On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 GSLevy.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> jqm1584.domain.name.hidden writes:
> > The RSSA is not another way of viewing the world; it is a
> > category error.
>
> I use the RSSA as the basis for calculating what I call the relative
> probability, in this group the first person probability, or, equivalently,
> the probability conditional on the life of the observer. The ASSA is by
> extension, the assumption for calculating the 3rd person probability.
>
> Let us perform a thought experiment.
> Imagine that you are the scientist in the Schroedinger cat experiment.
Scratch that. Right now let's stick to the example with Bruno and
the 3 cities, because it's better for the current point.
Suppose Bruno, in 1999, wants to know if he is more likely to be
in Washington or in Moscow during 2001.
First of all, that is not a well defined question, because
"Bruno" must be defined. Suppose we define it to mean the set of all
Bruno-like observations, where by "Bruno-like" we can assume we know what
qualifies.
But then the question becomes meaningless, because it is 100%
certain that he will be in *both* cities. A 3rd person would have to
agree with that, he is in *both* cities.
So let's ask a meaningful question. Among the set of Bruno-like
observations in 2001, what is the effective probability of such an
observation being in Moscow?
This is just a conditional effective probability so we use the
same rule we always use:
p(Moscow|Bruno in 2001) =
M(Moscow, Bru. 2001) / [M(Moscow, Bru. 2001) + M(Washington, Bru. 2001)]
where M is the measure.
So in this case the conditional effective probability of him
seeing Moscow at that time is 10%, and in *1999* he knows he should brush
up on his English because his future 'selves' will be affected by that.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Physicist / 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 Jan 18 2000 - 13:10:18 PST