From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 22:03:46 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> gts writes
>> Why bother with a random number generator? I grant you a license
>> to use my bifurcation chamber technology in your 999/1000 die
>> chamber. So then Subject-0 walks into the chamber and
>> effectively becomes an observer of a subatomic experiment that
>> has 1000 equally probable outcomes. Each outcome is observed by
>> one alternate of the observer, as in MWI, and all 1000 alternate
>> observers from Subject-1 to Subject-1000 are retained in this
>> universe inside the chamber.
>
> Sorry, but that's too complicated. As Jef observed, why bring
> MWI into it (except for purposes of explanation)?
I wish you would stop quoting people who don't agree with level 7 in
your arguments in defense of level 7. It gives the impression of
intellectual dishonesty. Jef has stated several times that that your
idea of identity is not as useful as a more conventional idea of
identity.
MWI is perfect for purposes of explanation, and so that is how I explain
the mechanism of the chamber. One does after all need to provide a
method for creating copies. MWI provides that mechanism.
> 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.
You are trying to create a chamber in which 1000 people exist who are in
every respect identical at some instant in time. But such people cannot
exist even in principle -- each must be observing a different reality
and thus have different brain-states -- and this is true even if we do
not use MWI as a model for their creation.
>> Right. They look like me and share my *nominal* identity.
>> But they do not share my *non-nominal* identity, which
>> includes my body and perceptions.
>
> Thanks for your patience.
You're welcome. Thanks for yours. :)
> 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.
> 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.
-gts
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