From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 00:19:36 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
>> 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.
Your thought experiment is pure fantasy. Even if we don't use MWI in our
interpretations, the 1000 people would each be experiencing different
realties and thus have different mental states. They are not "totally
identical."
>> 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.
It can't happen. At planck time 1 there is only one person (Subject-0).
At planck time 2 there are 1000 alternates, (Subject-1 to Subject-1000),
each observing a different outcome.
>> 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.
Of course each thinks he is the same person as before. They are all
equally valid continuations of the original, with memories of the same
past. But 999 of them die before they leave the chamber. I may or may
not experience myself to be the one who survives, with 999/1000 odds
against.
>>> 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?
Yes. Too bad for me that I'm six feet under.
-gts
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