Re: Immortality

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon Oct 8 07:25:06 2001

Brent Meeker wrote (out-of-line), about the comp indeterminism
(cf my last post to Juergen Schmidhuber):


>You are wrong in asking for a single answer from two people. Ignore the
>duplication. Suppose I put Alice in one room and Bob in the other.
>Can I then ask, do 'you' see ONE or ZERO and get a sensible answer? ...


No. You cannot answer a single 1-person question to two peoples at
once. I agree with that remark.


> ... Not unless I make it clear whether 'you' refers to Alice or to Bob.


Of course.


>Returning to the duplication experiment, as soon as you are duplicated
>there is you-1 and you-2 and it no longer makes sense to address
>questions to 'you'.


Yes, but I ask the question *before* the duplication. So I do ask the
1-person question to a single person, about its *future* experience.
 The comp ignorance is that that
person cannot be sure if he/she will feel being in front of ZERO or ONE
in his/her next future. Before the duplication you1 = you2, if you want.
Before the duplication you are in a state of maximal ignorance about
your personal future. Of course after the duplication, just looking
at the wall and seeing ZERO (or ONE) give you one bit of information
making it possible to distinguish yourself from your double.
The indeterminism is really a prediction-indeterminism. It is not
a form of identity-indeterminateness.
The indeterminism comes from the fact that
  1) You can 3-duplicate a 3-person (with comp).
  2) you cannot 3-duplicate a 1-person, that is, from the point of view
of the person, that person feels like staying one and unique, in front
of ZERO *or* in front of ONE.

OK?

Bruno
Received on Mon Oct 08 2001 - 07:25:06 PDT