>From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
>By comp I mean the hypothesis that you can survive with a digital
artificial brain.
It depends on what "you" means.
>Survive is taken in the grand-mother sense,
(although much latter I will also "eliminate" the "grand-mother",
but then it will be technical).
What do you mean by the "grandma sense"? Well, you'd better get
technical now, since the problem is already here.
>Comp just means there is a level of description of "yourself"
such that you survive a purely functionnal substitution made at that
level.
That's meaningless. According to your definition, if you were to see a
Medusa and turn to stone, "comp" will say you survive, since I could point
to the stone and say "Yep, that's Bruno".
>More operationaly: a computationalist practionners is someone who say
"yes" to his doctor when the doctor proposed an artificial digital brain (in
case of some fatal disease for exemple).
This too is meaningless. Suppose I say to myself "I would die, but I
want another guy to be born, so I will agree".
>Question 5: do you agree you will survive the *duplication*
>experiment where you are read and destroyed at Brussels and then
>you are reconstituted (simultaneously or not) both at
>Washington and Moscow? I just ask you if you think you will
>survive *that* experiment. Well I ask you also if you agree
>that the Joel in Moscow and the Joel in Washington have the
>same "joelness right".
I agree only to the latter statement.
>Here is question 6. Perhaps the first not so obvious one.
>Do you agree that, if I ask you at Brussels, before the
>Washington-Moscow duplication experiment: "Where will you *feel*
>to be after the experiment will be completed?" that although
>you can answer "you will see me at Washington and at Moscow",
>your first person diary will either contain "I am at Moscow" or
>I am at Washington" so that you cannot predict with certainty
>where you will feel to be?"
This question is meaningless without a definition of "you".
>Finney wrote:
> >However I would refuse to answer a question like "where will you feel to
>be", not because I can't predict the answer with certainty, but because I
>don't think "you" is a well defined concept in the context of this
>experiment. It's not that the answer to the question is unpredictable,
>it's that the question is meaningless.
Hal, there may well be hope for you :)
Indeed, I have previously explained how the experiment relates to three
reasonable definitions of "you". See
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m2710.html
(near the end of it)
>If you answer "yes" to the question 5 (do you survive duplication) it
>seems to me that the question is meaningful. After all if "I" survive
>(in grand-mother sense), it is natural to ask myself where I will feel to
>be.
It's not the same thing, but you are right in a way, since both require
a definition of "you".
>I don't see the difference whith the experience where I ask you to
>look at a photon in the superposition state a + b, and asking you to go
>in W if you find the photon in state a, and to go at Moscow if you find
>the photon in state b. Here too there is a sense to ask you where you
>will feel to be, and with MWI both alternatives are realised.
That is somewhat different (regarding implementations) because making
measurement in QM is (ironically?) a measure-conserving process, while
duplication is not. But again, you need a definition of yourself.
BTW, if Joel or other new people can't find definitions of key terms
like "measure" and "implementation", my web site is one place to start, and
the archive should be useful too.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jackmallah.domain.name.hidden)
Physicist / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/
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Received on Sat Jun 30 2001 - 14:07:09 PDT