Brent: right on!
It all seems to me that we have no fitting meanings (whatver) of memory,
identity, forgetting, recalling and the entire vocabulary we apply to things
unknown. We only think so.
The fact that Bruno puts equationally expressed formulations (numbers) to it
does not make it more meaningful, since he only expresses more formally what
we (don't) know.
If I undergo *total *amnesia, do I still stay the same person? I doubt it:
that would only mean that we are a composite of *atomic figments*, as well
products indeed of the part we questioned in the previous sentence.
Which begs the follow-up: if I forget (lose) part of my memories (Bruno's
Beijing or Sydney version) am I still the myself of Kilgari?
Which goes even further: If I forget only a detail, e.g. the birthday of a
friend, does it destroy my total identity? Where is 'a' limit? Are such
quantitative distinctions imperative in 'meaning' assignments? Then again,
the so called physical part of us, we consider a person who lost a limb THE
SAME person. Losing a heart or substantial parts of the brain makes it
'dead'.
I am afraid to support my starting conclusion: We don't know the first thing
of the complex we speak about so eloquently and savantly.
The bad part is: we believe in our science and do not start thinking
"outside" the box, so our ignorance gets more and more firm.
A fresh start? After all those millennia of 'wisdom', Nobels et al.?
John M
On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 1:03 AM, Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>wrote:
>
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > 2009/4/4 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> The probability that I go from state A to state B is given by the
> >> "number" of computations going from A to B.
> >> The problem with amnesic teleportation, that is teleportation with
> >> partial amnesia in the reconstituted person, is that it introduce a
> >> fuzziness on the first person uncertainty domain.
> >> What are your prediction in the following experience, where the
> >> protocol is told to you in advance: you are triplicated in Sidney,
> >> Beijing and Kigali. But in Sidney you loose your long term memory: you
> >> remember perfectly the triplication experience, your name, but nothing
> >> of your life. In Beijing you lost your short term memory, you
> >> remember your whole life except the last hour, and thus you forget the
> >> triplication experience, and thus the protocol. In Kigali you keep
> >> your whole memory. I suppose that you will never recover the memories
> >> (this is in the protocol). How do you quantify the first person
> >> indeterminacy?
> >>
> >> Accepting probabilities, what would you consider as being "more
> >> correct" among
> >>
> >> 1) S = 1/3, B = 1/3 K = 1/3,
> >> 2) S = 0, B = 0, [K] = 1,
> >> 3) S = 0, B = 1/2, K = 1/2,
> >> 4) S = 1/2, B = 0, K = 1/2,
> >
> > I would say (3), but I have long been troubled by such questions
> > because there is no clearly correct answer.
> >
> >>> That argument is invalid, unless we are falling asleep
> >>> permanently, i.e. dying. If we fall asleep and wake up again, or
> >>> experience amnesia and recover, then the worlds where that happens are
> >>> *not* excluded by QI. They are simply worlds where you have a gap in
> >>> consciousness, as valid when you are calculating subjective
> >>> probabilities as the (in general far less common) worlds where there
> >>> is no such gap.
> >> I agree with you (except I am agnostic on the existence of gap of
> >> consciousness). The problem, imo, arise with partial amnesia and
> >> partial recovery, ... and (I think) who we are ... in the long run. Do
> >> we need to have an ever developing brain to be (first person) immortal?
> >
> > No, because in ordinary life we gradually forget things the longer ago
> > they happened, especially if they are felt to be less significant.
> >
> >
>
> And complicating things even more we may not be able to remember something
> on
> request but then remember it later. I've often experienced this kind of
> Poincare effect. There's also some evidence that hypnosis can recover
> memories
> not otherwise available. So "forgetting" and "remembering" are not simple
> contraries.
>
> Brent
>
> >
>
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Received on Sat Apr 04 2009 - 08:30:34 PDT