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

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 22:57:24 -0400

Dear Lee and Stathis,

    I really do not want to be a stick-in-the-mud here, but what do we base
the idea that "copies" could exist upon? What if "I", or any one else's 1st
person aspect, can not be copied? If the operation of copying is impossible,
what is the status of all of these thought experiments?
    If, and this is a HUGE if, there is some thing irreducibly quantum
mechanical to this "1st person aspect" then it follows from QM that copying
is not allowed. Neither a quantum state nor a "qubit" can be copied without
destroying the "original".

    All of these threads so far seem to be assuming that the process that
gives rise to a 1st person experience and the content of the experience
itself are purely classical and can be faithfully represented by classical
systems. It is this assumption, I believe, that underpins the entire
classical Platonic thesis. Indications are that it has already been
falsified, by the same experiments that unassailably imply that Nature is,
at its core, Quantum Mechanical and not Classical and thus one wonders: "Why
do we persist in this state of denial?"

Stephen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
To: "EverythingList" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 10:32 PM
Subject: RE: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...

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Received on Thu Jun 02 2005 - 23:10:50 PDT