From: Krekoski Ross (rosskrekoski@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Feb 09 2009 - 18:58:02 MST
On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 1:24 AM, John K Clark <johnkclark@fastmail.fm>wrote:
>
>
> And here we have it, "only their [quantum] states" moved not "The atoms
> themselves". That last is a revealing phrase, even in the absence
> quantum states you think all atoms have a unique property that no other
> atom has, even though the scientific method can not detect it. There is
> a word for that mysterious property but I can't seem to remember it
> right now.
That is incorrect. With complete information about the system, any two atoms
are distinguishable. Not in terms of inherent quality, that is impossible,
but in terms of details of their instantiation. Or rather, if we had
complete information about a given real-universe system, it would not be
perfectly isomorphic with the complete information about another given
real-universe system. This is not true in a simulation or an abstraction
where we can use a reduced set of physics, and we may have perfect
isomorphisms, however, the complete information regarding the representation
of the abstraction in the underlying substrate, whether it is grey matter,
computronium, or what have you, would be distinguishable.
Thats all I'm saying really.
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