From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 17:53:24 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Why not go back to my post and answer the questions
> it has? You'll see that something preternatural is
> going on when you realize that you survive your trip
> through the 1000-way duplication chamber. Here is
> the post again, for your ready convenience:
>
http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians/0211/17407.html
OK, but I don't think you're going to find anything different in my
answer that you haven't already seen...
re: your 999 of 1000 chamber...
> We need to inquire further into your "demise" in this
> chamber. Again, the setup: today we talk, tomorrow
> you go to the chamber, and the third day someone wakes
> up in your bed, and you believe that the odds are only
> 1 in 1000 that you will survive and will wake up on the
> third day. Correct so far?
Correct.
> Inside the 1000-way duplication chamber exactly
> a thousand gts-like creatures roam, but only one
> of them is you. When the random choice is made,
> then if and only if that particular one is chosen
> do you survive. Still correct?
Essentially correct. There are 1000 alternate continuations of me,
identical to 1000 alternate continuations of me as would result, under
MWI, from an atomic experiment with 1000 possible outcomes.
> Let us say that you are #731 so that if #333 or
> any other number besides 731 is chosen, then you
> fail to survive the duplication chamber exactly
> in the same manner as you fail to survive the
> helicopter ride in 25% of the cases. Okay so far?
Okay, though I do not like your use of the word "chosen." It implies
volition. The decision as to which 999 of the 1000 is killed is not
dependent on choice or volition.
> Now what several of us are dying to know, so to speak, is
> in what manner #731 is special?
731 is not special any more than the number 7 is special when you roll
the dice and get 7. It is purely random.
> According to physics there is nothing at all to distinguish #731 from
#333
> or any of the others.
Each observer is experiencing a different outcome, 999 of 1000 of which
lead to immediate death.
> I want to know what is special about #731. Why is it here, today,
> before you have even entered the duplication chamber that one
> particular one of them (maybe not 731 but some other number)
> is special? Just how is it that you fail to survive unless one
> particular number is selected to survive?
I don't know about "special." However according to the physics of MWI
each of the 1000 would experience a different outcome.
In your chamber, 999 of 1000 experimental outcomes include
disintegration of the observer. Thus I have a .001 probability of
surviving the chamber.
-gts
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