which branch they are on.

"But it won't work. Suppose Alice says, with scrupulous care, 'The experience I will have is that I will wake up in a room containing a chest that has a 100% chance of being empty.' The Everettian must accept this statement as a true and rational belief too, for the initial 'I' here must apply to both Alices in the future.

"In other words, Alice-Before can't use quantum mechanics to predict what will happen to her in a way that can be articulated -- because there is no logical way to talk about 'her' at any moment except the conscious present (which, in a frantically splitting universe, doesn't exist). Because it is logically impossible to connect the perceptions of Alice-Before to Alice-After, 'Alice' has disappeared. You can't invoke an 'observer' to make your argument when you have denied pronouns any continuity." (Beyond Weird, pp 301-2)

Ball concludes, "What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all. It replaces them with experience of pseudo-facts (we 'think' that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now. We might reasonably wonder if there is any value -- any meaning -- in what remains, and whether the sacrifice has been worth it."

Bruce

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, December 22, 2019 at 12:52:35 AM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

Philip Ball, in his recent book "Beyond Weird" (2018) addresses a similar issue of personal duplication in a quantum many-worlds setting. 

 

...  Is 'that' a meaningful concept of probability?  ...

Bruce

No.

That's the whole reason MWI should be ignored as being 100% useless.

@philipthrift 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 Dec 2019, at 07:52, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 6:32 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/17/2019 3:54 AM, John Clark wrote:

OK, but the very definition of "The Helsinki Man" is the man who is experiencing Helsinki right now today. Or at least that's the definition on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, but on other days of the week the definition is the man who REMEMBERS experiencing Helsinki today, and on those days the Helsinki Man would be a fool to expect that the Helsinki Man would experience one and only one thing tomorrow.  

I did use proper nouns.  So what is John Clark's answer to the question what did the Helsinki man expect regarding his future just before he pushed the button?  My guess would be that he expected to experience being in either Moscow or in Washington, just as if H-man were going to be anesthetized and flown to one or the other city.

Philip Ball, in his recent book "Beyond Weird" (2018) addresses a similar issue of personal duplication in a quantum many-worlds setting. He remains unconvinced by the rhetoric....

"Imagine that our observer, Alice, is playing a quantum version of a simple coin-toss gambling game ... that hinges on measurement of the spin state of an atom prepared in a 50:50 superposition of 'up' and 'down'. If the measurement elicits 'up', she doubles her money. If it's 'down', she loses it all.

"If the MWI is correct, the game seems pointless -- for Alice will, with certainty, both win and lose.

That is true for an external observer, but false for Alice, or anyone entangled with Alice. From her point of view she can expect to clearly win, or clearly lose, but not both at once, for the same reason that I can expect the Schroedinger cat to be found Alive or dead, but never both at once, from the point of view of anyone interacting with the cat.

Philipp Ball miss the distinction between 1p and 3p. Everett did not. He used the term “subjective” for 1p.

And there's no point in her saying 'Yes, but which world will I end up in?' Both of the two Alices that exist once the measurement is made are in some sense present in the 'her' before the toss.

And both are still present after the toss, but they have differentiated.

"But now let's do the sleeping trick. Alice is put to sleep before the measurement is made, knowing she will be wheeled into one of two identical rooms depending on the outcome. Both rooms contain a chest -- but inside one is twice her stake, while the other is empty. When she wakes, she has no way of telling, without opening the chest, whether it contains the winning money. But she can then meaningfully say that there is a 50% probability that it does.

If today someone can predict with certainty that tomorrow he will be uncertain of the outcome of an experience, then today that person is incertain of the outcome of that future experience.

You can do the same with the WM-duplication, assuming the reconstruction box are completely identical and give no clue on their localisation. After the cut and copy, the candidate will not been able to say in which city he is before opening the box. But that makes the H-guy as well uncertain of the outcome, given that we agree that both copies are dignified survivors of the experience.

What's more, she can say 'before the experiment' that when she wakes, these will be the odds deduced by her awakened self as she contemplates the still-closed chest. Is 'that' a meaningful concept of probability?

Yes. Why not?

"The notion here is that quantum events that occur for certain in the MWI can still elicit probabalistic beliefs in observers simply because of their ignorance of which branch they are on.

Like with Mechanism in all arithmetical models of arithmetic.

"But it won't work. Suppose Alice says, with scrupulous care, 'The experience I will have is that I will wake up in a room containing a chest that has a 100% chance of being empty.' The Everettian must accept this statement as a true and rational belief too, for the initial 'I' here must apply to both Alices in the future.

Assuming that Mechanism is false, I can imagine some circumvolved way to make sense of this. With Mechanism, only the prediction which are verified by both copies can be said correct. Obviously if she predicts that the chest will be empty, we know that the one with a non empty desk will refute the prediction, and, in the finite duplication case, that is enough to say that the prediction was false. After a self-duplication (made at the right level) the first person experiences diverge, and indeed, that is why Alice cannot make a certain specific prediction about what will be in the chest or not.

"In other words, Alice-Before can't use quantum mechanics to predict what will happen to her in a way that can be articulated -- because there is no logical way to talk about 'her' at any moment except the conscious present (which, in a frantically splitting universe, doesn't exist).

That is not valid, as Mechanism illustrates clearly, once of course we get the 1p/3p distinction.

Because it is logically impossible to connect the perceptions of Alice-Before to Alice-After, 'Alice' has disappeared. You can't invoke an 'observer' to make your argument when you have denied pronouns any continuity." (Beyond Weird, pp 301-2)

It can be a continuous split. (It his provably a continuous split in the topology of the logic associated with knowledge, as opposed to 3p beliefs).

Ball concludes, "What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all.

Not at all. I would say that it is Ball who denies the first person experience in a many personal histories setting, like with the universal waves, or the universal computations.

It replaces them with experience of pseudo-facts (we 'think' that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now. We might reasonably wonder if there is any value -- any meaning -- in what remains, and whether the sacrifice has been worth it.”

It is the probabilities on the relative outcome (first person, or first person plural) which counts. The fact that you will survive no matter what when jumping out of the windows, is not relevant if the goal is, not to survive, but to keep some quality of life. By using the lift, you survive in good shape, which has a negligible probability when going through the windows.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Brent Meeker]

On 12/20/2019 4:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> But the question is about the prediction of his future 1p-experience.
> Here the guy can assert that he (in Helsinki) can predict with
> certainty that he will feel to be in only one place, but he cannot,
> for obvious reason, write dow which one in his diary.

How can he be certain of that?  Maybe he will experience both places. 
Would it make any difference if he predicted that?

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

If the Helsinki guy predicts that he will experience both places 5washington and Moscow), and that indeed both copies claim and show that indeed they are in both place, that would entail a form of telepathy which is logically impossible with (Indexical Digital) Mechanism.
I think that both Moscow and Washington will be interested as this will give a new efficacious way of spying!

Bruno



>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
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[spudb...@aol.com]

For whatever stupid reason, I tended to agree with the late US philosopher, Nozick, on whomever lands in DC or Moscow, or yeah, and afterlife, it's the closest continuer. Is it disputable, sure go ahead. But as we say in the US, 'close enough for government work!' It's how much accurate data the copy or clone contains? Thus, I am willing to consider the clone (screw the no-cloning theorem), the "soul" because the dude is alive in MOCKBA drinking piva (beer) while the DC version is smoked. In Helsinki? Again, The difference between a rock and a rabbit, is the information it contains-that was from Claude Shannon. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Dec 30, 2019 10:54 am
Subject: Re: Superdeterminism in comics

> On 28 Dec 2019, at 06:47, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/20/2019 4:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> But the question is about the prediction of his future 1p-experience. Here the guy can assert that he (in Helsinki) can predict with certainty that he will feel to be in only one place, but he cannot, for obvious reason, write dow which one in his diary.
>
> How can he be certain of that?  Maybe he will experience both places.  Would it make any difference if he predicted that?

If the Helsinki guy predicts that he will experience both places 5washington and Moscow), and that indeed both copies claim and show that indeed they are in both place, that would entail a form of telepathy which is logically impossible with (Indexical Digital) Mechanism.
I think that both Moscow and Washington will be interested as this will give a new efficacious way of spying!

Bruno



>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

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> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/83d74b4e-1486-d532-4ed2-e212495ce7ef%40verizon.net.

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Dec 2019, at 19:26, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

For whatever stupid reason, I tended to agree with the late US philosopher, Nozick, on whomever lands in DC or Moscow, or yeah, and afterlife, it's the closest continuer. Is it disputable, sure go ahead. But as we say in the US, 'close enough for government work!' It's how much accurate data the copy or clone contains? Thus, I am willing to consider the clone (screw the no-cloning theorem), the "soul" because the dude is alive in MOCKBA drinking piva (beer) while the DC version is smoked. In Helsinki? Again, The difference between a rock and a rabbit, is the information it contains-that was from Claude Shannon. 

The only problem I see here is that if the difference is only in the information, the closer continuer cannot make the difference, as it is the same information sent to Moscow and to Washington.

Nozick's Closest Continuer theory does not make sense once we assume Mechanism, which is indeed based on the idea that a brain is nothing more than an information treatment machine.

I don’t claim Mechanism is true. I claim only that it is incompatible with Nozick theory.

OK? Does everyone see this?

Bruno

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Dec 30, 2019 10:54 am
Subject: Re: Superdeterminism in comics

> On 28 Dec 2019, at 06:47, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/20/2019 4:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> But the question is about the prediction of his future 1p-experience. Here the guy can assert that he (in Helsinki) can predict with certainty that he will feel to be in only one place, but he cannot, for obvious reason, write dow which one in his diary.
>
> How can he be certain of that?  Maybe he will experience both places.  Would it make any difference if he predicted that?

If the Helsinki guy predicts that he will experience both places 5washington and Moscow), and that indeed both copies claim and show that indeed they are in both place, that would entail a form of telepathy which is logically impossible with (Indexical Digital) Mechanism.
I think that both Moscow and Washington will be interested as this will give a new efficacious way of spying!

Bruno



>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
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[spudb...@aol.com]

My only reply Bruno, is using information in biologicals like ourselves (what else is there?) and the practices of computer science going back decades. Unix forking is a means of protecting information, as well as checksum. The  universe may not work this way at all with information, but I guess it might. If one produces a continuer with virtually the same info as the original, and we would need to discuss this intensely, on what constitutes a genuine Bob or Alice? We have seen people on this forum, reject the continuer or simulation, as axiomatically wrong, rather than consider this, which for me indicates that I am dealing with the part of the brain called the amygdala, and not the part of the brain that deals with math. If the original species, turns into smoke, and there are two nearly identical copies in Moscow or Bruges, let them fight over the inheritance. Have a jolly New Year. 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/D62E215D-ABE4-4AA8-9B47-1BE152A79DBB%40ulb.ac.be

.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Dec 2019, at 20:29, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

My only reply Bruno, is using information in biologicals like ourselves (what else is there?) and the practices of computer science going back decades. Unix forking is a means of protecting information, as well as checksum. The  universe may not work this way at all with information, but I guess it might.

Hmm… not really if we assume Mechanism. It behave classicaly above the substitution level, and (quantum) statistically below it. We are multiplied by everything our mind does not depend on.

If one produces a continuer with virtually the same info as the original, and we would need to discuss this intensely, on what constitutes a genuine Bob or Alice? We have seen people on this forum, reject the continuer or simulation, as axiomatically wrong, rather than consider this, which for me indicates that I am dealing with the part of the brain called the amygdala, and not the part of the brain that deals with math. If the original species, turns into smoke, and there are two nearly identical copies in Moscow or Bruges, let them fight over the inheritance. Have a jolly New Year. 

Better to settle this with oneself before the duplication! 

Happy New Year! Best wishes for the Australians who live the biggest fire ever. Hope it will rain!

Bruno

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