On 14 Mar -1, Marchal wrote:
> Jacques Mallah wrote:
> > The above once again makes no sense. The ASSA does not predict
> >any chance of you standing on the moon tomorrow, at least not unless you
> >define 'you'. If it is taken to refer to computational continuations of
> >your present state, the usual conditional probabilities obviously apply.
> >But again, the ASSA does not require any such notion of 'you', and the
> >most natural thing would be to say that you only exist at one moment while
> >future Russells are really different people.
>
> Do you mean that we are dying at each instant ?
With the above definition? OK, as well as coming into being.
Sounds about right. Note that 'instant' isn't quite right; 'time-step' is
better. (Think of a digital computer.)
> Do you agree we are surviving each such instant ?
See above. But again, it's just a definition. If I die in
that sense and am replaced by a nearly identical Jack, it is not exactly
something to complain about. Of course I could choose any logically
consistent definition I want; but my utility function should depend only
on the physical situation, not on words.
> But then we're back again to the very question: how could we be (first
> person) mortal ?
Doesn't seem like much of a question. How could we not be? I do
not see what your problem is at all.
> More precisely, when you say:
>
> >The ASSA does not predict
> >any chance of you standing on the moon tomorrow, at least not unless you
> >define 'you'.
>
> Sorry but it is hard for me that a question like "will I be on the moon
> tomorrow" depends on the fact that I should define "me".
Maybe it would help if I say it also depends on how you define
"the moon". I am not trying to sound like the president, but the answer
to a question depends on what the question means.
> >If it is taken to refer to computational continuations of
> >your present state, the usual conditional probabilities obviously apply.
>
> This is just what I take for the RSSA !
Obviously you don't understand. With the ASSA, it is always
possible to find the conditional probability of an observation given a
suitable condition. Choosing a condition and asking a question about it
changes nothing about the real situation.
The difference between the ASSA and RSSA really becomes apparent
when the ASSA predicts nonconservation of measure as a function of time.
Obviously this does not happen in most everyday, nonfatal situations.
BTW, even if the effective probability to "survive" (in the
computational continuation sense of "me") (i.e. the chance of getting a
large subjective time observation) is low, I can always ask what I would
see on the *condition* that my subjective time is such and such.
As I have previously mentioned, the trouble with this definition
of "identity" is that a single person at time t may be 'continued' into
multiple persons at a later time, or the reverse. There is nothing
random about that, of course. It's just a definition of a word and
teaches nothing about physics. The ASSA is the way to get predictions.
- - - - - - -
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 Tue Sep 14 1999 - 13:27:45 PDT