From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 10:44:36 MDT
On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, gts wrote:
I'm overposting today, but...
> Seems to me that that the supposed paradox is explained much more
> easily by noting the simple fact that the similarity of their visual
> experiences is due only to an optical illusion. The paradox is
It is not similiarity, and no illusion. It's the boundary condition
asserting conservation of identity. As soon as you deviate from them, you
get two (or N) people.
> illusory, literally. Let them each have access to a compass and then
> compare their experiences.
They can't. Trajectory forcing causes selective agnosia. Depending how it
is implemented, they both would see what A would have seen, or what B
would have seen, or something inbetween. You can tell them that there are
several of instances of them in perfect sync. It wouldn't matter, they
couldn't consciously diverge. The perfect mirror man routine (didn't the
Stooges use to do that?).
As soon as they would see something different their input would have to
deviate. They would have become distinguishable. You can still cause the
fork to fuse by brute force. After the prongs fuse again they will all
remember seeing the same thing when questioned about the event which
caused the temporary bifurcation.
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