On Thu, 13 May 1999, Russell Standish wrote:
> everything-list.domain.name.hidden
What's that?
> > > [Jacques Mallah wrote]
> > > > What about worlds on which others survive? How do you even
> > > > distinguish between "you" and others to make such a distinction? And of
> > > > course time should not be a consideration: Measure is NOT conserved over
> > > > time! There is NOT an equal chance of finding yourself at one age as at
> > > > an older age! If there was it would disprove the MWI!
> > >
> > > Again this depends on what picture you use (ie what filter you use to
> > > loom at the universe) From the third person picture, you are quite
> > > correct. From the first person picture, measure is conserved (at 1), except
> > > in a catastrophic case where at some point in time, the measure
> > > vanishes
> >
> > So according to your statement, the predictions of a theory depend
> > on which 'picture' you use. That is nonsense.
>
> It is hardly nonsense. The predictions can easily depend of the
> 'picture' but must be consistent with each other. Let me give a simple
> example:
>
> In one picture, observer A decides to measure the spin of an electron
> in the x direction. In the other, observer B decides to measure the
> spin of the electron in the y direction. Observer A will see the spin
> of the electron aligned with x axis, and Observer B will see it
> aligned with the y axis. Both observations are correct in the first
> person picture of that observer. A "person" with the third person
> perspective, sees observers A and B as inhabiting separate `worlds' of
> a multiverse, each with appropriate measure that can be computed from
> Quantum Mechanics.
On the contrary, this is a textbook example of the way I said it
works. The theory predicts some measure distribution of observers; an
individual observer sees an observation drawn from that distribution.
There are no different sets of predictions for different pictures, just
the measure distribution and the sample from it.
> > A theory predicts some measure distribution on the space of
> > conscious observations. From the point of view of an observer, you see
> > one observation drawn from that measure distribution.
> > If measure were conserved for a particular individual as a
> > function of time, you immediately have 2 problems:
> > - How to define a particular individual? You need to, or else the
> > measure of other people would count too, and would stay relatively
> > constant as opposed to the rapidly diminishing measure of "you".
>
> This is a furphy. I have no problem whatsoever in knowing that I am
> who I am. If you are unsure of your identity, then that's your problem.
Nature must have a mathematical criterion for it, if it is going
to figure in a theory of physics.
> > - The expected value of your age would be infinite, contrary to
> > observations which indicate no unusual age on your part.
>
> Again this is based on an assumption that at each time period,
> conciousness must select randomly from the set of available conscious
> moments for that observer. (ie SSA of all concious moments, as opposed
> to SSA of birthdates). As I mentioned earlier, I reject this
> assumption as absurd, and prefer the view that conciousness must sweep
> out the concious moments in the time order they are arranged, ie I
> must pass through being 30 years old before I can experience being 100
> or 1000 years old. Therefore being young with respect to average
> lifetimes is not contradictory with expecting an infinite lifetime. I
> would be very surprised if conciousness jumped from 30 yo, to 100yo
> back to 10yo etc in some unordered random fashion, but of course have
> no way of exactly disproving it.
The above paragraph is rather meaningless since you haven't
defined 'yourself'. If 'you' are some extended implementation of a
computation, you are not immortal: the number of implementations will
decrease over time. I take one time step as the most logical unit but
that is irrelevant to the conclusion.
From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Subject: RE: SSA
>Jacques wrote:
>> Are you saying that the MWI does not predict immortality, or that
>>a single world theory does predict it? The former would make sense
>>since immortality is observationally false, but I didn't think you'd
>>come around so easily.
> Good grief, Jacques - for the umpteenth time: of course it does not
>predict immortality any more than classical physics does. But you will
>end up as one of those exceedingly unlikely, one in 10E500000...Jacques's that
>happen to survive for an aeon. Even then you will have no better proof of
>MWI than you do now.
Let me get this straight. It doesn't predict immortality, but it
does; I will find myself to be old due to the MWI, but since it's not
really a prediction of the MWI I won't have evidence for the MWI based on
that. Your doublethink continues to amaze me.
> Immortality is no more 'observationally false' than the statement
>'you will become a petunia in six minutes'. After six minutes, you may
>challenge that statement (in those universes in which you are not a petunia
>and have not lost your power of communication in another way). And after
>infinity you may challenge my statement that you are immortal.
Ever hear of statistics? All use of empirical evidence is based
on it.
> If anything, the fact that you are alive lends support to the
>hypothesis that you will not die. You have never been observed to die in
>the past.
That's the kind of Basic Stupidity (BS) that undeservedly gave
induction a bad name. I've had enough of your BS.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Fri May 14 1999 - 14:07:29 PDT