From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 11:14:56 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
To me, this casts doubt on the intuitive sense that there is "one
person"
associated with the first run, and "another person" associated with the
second run, with the first person getting snuffed out when he pushes
the button while the second person continues to run. That model just
doesn't work.
### Exactly.
------
We can even look at the cycle-to-cycle progress of the programs even
when
no macroscopic suspension is involved, and question whether it makes
sense to associate one person with one run and a second person with
the other run. Between each cycle there is a microscopic suspension,
which based on the argument above means that we could with equal
validity
assume that the two runs swap identities every cycle. That's a pretty
absurd view of the behavior of identies (by which I mean people from
the first-person view), again calling into question the validity and
usefulness of the one-person-per-run model.
### This question was tackled by Greg Egan in "Permutation City", with
conclusions similar to Hal's, and mine.
Rafal
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