RE: valuable errors

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:47:33 +0100

No, I think that both are possible and (2) hapens every planck-time. But as
Jacques has rudely pointed out the problem is that we have yet to define
'you'.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gilles HENRI [SMTP:Gilles.Henri.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 1:29 PM
> To: Higgo James; everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: RE: valuable errors
>
> >OK so you're highlighting practical problems. But (1) Tipler for example
> >believes that infinite computing power is a practical possibility and (2)
> if
> >it's not, so what? This is a gedankenexperiment and practical
> considerations
> >are not important.
>
> What I'd like to stress is that even if infinite computing is a
> "practical"
> possibility (the word "practical" should be carefully defined in that
> context), it would not realize a duplication of an individual being in the
> same world, but rather a duplication of the entire Universe. So it is
> conceptually different of the COMP hypothesis of Bruno, which applies to
> the generation of "clones" of yourself, who could eventually replace you.
> Rather it would imply a "meta Universe " where you could place your
> super-computer, and this is already a strong hypothesis, which is not
> directly obvious from what we know of our Universe. Such a computation
> would act as a generation of another Universe, and the "identity" of your
> copies would not be obvious at all to define. In fact it is very close to
> MWI, who forbids also the simultaneous presence of two copies of you in
> the
> same observable Universe (it may be different if closed time-like loops
> exist,allowing travelling backwards in time).
>
> In summary I think that:
>
> You ----> (You 1 + you2 in the same Universe) is impossible (in my
> sense!).
>
> You in Universe 0 ---> You 1 in Universe 1 + You 2 in Universe 2
>
> is admittedly possible, but requires a careful definition of what allows
> to
> consider "You1" and You2" as two copies of the same "You". In MWI it is
> because "You1" and "You2" are both related to "You" by a spatio-temporal
> continuity, which applies to all macroscopic (not only conscious!) objects
> and which allows under some "classicity" conditions to order different
> macroscopic Universes along a temporal order.
>
> Do you agree?
>
> Gilles
>
>
>
Received on Tue Apr 20 1999 - 06:54:59 PDT