Bruno wrote:
>
> Suppose you are read and annihilated and then reconstitute at
> 3 different places A B and C.
> So you are uncertain about your 1-person next location.
> The domain of uncertainty is {A, B, C}.
> But suppose the reconstitution failed at C. So, 'you' die at C.
> I say that in that case the domain of uncertainty *was* {A, B}.
> This is what I mean by "you quantify the indeterminacy only where
> you survive.
> So by killing yourself in worlds you don't like, you can manage
> a high probability to find yourself (1-point of view) in worlds
> you like. That is the idea of both comp and quantum suicide.
> And it was the only way I was seeing untill Niclas Thisell propose
> his meditation exercice! Indeed, if you are able, in the preceeding
> setting to transform yourself into a zombie at C, then you will
> also augment the probability to be *conscious* of being at A or B.
>
> Where a zombie is just an unconscious (i.e. there is no 1-person
> view at all) being. It is a technical term in philosophy of
> mind.
>
> Of course Niclas Thisell's solution work because from the
> 1-person point of view, to make oneself zombie is equivalent to
> self-killing.
>
> I just hope your psychic power are based on another method, because
> if you use Thisell technic you could as well be a zombie in
> my branch of the universal computation, and in that case I waste
> my time to convince you :-).
>
> To sum up: if you admit modelising death by terminal kripke worlds,
> then to quantify indeterminism you must cut away those terminal
> worlds, making the accessibility relation ideal.
> Latter I will show you that we will lose the accessibility too. But
> that is suitable because we will get neighborhood and proximity
> relations defined on the 2^aleph_0 maximal consistent computational
> continuations. That is suitable for our measure searching.
>
> Bruno
>
>
I think I now understand what you're getting at. I'm claiming that I'm
modifying the RSSA transition probabilities between different outcomes
(not the absolute measure - this remains unchanged and irrelevant). If
I were to do this perfectly, i.e. set some of the transition
probabilities to zero, then indeed logically I must be a zombie in
those worlds. However, if we allow the slightest amount of
imperfection in the process (lets say I change the probabilities such
that the undesired outcome has a probability of 10^-googol), then in
practise I'm very unlikely to see a failure, but I would not be a
zombie in the undesired world. In real life, I do not believe I'm
affect probabilities quite that much (maybe a couple of orders of
magnitude at most), so I do see failures in the method, but it works
well enough for me to persist with it.
In short, while at this stage I'm open minded on the possibility of
zombies, I don't believe that any human being, including those called
Russell Standish, has been, are, or ever will be a zombie.
Cheers
PS - the possibility of an imperfect process is exactly enough to save
me from having to prove to you guys that this works by the double
guessing competition I mentioned earlier. So this procedure remains
scientifically uncommunicable, regardless of how good it is :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Thu Jan 13 2000 - 18:16:41 PST