From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 21:21:45 MST
gts writes
> > No, I meant that there is a random number generator
> > in the room that selects which of the 1000 is to
> > survive. All right?
>
> Why bother with a random number generator? I grant you a license to use
> my bifurcation chamber technology in your 999/1000 die chamber. So then
> Subject-0 walks into the chamber and effectively becomes an observer of
> a subatomic experiment that has 1000 equally probable outcomes. Each
> outcome is observed by one alternate of the observer, as in MWI, and all
> 1000 alternate observers from Subject-1 to Subject-1000 are retained in
> this universe inside the chamber.
Sorry, but that's too complicated. As Jef observed, why bring
MWI into it (except for purposes of explanation)? The situation
in *my* duplication chamber is:
Today we talk about the experiment. Tomorrow you walk into
the chamber and 999 identical copies of you are made, totally
identical at the instant of creation.
A random number generator is brought into the chamber, and all
but one of the numbered 1000 entities is liquidated (a little
commie-speak there).
So we have to go back in time. Again, is this all right with
you?
> > What is important is the odd
> > fact that to you *one* of them is distinguished by
> > having a certain property that none of the others
> > possess. Namely, it is you.
>
> It's no more odd than MWI is odd. You flip a coin and get heads. An
> alternate of you is experiencing tails in an alternate universe. Why are
> you experiencing heads and not tails?
Right. It *is* the same, and David Deutsch complains that
concerns over identity hold a number of people back from
accepting MWI. But please, this thought experiment has
NOTHING TO DO with MWI; that's just one *interpretation*.
> > Moreover, the others are *not* you.
>
> Right. They look like me and share my *nominal* identity.
> But they do not share my *non-nominal* identity, which
> includes my body and perceptions.
Thanks for your patience. Now we are talking about what
you expect to happen when you go into the chamber and
whether or not you survive it. Today is today, and
tomorrow you will go into it, and the day after someone
will wake up in your bed at home, yet you claim that
this will not be you. That is incorrect (says I).
> If I could travel to an alternate universe, I could kill your alternate
> there without killing you. This is so because your alternate is *not
> you*. The same would be true if I brought your alternate to this
> universe and killed him here. You would survive, because your alternate
> is *not you*.
You can indeed kill one instance of me and allow the
others to survive. This has been true in all the
thought experiments, and we don't need alternate
universes to complicate the discourse.
Now Gordon, we have not yet reached anywhere near level
seven. I am talking about something at a much lower
level. I know people who claim the following (unlike
you):
"I choose to tomorrow go to the 1000-way duplication
chamber rather than face the dangerous helicopter
ride. I will survive the chamber, because I am all
my future instances. But after the 999 copies are
made, then if you ask any one of me, "what are your
odds?" he will, say "only 1 in a 1000". Yes, that
person that I was before entering the chamber does
survive, but I'm not him. Only you level seven freaks
actually think that someone can point a gun at your
head, pull the trigger, and yet you will survive."
Yet my friend is on a higher (okay, if you will, "more
general") level of identity than you---unless you want
to change your mind and agree that the person that you
are today will survive the experiment, just that only
one of the 1000 subjects will.
> > I think that I know what is going on. Is it true that
> > when you think about this thought experiment you visualize
> > how the chamber would look from the inside?
>
> No.
Hmm. One hypothesis shot down. Believing totally in
physics and the objective viewpoint, I look down upon
the duplication chamber, as it were, from a height.
I see me go in. I see some things happen to me, and
see that there are 1000 now. Then I see that 999 die,
and one walks away. Looking back over his history,
and taking careful note that he is no different from
me than I expect to be next week, he is me and I
survived.
Lee
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