Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory

From: Marchal Bruno <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 10:03:57 +0100 (MET)

Stephen Paul King wrote:


> Yes. I strongly suspect that "minds" are quantum mechanical. My
>arguement is at this point very hand waving, but it seems to me that if
>minds are purely classical when it would not be difficult for us to imagine,
>i.e. compute, what it is like to "be a bat" or any other classical mind. I
>see this as implied by the ideas involved in Turing Machines and other
>"Universal" classical computational systems.

I'm afraid you have a pregodelian (or better a preEmilPostian) view
of machine. If we are consistent machine we cannot know which machine
we are. We cannot consistently identify formal and intuitive probability.
Godel's and Lob's incompleteness prevent us to identify any intuitive
first person knowledge with objective third person communicable statements.
Gunderson has given also non-godelian argument, based on simple assymmetry
considerations illustrating the point. Actually duplication experiments
provide intuitive understanding of that phenomenon: if you are duplicated
at the right level, none of "you" can understand what it is like to be the
other. You could look at "Benacerraf" in the archive to see more.
Note also the UD Argument works for quantum brain too. Although quantum
states are not duplicable, it is still possible to prepare them in many
instances, and that is what the UD does (quantum universal machine *are*
emulable by classical machine).

The no-cloning theorem is also a consequence of comp. Knowing that
our experiential states supervene not on a "physical state" but on
the whole set of histories going through that states, it is hard to imagine
how anyone could duplicate anything below its substitution level.

Bruno
Received on Tue Dec 24 2002 - 08:24:09 PST