From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 23:37:33 MST
gts writes
> > 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.
>
> Problem is that they are *not* totally identical at the instant of
> creation. At the instant of creation, each of the 1000 is observing a
> different outcome, 999 of which is disintegration.
What? Then you don't understand *my* thought experiment.
> You are trying to create a chamber in which 1000 people exist who are in
> every respect identical at some instant in time.
Yes, and for at least 10^-43 seconds.
> But such people cannot exist even in principle -- each must
> be observing a different reality and thus have different
> brain-states.
Not at all. For in the first place, each of the 999 copies
can be created in his own identical sub-chamber. At least
it would take several seconds for any microscopic or quantum
effect to propagate to the macroscopic level to start the
differences rolling.
In the second place, a pico-second is far too short for any
to be "observing" as you say.
> > 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).
>
> I'm glad you repeated this thought in this message because I missed the
> flaw when you first mentioned it. There is no assurance that on the day
> after the experiment someone will wake up in my bed at home. In fact
> there is a .999 probability that my bed will be empty.
Wow, are we miscommunicating! In *my* thought experiment---and
I thought in your original one---the copies are all so close that
each thinks he is the same person as before. I would swear that
that's how many of your discussions with Rafal and me had gone.
That's what it *means* to be a physical duplicate! So whichever
one survives the 1000-way chamber merrily gets in his car and
goes home to your house and assumes---so far as your friends
and relatives can tell---your role. Only that in your opinion
he's not really you, unless you had been thinking I was talking
of something different. No matter, ultimately, this is what
I am talking about.
> > 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....
>
> Those people are wrong, because they are not "all their future
> instances." They would experience themselves to live on in only one
> instance, an instance that would be selected by random chance.
Yes, so you contend. Okay, well the one that *does* live on
assumes your role, no?
Lee
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