Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> Do you believe there is a difference between the experience of a being
> living in a model block universe, such as having the observer moments
> of its life running simultaneously on different machines or as separate
> processes run in parallel on the one machine, and the experience of a
> being running in a linear simulation as per the traditional view of time?
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
This is a 'philosophical leading question' ;) If my theories are right
you *can't* have a being experiencing things living in a model block
universe. I suspect that if you tried to actually carry out the
thought experiements you mention (observer moments being simulated
simultaneously), you couldn't be certain of simulating a being with a
fixed identity.
So perhaps I should answer: 'Yes I believe there is a difference. The
being whose observer moments one is trying to simulate simultaneouly
cannot be garanteed to be the same being as the being simulated
linearly'.
The problem lies in the meaning ascribed to symbols. The same
computation can mean any number of different things depending on the
encoding system used. For example the following two bytyes:
45, 65
mean two different things depening on whether ASCII or EBCDIC was used
to encode the meaning of the bytes.
Could one be sure that the same computations run simultaneously *mean*
(i.e encode) the same thing as computations run linearly? I maintain
you cannot.
Also see my reply to Russell below:
>Russell Standish
>
>The Multiverse is defined as the set of consistent histories described
>by the Schroedinger equation. I make the identification that a quantum
>state is an observer moment, and the set of consistent quantum
>histories is the set of observer histories. As such all observer
>moments are in the Multiverse.
>
>But I appreciate this is not a widely held interpretation...
Indeed so. And there's a good reason why it isn't a widely held
interpretation, as J.barbour explained in 'The End Of Time'. In order
to define 'the Multiverse' in terms of QM one needs a *static*
wave-function solution for the entire universe (one which doesn't
change) , whereas conventional QM solutions to real world problems are
*dynamic* wave-function solutions (wave functions which evolve with
time). No one has yet succeeded in demonstrating a static
wave-function solution for the entire universe.
See what I said above. If the *same* QM state could be associated with
*different* observer moments, then observer moments would not be
reducible to QM states and the set of consistent quantum histories
could not be said to be fully identified with the set of observer
histories.
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Received on Fri Oct 13 2006 - 03:03:39 PDT