From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 17:53:54 MST
gts writes
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > Amazing. I think that it is *you* who don't take the God's eye
> > point of view,
>
> From a bird's eye view, I mean that you should look down at the forking
> process from above, so to speak, and see that the individuals diverge
> into separate identities, regardless of what people with no knowledge of
> the fork might conclude upon meeting either of the forks.
That *is* what I mean by an objective view, or bird's eye view,
or God's eye view, whatever. Do I need to take a lie detector
test before you will believe that I believe that the *objective*
view is absolutely necessary, and that the basic problem IMO
is *subjective* evaluation?
> Your arguments rely heavily on the perceptions of people who
> have no knowledge of the divergence that occurs at the fork.
I don't think that my arguments hinge on that at all. Suppose
that indeed I am presented with my true love, or an old friend.
Do you think that my attitude towards him or her would or should
be any different if I know that he or she is a duplicate? It
would not. But since what I think at that time is ipso facto
subjective, that's not what the crucial point is.
The crucial point is that physically the same events are taking
place locally whether or not remote copies exist. If someone
teleports into my immediate surroundings, what is physically
true about them, or about our relationship doesn't depend on
whether there is a remote copy also produced. I affirm that
not only would my behavior be the same, but that anyone's
behavior would be the same. The only coda to this is that
so far as whether person A *survives*, that is a global not
a local condition. But I feel that I may be missing your
point. Am I? Your single sentence above doesn't say much
except to tell me how I am thinking.
> My thought experiment was meant to be taken a face value, only as
> *example* of the type of shifting of perspective that I see in your
> arguments. You dissected it first, without first considering it at face
> value, which is not the way I intended to be used.
Sorry, if I read carefully, then I must have reactions. I
wrote my reactions as I read (following an initial skim that
wasn't clear). What was its face value?
> Eugene and I agree on the relevant point that divides us: that
> the forks will diverge immediately and be non-identical.
Okay, but do answer this: Would you agree to teleport where
information is sent and different atoms used? Do you think
that you would survive such an operation?
> How can non-identical people have the same identity?
Because pattern-identity is not an all or nothing phenomenon.
How many stones must be removed from a heap before it's not
a heap any more? How many atoms does one have to remove from
the sun before it's not a sun any more? How many annoying
telephone solicitations does gts need before he's not gts
any more?
If you say "one" to any of those questions, I think that
you're simply wrong---the relation in your skull between
words and things is too brittle.
You ask "How can they have the same identity?". Exactly
the same way that I will be the same person tomorrow that
I am today, or was last year. For most people, Gordon,
identity does not change every instant. For most of us,
it's something that we feel to be the same about us year
after year, although if we are realistic, we realize that
after enough years, one isn't the same person anymore.
> Your answer seems to rely heavily on the fact that *unwitting*
> witnesses will have no reason to be believe anything unusual occurred.
You seem very stuck on this. I am saying that at the present
time, witnesses are the best *instruments* we have for determining
whether someone's identity has altered. If we had the entire set
of all paragraphs correctly describing the person, then we'd have
much sharper instruments. Just as a river changes from day to day,
we regard it, rightly, as the same river. The wisdom in "you can't
step into the same river twice" ignores more truth than it provides
(even though it does provide some).
> They will believe they are encountering the same person they
> knew pre-fork. But these unwitting witnesses are not aware
> of the entire situation -- they are not seeing
> the problem from a bird's eye view.
As I say, suppose they were. Suppose they knew that there was
an identical copy in Andromeda. So what?
> If the unwitting witness met with both forks at once and surveyed their
> personalities in sufficient detail, he would discover and be perplexed
> by the differences in personality between them (differences which could
> be very subtle or very apparent depending on the passage of time and
> events).
Yes. But if someone talks to me tomorrow in the same excruciating
detail that you are proposing, he'll find differences between Lee
tomorrow and Lee today. The central point is, there won't be enough
differences to matter. You yourself appear to vaguely understand
that you are dealing with the same person that you wrestled with
months ago in a different thread.
> How would he account for the differences in personality, Lee,
> except by acknowledging that the two are in reality different
> people with different non-nominal identities?
Exactly the same way that the sheriff does when he arrests
a perpetrator. Yes, the perpetrator is not *identically*
the same as the organism that committed the crime. What
is so hard to understand about this? What are you straining
at?
Lee
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