Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 13:58:33 -0500

Dear Bruno and Tim and Eric,

    Thank you for you thoughtful and thought provoking replies. What your
comments point out is that I need to sharpen my argument and study more so
that I can better understand the ideas, for example, that "The no-cloning
theorem is also a consequence of comp".
    Bruno, I am still not convinced that the statements that "If we are
consistent machine we cannot know which machine we are" and "Godel's and
Lob's incompleteness prevent us to identify any intuitive first person
knowledge with objective third person communicable statements" mutes my
question since it seems that it makes my predicament much worse! It seems
that your idea prevents me from "knowing what it is like to be a bat" by not
allowing me to have any 1-person certainty at all, in other words, I can not
be sure that I am not a "bat" or a "amoeba" or a "Dark Cloud" or whatever.
     Do you see any possibility that we might use omega-incompleteness to
recover, at least, some form of justification, albeit vanishing in the omega
limit, that, for example, I am a human and not a bat?

Kindest regards,

Stephen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marchal Bruno" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2002 4:03 AM
Subject: Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory


> 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 Thu Dec 26 2002 - 14:00:21 PST