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

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:45:52 +0200

Le 12-juin-05, à 06:30, Jesse Mazer a écrit :

> My speculation is that p(y -> x) would depend on a combination of some
> function that depends only on intrinsic features of the description of
> x and y--how "similar" x is to y, basically, the details to be
> determined by some formal "theory of consciousness" (or 'theory of
> observer-moments', perhaps)--and the absolute probability of x, since
> if two possible future OMs x and x' are equally "similar" to my
> current OM y, then I'd expect if x had a higher abolute measure than
> x' (perhaps x' involves an experience of a 'white rabbit' event), then
> p(y -> x) would be larger than p(y -> x').

To Jesse: You apparently completely separate the probability of x and
x' from the similarity of x and x'.
I am not sure that makes sense for me.
In particular how could x and x' be similar, if x', but not x, involves
a 'white rabbit events'.

To Hal: I don't understand how an OM could write a letter. Writing a
letter, it seems to me, involves many OMs. Evolution, and more
generally "computational history" *is* what gives sense to any of the
OM. What evolves is more "real" that the many (subjective or objective)
bricks on which evolution proceeds and histories locally rely.

To Russell: I don't understand what you mean by a "conscious
description". Even the expression "conscious" machine can be misleading
at some point in the reasoning. It is really some person, which can be
(with comp) associate relatively to a machine/machine-history, who can
be conscious.
Imo, only a person can be conscious. Even the notion of OM, as it is
used in most of the recent posts, seems to me be a construction of the
mind of some person. It is personhood which makes possible to attribute
some sense to our many living 1-person OMs.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Mon Jun 13 2005 - 06:06:10 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:10 PST