From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Nov 11 2002 - 23:17:00 MST
gts writes
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of gts
> Sent: Saturday, November 09, 2002 8:31 AM
>
> Imagine a "bifurcation chamber," which houses the
> futuristic technology necessary to create two versions
> of a single person. It has an entrance door on one
> side and two exit doors on the other side. A person
> who walks into this chamber instantly becomes two
> people, Person-A and Person-B, each of whom then walk
> out of one of the two exits. Both Person-A and
> Person-B would experience a continuation of self and
> rightly believe himself to be a continuation of the
> original Person.
That's right. However we label them, whatever we
call them, they both believe themselves to be a
continuation of the original person.
> Now here is the question: the original himself would
> experience a continuation of his experience as he walks
> into and out of the chamber, but clearly he will not
> experience himself as walking out of *both* doors.
Yes, at no time will anyone say, "It feels to me as though
I am in two places at the same time", nor will anyone say
"It feels to me that I am walking out of both doors".
However, it's also a fact that people who adopt level
seven in the identity scale will maintain---once they
know all the relevant facts---"I am walking out of both
doors". (I must hasten to add, however that, of course,
what they mean by "I" is rather non-traditional.)
> He will experience himself to walk out of either exit
> A or exit B.
I believe that NOT to be the case, but that in fact
he walks out of both (simply put).
> So then the answer to the question of what determines
> if one will experience exiting from exit A or B in my
> thought experiment above is the same as the answer to
> the question of what determines one's own personal
> measurement in MWI.
That's exactly right. If a photon encounters a half-silvered
mirror (beam splitter) which is connected to a monitoring
device, the photon will take both routes according to MWI.
In each branch of the subsequent universe, one of you will
say "It went up" and the other of you will say "It went
straight". Because the apparatus signals colored lights,
one of you will see blue and one will see red. I believe
that you should anticipate seeing red, and that, separately,
(weirdly), you should anticipate seeing blue.
> So then the original in my thought experiment above
> would have an equal probability of experiencing
> himself as walking out of either exit A or exit B, and
> he would have no way to predict which door ahead of
> time.
You are assuming that some essence sticks to one of A
or B, but not both. The symmetry of the situation should
suggest to you that no relevant property adheres to one
that does not adhere to the other.
To recap, in MWI the original splits into two. They're
equally "him" (and, in the sense you have emphasized in
earlier posts, "not-him"). In one sense, the original
who walks into a room with one door leaves by the same
door that he entered. In another sense, the original
cannot leave at all, because the original ceases to
exist 10^-43 seconds after walking into the room or
perhaps even sooner.
In another email, you continue this idea:
> However the point of my message here was not to
> address that paradox, but rather to address the means
> by which the original "root" person will experience
> himself to walk into the entrance of the bifurcation
> chamber and leave by one exit and not the other.
May I ask some details of your thought-experiment
(which is very good, and even crucial, I would say)?
You say "A person who walks into this chamber instantly
becomes two people, Person-A and Person-B, each of whom
then walk out of one of the two exits."
Where did the atoms come from that constitute Person-A
and Person-B?
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:03 MST