RE: Belief Statements

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:11:07 +0100

At 10:24 13/01/05 +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>1. Every possible world can be simulated by a computer program.


With the most usual (Aristotelian) sense of the term "world", this
assumption would entail the falsity of comp,
which is that I can be simulated by a computer program.
(I, or any of the class of observers I belong(s) to).
But then, as you were indeed driving at, we
cannot know in computations are supporting us,
and there are actually 2^Aleph0 infinite histories
going through your current state, and any notion of worlds
is a subjective notion emerging from probabilistic
"interference" among those computations. Actually
those which support you + all those below (your substitution
level).

In the spirit of your thought experiment, let me ask
you a "personal" question. Assume you have big motivation
for going to Mars. You can now choose between a 100$ and a
10000$ teletransporter machine (TTM). Let us assume you are not so rich
that this difference count (or adjust the number relatively to your situation).
The 100$ TTM has no security and it is known that billion of copies of yourself
will be sold elsewhere, for example to the kind of "hell" you were pointing to.
The 10000$ TTM has quantum coded protection, so that the probability
is very near one that no pirate will be able to copy you.
Are you telling us that you will take the insecure low cost TTM ?

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jan 13 2005 - 09:14:02 PST

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