Re: another puzzzle

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:30:35 -0400

Stathis wrote:
>To summarise my position, it is this: the measure of an observer moment is relevant when a given observer is contemplating what will happen next... Now, minimising acronym use, could you explain what your understanding is of how measure changes with number of copies of an OM which are instantiated, and if it doesn't, then how does it change, and when you use it in calculating how someone's life will go from OM to OM.
 
Jesse wrote:
> Well, see my last response to Hal Finney... The measure on the set of all unique observer-moments is really the fundamental thing, physical notions like "number of copies" are secondary. But I have speculated on the "anticipatory" idea where multiple copies affects your conditional probabilities to the extend that the copies are likely to diverge in the future; so in your example, as long as those 10^100 copies are running in isolated virtual environments and following completely deterministic rules, they won't diverge, so my speculation is that the absolute and relative measures would not be affected in any way by this... There is the question of what it is, exactly, that's supposed to be moving between OMs, and whether this introduces some sort of fundamental duality into my picture of reality...

 
So if the copies are completely synchronized, this puzzle is a no-brainer (easy). But what about if one of the neurons in one of the copies does a little jig of its own for second?
 
More in general, I'm doubting the legitimacy of the puzzle in the first place: If, in your theory, measure really corresponds to the probability of having a next observer moment, and then you bring God into the picture and have him totally mess up the probabilities by doing what he wants, how are you going to conclude anything meaningful as a continuation of your definition of measure? The flip side of the coin is that apparently the probability of having a next OM is 100% ("everything exists"). In this theory, no matter what God does with 10^100 copies, there are 10^100^n other identical next OMs out there to replace them. It seems like what I've seen so far on this list is an exercise in forgetting that "everything exists" for a moment to do a thought experiment to conclude more about "everything exists".
 
Tom Caylor
 
Received on Tue Jun 21 2005 - 12:44:37 PDT