À (At) 14:47 +0100 20/04/99, Higgo James écrivait (wrote) :
>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'.
>
Right. As there is no objective definition of individuality, you can assume
many different ones. You are allowed to think that you can be a computer,
or that you were another person in another life, or even that you are any
other human being. What I propose is to RESTRICT the definition of identity
to a set of organized subsystems of macroscopic (classical-like) worlds
that are physically continuous (i.e. connected by a chain of Planck times
with Planck length separations ) and hence which can be thought as a
temporal evolution of a single individual, including all possible quantum
branching points. This is quite comparable to the problem of determining if
some branch belongs or not to some tree. This EXCLUDES the possibility of
discontinuous copies in a macroscopic world ("teleportation"), or rather
such copies wouldn't preserve the identity in this sense. So (1) is
excluded by definition. But it keeps the idea of many "you" in MWI (2).
I think that Bruno himself thinks that this position is tenable. I agree
that you can adopt a larger definition of identity, making (1) possible,
although I think that it would inevitably lead you to accept that you could
be also something VERY different from your present state, which I find
quite strange. I tried to convince you that if you expect that your copy
behaves EXACTLY like yourself in ANY circumstance, it imposes that he IS
yourself, i.e; you are unique in our world. If you don't think that, you
could also accept to commit suicide thinking that you will reincarnate on
Sirius, like the members of Solar Temple order. It is not logically
refutable, although most people agree that it is foolish.
Gilles
Received on Tue Apr 20 1999 - 09:08:42 PDT
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