RE: The Time Deniers

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 02:54:19 -0400

Lee Corbin wrote:

>
>Jesse writes
>
> >
> > For me, it's not that I think it's meaningful to imagine a universe just
> > like ours but without causality, rather it's that I think causality is
> > probably important to deciding whether a particular system in our
>universe
> > counts as a valid "instantiation" of some observer-moment, and thus
> > contributes to the measure of that observer-moment (which in turn
>affects
> > the likelihood that I will experience that observer-moment in the
>future).
>
>But here you use the word "system". Isn't that by definition a
>process (obeying, for example, in our universe the Schrödinger
>equation)? I wouldn't know, in other words, what kind of system
>would *not* be a valid instantiation of an observer-moment if
>it actually computed a sequence of states that emulated a person.

As long as you actually run the simulation I think it would be a valid
instantiation--but see below about why a book doesn't qualify.

>
> > I think if you run a simulation of an observer, and record the output
>and
> > write it down in a book which you then make thousands of copies of, the
> > static description in all the books most likely would not have any
>effect on
> > the measure of that observer, since these descriptions lack the
>necessary
> > "causal structure".
>
>Yes, I'd agree. When you use the word "static" then I get the
>picture. A warehouse full of stacks of paper with symbols
>written on it for example. But it's not *doing* anything.

Exactly.

>
> > I sort of vaguely imagine all of spacetime as an
> > enormous graph showing the causal links between primitive events, with
>the
> > number of instantiations basically being the number of spots you could
>find
> > a particular sub-graph representing an observer-moment embedded in the
> > entire graph; the graphs corresponding to the physical process that we
>label
> > a "book" would not have the same structure as graphs corresponding to
>the
> > physical process that we label as a simulation of a particular observer.
>
>Here I am not sure that I am following you. Let's say somewhere in
>spacetime we have a spot, as you say, where we could find a particular
>sub-graph representing an observer moment. But a "book" COULD NOT
>have the same kind of structure? (If the answer is yes, then I'm
>following you.
>

Yes, I'm saying the book wouldn't have the same causal structure. There
would still be *some* sort of causal structure despite the fact that a book
looks "static" on a macro-level--the book only maintains macro-level
stability because of constant electromagnetic interactions between the atoms
that make it up--but the causal structure of the physical book wouldn't
resemble the causal structure of the simulation which is being described in
symbols on the pages of the book.

Jesse
Received on Mon Jul 11 2005 - 02:55:33 PDT