On 24 April 2004 Kory Heath wrote (in response to Bruno Marchal's post of 13
April 2004):
QUOTE-
Platonia contains every possible computational state that represents a
self-aware structure, and for each such state there are X number of
next-possible-states, which also exist in Platonia. The chances of one
self-aware state "jumping" (I know my terminology is dangerously loose here)
to any particular next state is 1 / X, where X is the total number of
next-possible-states for the state in question. Any regularities which
emerge out of this indeterminate traversal from state to state will be
perceived as local "laws of physics"...The real question is, what reason do
we have to believe that any regularities actually emerge? In other words,
how do we *know* that most of my "next-possible-states" do in fact contain
stars and galaxies?
-ENDQUOTE
Does the fact that we never find ourselves in one of the bizarre,
inconsistent worlds that are postulated to exist in Platonia cast doubt on
the reality of these worlds and the validity of the underlying theory?
Consider this thought experiment:
You are living in a time when humanity has colonised other planets in the
solar system and teleportation is commonplace. For your vacation, you buy a
ticket that allows you to be destructively scanned and teleported to one
thousand fabulous destinations around the solar system. The machine also
sends a copy of you to a receiving station next door, on Earth (it's the
rules). You enter the sending station, press the red button, and a second
later find yourself in slightly altered surroundings. When you get out of
the machine, you realise that you are still on Earth. Disappointed, you buy
another ticket on the spot and go through the same procedure again, hoping
for a better result. Again, however, you walk out and see that you are still
on Earth. This time, you are angry. The probability that you finish up the
stay-home copy twice is less than one in one million! You suspect on this
basis that the company running the teleporter has cheated you, and did not
send copies to the holiday destinations at all. You demand a refund.
The confusion here arises from using the pronoun "you" in the traditional
way: as if there can only be one "you" in existence at any one time.
"Stay-home-you" imagines he has missed out on seeing Jupiter from its moons,
because, obviously, he is here and not there. This is valid reasoning when a
person cannot be in two places at once, but in this case we are starting
with the premise that a person can be in at least 1001 places at once!
In a similar vein, if the existence of multiple versions of me branching out
from the present moment in Platonia/Multiverse is allowed, the fact that
"I-typing" do not experience, say, my laptop computer turning into a
kangaroo and hopping away does not mean that it doesn't happen.
(The above discussion brings up the old arguments about personal identity,
but I will refrain from starting a thread on that topic unless others are
interested.)
Stathis Papaioannou.
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Received on Sat Apr 24 2004 - 10:39:44 PDT