Of course you are right: there is no way to distinguish the original from
the copy, given that the copying process works as intended. And if you
believe that everything possible exists, then there will always be at least
one version of you who will definitely experience whatever outcome you are
leaving to chance. Probability is just a first person experience of a
universe which is in fact completely deterministic, because we cannot access
the parallel worlds where our copies live, and because even if we could, we
can only experience being one person at a time.
--Stathis Papaioannou
Bruno Marchal writes:
>You made your point. Let me give you an argument showing (incorrectly) that
>the notion of probability is not applicable in the duplication situations.
>I let you find where is the error. The argument is of course (*) a thought
>experiment and I present it through an imaginary story. In the "copy and
>the chair" you reverse the situation. Here I show it to be completely
>arbitrary.
>
>It is the story of my friend Jack. Jack is a computationalist practitioner,
>and he is also fond of the planet Mars. Unfortunately he married Jeanne who
>was anti computationalist. Nevertheless he promised to never leave her. And
>Jack is as honest as possible.
>Today, classical teleportation and duplication were common, but Jeanne just
>believes that those who are reconstituted are sort of "impostors", and that
>each time an "original" is scanned and annihilated, well, he just dye.
>One day Jack, who is a little bit tired arguing with Jeanne, found a
>proposition for a nice Job on Mars. He decides to duplicate itself, by
>being scanned, and then send on Mars and be reconstituted on it. All this
>without annihilation of the original, so as to be able not feeling guilty
>in front of Jeanne, and hurt her feeling in case she would know.
>Jack, who bet on comp, thought that he has a chance of 1/2 to "be the one
>who will enjoy working on Mars"
>After having done the experience. Jack-original was a little bit sad.
>Jack-1, the copy, was delighted: it has worked!
>Soon after, his news paper was offering even more jobs on Mars, actually 64
>jobs. He decided to reiterate the "copy and paste" (no cut) 64 times. He
>thought that the probability he remains the original was 1/2^64 (= about
>1/1,84 10^19) so that he would be rather unlucky to be the one feeling
>remaining the original!
>But as tautologies are tautologies, the original remains the original, so
>he was, as a computationalist, quite astonished failing again. He did even
>begin to doubt comp. On Mars, Jack-2, Jack-3, ..., Jack-65 were delighted
>and were thinking that they knew that trick could hardly fail!
>And then new jobs on Mars were still offered, dirty dangerous one. Jack
>(who is Jack-0) was beginning to doubt comp, and was thinking that Jeanne
>was perhaps right about the reconstituted people being "other". Still, its
>relation with Jeanne were bad enough he really wants to leave her, and its
>frustration not being on Mars was growing and growing. And perhaps Jack was
>not so honest, and he makes up the following plan: "I will just LET THE
>ORIGINAL GO ON MARS". And Jack promises to himself that, would he
>acknowledge to be the copy, he would stay with Jeanne.
>He even decides to delay the reconstitution, following that anti-comp
>superstition that being scanned, and reconstituted with a delay makes you
>sure to remain the original.
>So he scanned himself, with a program activating the reconstitution with a
>delay of one hour (say), and then, he was going on MARS, by usual 2 years
>trip by rocket (he was doubting! Note the irony here: he feels to leave
>Jeanne at the time he feels to get her point! ).
>You can imagine the disappointment of the copy on earth. "What! it fails
>again! Come on Please! Will I ever successfully quit earth? Jeanne did not
>see Jack was a copy, and Jack did not despair finding a way to go on mars,
>letting a copy or "an original" of him with Jeanne.
>In new attempts, he decides to select the one among copy/oiginal with a
>coin, among the original and the copy. It failed! He decides to use the
>decimal of PI written in binary as selector. It failed! He decides to use
>ieratively a quantum OR gate making the decision "arbitrarily sure": it
>still failed!
>This explains why my friend Jack was rather depressed the last time I saw
>him. Obviously, anyone on Earth will find eself with a necessarily
>disappointed "Jack", given that from our point of view the tautology
>alluded above is now: "the one who has been chosen to stay on Earth will
>have with certainty the experience of staying on Earth". For any strategy
>of choice (original/copy) we could suggest to Jack, we know, that the
>"Jack" who will stay on earth and come back to the bar will say: "it
>failed".
>That day in the bar, my friend Jack was feeling being incredibly unlucky.
>Was he right?
>
>
>Bruno
>
>
>
>(*) Those who believe that we cannot argue or prove proposition through
>thought experiment can read the mathematical part of my SANE paper where I
>show how to translate similar argument in arithmetic and/or computer
>science. In SANE I say that I substitute the FOLK or GRAND-MOTHER
>psychology (of the philosopher of mind) by a self-referentially correct
>(universal) machine (correct with respect to provability and inductive
>inference).
>
>
>http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
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Received on Sun Jun 26 2005 - 09:22:09 PDT