Marchal wrote:
> What does your theory predict with respect to
>the following experience: You are scanned read and annihilate
>at Amsterdam. I reconstitute you in Washington tomorrow, and at
>Moscow in one billion years. Are your expectations different
>from the situation where the two reconstitutions are simultaneous.
I tend to agree that in this case the delay shouldn't matter in terms of
your first-person expectations. Earlier I asked you a question about the
thought-experiment where you would only be duplicated if the coin landed
"tails":
> >Are you saying that you support the 2/3 view, meaning that the
>probability
> >of my "next moment" depends on a kind of integral over all possible
>future
> >histories?
>
>Yes. I am less sure than Gille Levy for the precise computation of the
>probability, but I am sure (with the comp hyp.) that my "next moment"
>depends on a kind of integral over all possible histories.
I think so too--*given* the assumption that continuity of consciousness is
real, it seems very likely that our theory of consciousness should make use
of this sort of integral. The question is, though, is this integral going
to be incomputable? Even if it is, I suspect it is the sort of thing that
could be approximated by a series of larger and larger computations.
In any case, I think it's pretty plausible that a theory of consciousness
will involve only a countable number of distinct possible observer-moments,
whether these moments correspond to distinct computations or to some other
mathematical structure (a question that would depend on the form taken by
the theory itself).
However, if the integral is over all possible "histories" it may have to be
taken over all possible *series* of observer-moments, which may indeed be
uncountable.
I'd like to know a bit more about what you think a theory of consciousness
would say about these questions, so I can understand better what you mean
when you say that I am splitting uncountably many times in each instant.
Jesse Mazer
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Received on Fri Feb 09 2001 - 09:39:14 PST