Re: momentary and persistent minds

From: Nick Bostrom <bostrom.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 04:13:22 +0000

Wei Dai wrote:

> On Fri, May 29, 1998 at 04:03:00AM +0000, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> > It seems we can interpret "I will observe X" as meaning: "There is
> > a future brain-state B2, similar in certain respects to the
> > brain-state B1 which instanciates this present cognition C1, such
> > that B2 instanciates C2, and C2 includes an observation of X.".
>
> That is not going to give you nice results. For example if there is
> no wavefunction collapse, all possible brain-states exist in the
> future and "I will observe X" would have probability 1 for all X
> under your interpretation.

Only if you believe in the many-worlds interpretation. A believer in
the MWI will have to add the idea of a measure, and say:"I will
observe X" with amplitude psi(x), and "I will observer Y" with
amplitude psi(y). This can then be translated into probabilities by
squaring the amplitude.

> I already sent a followup saying I made a
> mistake. I should have specified two observer-instants at time 0 each with
> measure 1/7 instead of one with measure 2/7. I think the results do
> confirm our intuition of the difference between observer splitting and
> observer differntiation.

Does this mean that you think the right interpretation of quantum
mechanics is to postulate an uncountable number of actually existing
parallel world?

(BTW, this week's issue of New Scientist contains an article on
Tegmark's TOE.)

_____________________________________________________
Nicholas Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
n.bostrom.domain.name.hidden
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
Received on Tue Jun 09 1998 - 07:32:49 PDT

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