From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 17:58:58 MDT
Hal writes
> One way to see the supposed pointlessness of human action is that in
> this model, the "multiverse" (the totality of all realities created
> by all programs) is in a sense deterministic. Whatever you do here in
> this universe is matched by other universes where you do other things.
> The same thing is true, as a matter of fact, in the Many Worlds
> Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. So it might seem that even
> admitting the actual existence of alternative worlds is enough to call
> into question the meaningfulness of our actions.
No, it's not. But you already know why:
> I think the answer is to adopt a position of "compatibilism", where
> the workings of our free will are *identified* with the deterministic
> physical processes which underly our brain activities.
Yes, this is why there's really no conflict between determinism
and free will once you have totally bought into mechanism.
> In the context of a multiverse model like the MWI, compatibilism means
> that our actions can change the probabilities of the various multiverse
> worlds. In effect, in seeking to stop harm to others, we reduce the
> fraction of worlds in the multiverse where that harm occurs.
Fine. I think that David Deutsch would agree with you at once.
> For the full Platonic multiverse model, in the case where we think of
> the multiverse as being generated by all possible computer programs,
> we first need to understand that there are both pragmatic and technical
> reasons to believe that not all worlds have equal "measure". This means
> that if you selected a random conscious observer from the multiverse,
> residents of some worlds would be more likely to be selected than others.
Well, this seems right to me, except that I'm not sure what
you mean by the multiverse being generated by all possible
computer programs. We don't need that extremely speculative
notion to infer that not all worlds have equal measure. MWI
does a fine job of that already.
> This means that universes created by short programs would plausibly be
> much more likely than universes created by long programs, which offers
> an explanation of why our universe seems to be creatable by a relatively
> short program.
>
> Given this perspective, our activities can in effect change the measure
> of universes in the multiverse by making them more or less likely, just
> as in the MWI. When we intervene to help another person, we reduce the
> measure of universes where that person is suffering. We make them less
> probable; we make it less likely that a random person selected from the
> multiverse would be suffering in that way. We reduce the total amount
> of suffering in the vast multiverse.
Yes.
> These are positive results and are arguably just as meaningful as when
> we take steps to improve conditions in our own universe. Therefore the
> existence of a multiverse via Platonic reality of computer programs is
> compatible with the meaningfulness of human action.
Well, that's quite a tour de farce. (Oops, sorry for the typo.) I still
consider this *extremely* speculative. Could you perhaps answer this:
We all know the basic difference, apparent every day of our lives,
between static representations and dynamically changing ones over
time. We never suppose a frozen state, or even a sequence of frozen
states, to be conscious or to be experiencing anything. So where does
this bizarre notion that appears to afflict you and Greg Egan that
a large enough number of separate patterns---say separate integers---
take on any sort of dynamism? For me, since no information flows
between dead and passive structures, they're not alive. But apparently
for you, Rafal, and perhaps Mike, they are. (To be fair to Greg Egan,
he stated in an interview that he doesn't necessarily buy the ideas in
Permutation City.)
Lee
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