Re: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 16:19:39 +0200

Le 02-juin-05, à 15:23, Lee Corbin a écrit :

>
>> Stathis: So if I am told that tomorrow I will be copied ten times and
>> one of these copies will be tortured, I am worried, because
>> that means there is a 1/10 chance I will be tortured.
>
> Good example, but I would say that you will be tortured with
> 100% probability at some places, and tortured with 0% probability
> at nine others. The characterization of a piece of matter "Stathis
> is undergoing torture" is looked upon from the 3rd person as an
> entirely physically characterized objective process.

But here I agree with Stathis. What you say can be said with the throw
of a dice. There *will be* a 100% probability that I will experience
the result n (with n = 1, 2, ...6). And if I make the dice rolling a
long time, by adding the Heisenberg uncertainties there will be (with
the MWI) a 100% probability for each outcome. But before the experience
I am in a maximal state of ignorance, and that gives usually P = 1/6.

>
>> Stathis: But when tomorrow comes and I am not the torture victim, I am
>> relieved, because it is someone else who is suffering, and I can
>> feel sorry for him in the way I feel sorry for suffering strangers.
>
> I suggest that this is not the correct, selfish way that you should
> look at it. It's just the same as in MWI when there "really is" a
> version of you who saw the other outcome. He's you. I have a so-called
> proof of this proposition at http://www.leecorbin.com/dupproof.html

I agree "it is you", but I follow Stathis' intuition that before the
"splitting" the proba is 1/10 of being "that "you"".
If not with comp you must accept that Bruno Marchal *is* Lee Corbin.
I think we did arrive at that conclusion before, isn'it?

>
>> Stathis: What this means is that if you trace an individual's history
>> from his birth
>> to his ultimate demise (which may never come, if QTI is correct), at
>> each
>> time point he is associated with only *one* OM.
>
> Perhaps my insistence wherever possible of describing what is
> happening in our universe from the 3rd person is responsible
> for our different ways of talking.

That's an excellent diagnostic. That will help you to understand how I
derive the very existence of the "physical laws" or "observable theory"
from a ineluctable gap between 1 and 3 person.

>>
>> The conclusion from the above is that the absolute measure of an
>> individual
>> at any time point, from that individual's point of view, is unity.
>> When
>> looking into the future, the other copies in the multiverse do
>> matter, but
>> in this case it is the relative measure of different outcomes rather
>> than
>> the absolute measure which is important. Once the future becomes
>> present,
>> the other copies from the first person perspective are just other
>> people.
>
> Well, we aren't yet used to having more than one of us around
> at any given time. Perhaps our gut feelings on this issue will
> change when the technology allows duplicates. I, for example,
> would never dream of regarding my duplicate as another person.
> He's me, just running at a different location. (Just as, for
> example, my future and past selves are also me, just running
> at different times.)


Suppose immortality (for the sake of the argument). Lee1 and Lee2 can
become as different as Bruno and Lee now.
I think you should consider me as a "you" right now. We were the same
amoeba you know, a long time ago.


Bruno (I mean Lee ;)


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jun 02 2005 - 10:28:45 PDT

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