On 16/12/2008, at 5:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Hi Kim,
>
> You have accepted the artificial digital brain.
They got the colour wrong but that's OK - it would only have been
worth it if I'd gone for the transparent cranium option as well
> This means that you
> say "yes" to the doctor who proposes to you an artificial digital
> brain. You are thus obviously open to the idea that the MEC hypothesis
> in the cognitive science could be correct. Indeed, perhaps you believe
> it *has* to be correct, but I will have opportunity to raise doubt
> about that certainty.
At this point in time I am convinced of being an immaterial machine.
Which is nice.
Something tells me I still have to get up and go to work, though
So - do we care about Descartian dualism at this point or was René
really insane as George Levy (I guess half-jokingly) suggested?
Nobody ever seems to achieve clarity on this point because it entails
accounting for consciousness - The Ultimate Question, surely
Maybe we don't need to worry about this up to here, which is fine
>
>
> From now on, we will always suppose MEC is correct. We will work in
> that theory. We are just searching the consequences. In case we arrive
> to a frank contradiction, we can say that we have refuted the MEC
> theory. If we arrive to weird conclusions only, we have to accept that
> MEC entails those weird conclusions (and we can begin to doubt MEC, or
> to look in Nature if that weirdness is confirmed or falsified, etc.).
I'd be frankly interested to hear "non-quantum" examples of that
weirdness
everything in QM is weird, so why aren't you and I weird in some way
that you and I can understand?
The teleportation experiment which I have read many times makes sense
to me as something truly weird
I have seen and really enjoy "The Prestige" because of the way in
which some of this weirdness is translated well in that movie
The scene were Teszla copies first the black cat, then Angier's top
hat is remarkable.
Later, when Angier sees all of the hats and says "But which one is mine"
to which Teszla replies "But, my dear fellow - they are ALL yours!"
sends shivers down my spine
other than this quantum teleportation weirdness or inconsistency in
Nature, what might we expect?
could we even recognise something truly weird if it rose up and struck
us?
My sister has a white rabbit but it behaves much like any other rabbit
Have been out of town these last 2 days. Will now plunge into "Kim 2"
Really appreciate the trouble you are going to. I hope you are
enjoying this as much as I.
regards,
K
>
>
> "KIM 2" is really the "2)" of the plan. See below(*)
>
> I propose to proceed by little steps, under the form of questions.
>
> MEC is correct (by assumption). This makes the following thought
> experiment possible. You get a new job, but the job is located on the
> planet Mars, and for personal reasons you want to continue your night
> life on Earth (say).
> No problem, MEC makes possible to scan you, at the right level of
> description (or below), to annihilate you (let us say this is a legal
> obligation), to send the scanned information (containing the plan of
> your body, including the plan of your brain in its instantaneous
> state) to the planet mars (using some laser, radio waves) where there
> is a receptor and a reconstitution machine, which using the atoms in
> the martian neighborhood (re)build yourself in the relevant state,
> which, by construction, is really the state of your body 4m before on
> earth. (4m, because light takes four minutes to travel from Earth to
> Mars, as you surely know).
>
> I assume very short scanning-annihilation times and short receipting-
> reconstitution times. Hypotheses like that, or like the fact that your
> "generalized" brain is in your skull, will be eliminated explicitly
> later. The role of those hypotheses consists only in making the
> reasoning more easy.
>
> I assume all the usual default hypotheses: everything works fine. No
> bugs in the scanning and reconstitution processes, no asteroid hurting
> mars. The substitution level has been correctly bet, and it exists, by
> the MEC assumption. All right?
>
> The first question is: do you accept the job on mars, knowing that you
> will be obliged to use this teleportation machinery every morning and
> evening. I assume of course that you are interested in that job, ...
>
> Yes or no? (or comments, questions, precisions, etc.)
>
> Put in another way, do you agree that if we assume MEC and the default
> hypotheses, teleportation like this is a safe mean for transporting
> oneself.
>
> Here are slight variants of the same question which will be useful
> later. I suppose you, Kim, are doing the teleportation, and that I,
> Bruno, remains on Earth during that time.
> Both Kim and Bruno assumes MEC and the default assumptions. On Sunday,
> you are on Earth, Monday your job on Mars begins.
>
> Is is true that:
>
> -On Sunday, Kim believes he will find himself tomorrow on Mars. i.e.
> On Sunday, Kim believes "Tomorrow, I will find myself on Mars"
> -On Sunday, Kim believes he will be, tomorrow, on Mars. i.e. On
> Sunday, Kim believes "Tomorrow, I will be on Mars"
> -On Sunday , Bruno believes that tomorrow Kim will be on Mars.
> -On Sunday, Bruno believes that tomorrow Kim will find himself on
> Mars.
> -On Monday, Bruno and Kim believes that now Kim is on the planet Mars.
> -On Monday, Kim feels himself to be now on planet Mars.
>
> What do you say?
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> (*) the plan was:
>
>
> A) UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument)
>
> 1) I explain that if you are a machine, you are already immaterial.
> 2) Mechanism entails the existence of a subjective or first person
> indeterminacy or uncertainty.
> 3) The Universal Machine, the Universal Dovetailer and the reversal
> physics/bio-psycho-theo-whatever-logy.
>
> B) AUDA (Arithmetical or Abstract Universal Dovetailer Argument).
>
> 1) Ontology: Robinson Arithmetic
> 2) Epistemology: Peano Arithmetic
> 3) Arithmetical Interpretation of Plotinus (including Plotinus theory
> of Matter).
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
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Received on Wed Dec 17 2008 - 06:31:30 PST