From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2002 - 22:42:21 MST
gts writes
> --- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > This operation that "we" perform, namely "if we
> > follow his stream of consciousness" --- you haven't
> > explained what this is.
>
> I was speaking hypothetically. If we had a way to
> monitor the subject's experience as he walks through
> the chamber in real time, we would monitor his
> experience of walking out of one door only. He would
> not experience himself to walk out of both doors.
By what black art would our means to monitor the
subject's experience pick one of the two and not
the other? Would it flip a coin?
> if I understand you correctly, you think the original
> subject would experience himself to walk out of both
> doors. (!?!)
I hope that you are not deliberately misunderstanding me.
If you *ask* each duplicate, as they exit the room, no
one of them will say "I walked out of both doors",
because it will be obvious from the context of the
question that reference is being made to the short-
term memory of having passed through a doorway. On
the other hand, if the original person *were* philo-
sophically at level seven, and wondered if that was
what you were getting at, of course he would reply,
"Yes, I walked out of both doors, because in the most
important senses my duplicate and I are the same person."
> > How is this any different from the person walking
> > into the duplication chamber (set of atoms 1) and
> > having a duplicate made (set of atoms 2)?
>
> I'm not sure there is any difference. One thing that
> should be made clear however: in the chamber the two
> duplicates at their moment of creation immediately go
> on to experience different realities (different exit
> doors) and are thus slightly different even if only in
> very subtle ways.
That's true of duplicates, too.
> They are, as I've said, two alternates of a person one
> of which would otherwise have appeared in different MWI
> universes but for the magic of the chamber that retains
> one of them in this universe.
Although David Deutsch in "The Fabric of Reality" does
discuss the way that one goes into two universes, and
although discussions on the FoR list seemed to suggest
that many people could not accept MWI because of the
identity problem, shall we keep quantum mechanics out
of it for the sake of simplicity? The duplication
chamber is simple: you go in, and a copy is made of
you, atom for atom. Or, since you are at a high
enough level of identity, one is teleported-in-place,
using different atoms, at the same time that one's
duplicate is made. Again, is this all right with
you?
> > So which would you choose? To tomorrow take the
> > dangerous helicopter ride, or to tomorrow enter the
> > 1000-way duplication chamber?
>
> The helicopter ride, of course. My odds of surviving
> there is .75 vs. a miniscule .001 in your chamber of
> horrors.
Yes, while today you expect to survive *sleeping*
tonight, you rightly expect the helicopter to have
a significant chance of killing you. You also, (I
think wrongly), fear that the 1000-way duplication
chamber will have a .999 chance of killing you.
Is all of the foregoing correct? Thanks for your
patience, but we must avoid misunderstanding.
Lee
> I cannot predict or determine which alternate will
> survive your chamber in which 999 of 1000 are
> disintegrated. Therefore, (speaking as Subject-0), my
> chance of experiencing myself as the surviving
> alternate is 1 in 1000.
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