On 11 Feb 2009, at 22:19, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> This idea seems inconsistent with MWI. In QM the split is uncaused
> so it's
> hard to see why its influence extends into the past and increases
> the measure of
> computations that were identical before the split.
I got the inspiration from the MWI, and even from David Deutsch
convincing point that conceptually differentiation-talk is less wrong
than bifurcation-talk. But is is not simply, in QM, a consequence of
the linearity of the tensor product?, i.e. the fact that the state
A*(B+C) is equivalent with (A*C)+(A*C), where A, B, C represents kets
and * represents the tensor product.
Of course the price to pay, as Everett first noticed, is that the
states become a relative notion, and the probabilities too, making
RSSA obligatory in QM. With comp it is more subtle (but then Everett
uses comp and missed or abstracted himself from this subtlety).
>> Of course we still lack a definite criteria of identity for
>> computation. But we can already derive what can count as different
>> computations if we want those measure question making sense.
>
> As I understand it your theory of personal identity depends on
> computations
> "going through" a particular state. Intuitively this implies a
> state at a
> particular moment, but a Y=II representation implies that we are
> taking into
> account not just the present state but some period of history -
> which would
> correspond with the usual idea of a person - something with a
> history, not just
> a state.
Absolutely so. It is the Darwinistic aspect of comp. A species with a
lot of offsprings makes higher the "time life" of old gene.
Perhaps thats why it is said we should grow and multiply :)
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu Feb 12 2009 - 10:18:55 PST