From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 17:27:05 MST
gts writes
> > t0: one entity exists
> > t1: (Planck time) 1000 entities exist
> > ...
> > t10^35: each duplicate "observes" a difference
> > because finally his neurons have finished
> > firing.
>
> No, the 1000 come into existence at t1 already experiencing different
> outcomes. That is WHY they come into existence in the first place, as
> per MWI.
Your first statement is incorrect, if by "experience" you mean
a human being experiencing something. Experiencing something
means that neurons have fired. See above that the duplicates
do not observe until t10^35 or more.
You are trying to employ the quantum mechanical notion of
observation with human observation, and the two are entirely
different in concept. In QM, one speaks of a measurement
causing an MWI split. In the early days of QM, it was thought
by some that human consciousness had to intervene in order to
collapse the wave function.
> time t0 is one moment before the observation is made,
> however you choose to define observation.
>From the outset I was using "observation" to mean something
that causes a human being to realize---consciously or
unconsciously---that he's in a particular situation as
opposed to being in some other situation. This takes a
lot longer than 10^-43 seconds.
> > But recall that the central question for you is
> > how it could be at t1 that the original is associated
> > with only *one* of the duplicates
>
> And again I draw on the science of MWI to answer that
> question. Have you not studied Hugh Everett's theory of MWI?
Indeed! In scerer's words, I am an Everettista. David Deutsch
made a convert of me in 1986 with his article in the book
"The Ghost in the Atom". But you haven't addressed the question
posed here.
> The chamber is equivalent to an experiment in which 1000 alternates of a
> physicist come into existence, each of them experiencing a different
> outcome to a 1000-outcome atomic experiment, but in which all 1000
> alternates are kept in this same universe inside the chamber.
Yes, if you ask a physicist, "what is the probability that
you will see the number 731 come up?" he will answer 1 in
one thousand. But if the physicist believes in MWI then
you can remind him, and he'll say, "oh yes, I will experience
them all. It's just that if you talk to *one* particular
one afterwards, the chance that he saw 731 is only one in
a thousand. But neither the one you speak to afterwards
nor any of the others is distinguished."
> The key point is this: the alternates come into existence at the *moment
> of observation*, not before it or after it. It is therefore not
> meaningful to ask about how long it took for the neurons to fire. The
> point in time at which the neurons fire IS the moment of duplication.
It is *not*! The duplication happens much, much faster than
human neurons can fire. Observe the time line above. Note that
the duplication event happened in the first interval (or at t1,
whichever). This is vastly before any neuron fires.
> Of you think your argument fails using this MWI interpretation then
> please just say so that we can move on. It would then be up to you
> to show that a non-MWI interpretation is different.
They are the same. It's just that MWI makes it more difficult
because---as we see above---all the usual difficulties with QM
arise. People confuse observation with measurement, and then
on top of that, it depends on which interpretation one uses.
Therefore it is better to stick with classical duplicates.
Also, we have a physically completely symmetrical 1000-way
fork, and you have yet to say in what way any one of them
could have a special property.
Lee
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