Le 25-janv.-06, à 20:05, daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
> In the UDA it is said that the Correct Level Of Substitution (I'll
> call is CLOS for short) is unknowable. I agree: Just intuitively, in
> a closed system, how could we know if something wasn't exactly right?
> It would result in the future being different than it would have been,
> but we wouldn't be aware of the difference. We would just accept that
> as reality.
But smoking a cigarette or drinking tea or things like that also result
in the future being different, and in those case many will still say
they did survive the cigarette, tea, ... And those possible different
stories are of a type such that it is reasonable to say the CLOS
(Correct Level of Substitution) has been chosen, despite you are right
we cannot know it.
More apt to share your intuition here would be "agnosic mental
disease", where, for example, someone get blind after some use of
(classical) teleportation, but get also amnesic relatively to
everything concerning vision. He would say "I did perfectly survive"
although we could have reasonable doubt it is so.
> Since the CLOS is unknowable, then we should be able to talk about an
> unknowable, yet true, probability P(CLOS) that each substitution is
> done at the CLOS.
I think it would be foolish to choose the LOS (the level of
substitution) in any probabilistic way. Real doctors will argue for
some level with argument from biology or physics. If he knows "comp"
and its consequences, he will know that nothing can give certainty in
this matter.
> By the way, we know at least P(CLOS) < 1 because the doctor is
> guessing, ...
I could temporarily agree.
> ... and P(CLOS) = 1 would implies that the doctor knows and can
> actually implement it.
Not at all. Suppose some doctor choose the right level, which exists by
comp. The doctor will not know it, as we already agree on that point.
Still, platonistically P(CLOS) = 1.
Look at this analogy: I give you a dice and ask to bet on the result
you can get. You can tell me you will get six with probability = 1/6.
*I* could know that the dice is unfair or corrupted, and that the real
probability is, let us say 1/2. For the CLOS, nobody (even Gods) can
know the real probability, but for the derivation of the LAWS of
physics, we need just to compute the probability for all the CLOS,
given that the Universal Dovetailer generates all your continuations at
all correct levels, by construction.
> OK, so now for my question. So when we talk about finding a
> probability measure on the 1-determinancy (I don't know if that's the
> exact right words),
I guess you were meaning 1-indeterminacy.
> don't we have to multiply this probability measure by the unknown
> P(CLOS) to get the actual probability measure?
Sure. Except that nobody will ever computes those exact "actual
probability measure". It would be like computing the weather
probabilities by computing the Feynman Integral on all particles/waves
of the planet earth together with the probabilities that Feynman got
the right integral + the probability that I am not dreaming, etc. (this
mix unfaithfully the different sorts of uncertainty).
> But this would imply that the probability measure is impossible to
> find out to any degree that would be called scientific, since it is a
> function of P(CLOS), i.e. the step of faith in saying "Yes" to the
> doctor who doesn't know anything.
You are confusing perhaps two levels of uncertainties. The probability
measure could be computable if comp is true. What is impossible is to
know the probability are the correct one, except we can test this
experimentally. We can still believe correctly in those probabilities,
and this, for sure, without knowing we are correct. It is the same with
physics. We cannot know for sure that QM is a or the correct theory,
but this does not prevent us to bet on it, and then to use its
probability theory. No serious scientist will take into account that QM
could be false to change the probabilities implied by it. If QM makes a
wrong prediction, QM will be refuted, nobody will correct it simply by
multiplying the QM uncertainties by some higher level of
epistemological uncertainty. I think.
> In fact, if each moment is equivalent to a substitution (not
> necessarily at the CLOS!), as comp says, then there would be an
> exponential decay of our identity, as sort of identity entropy.
Sure. That's almost a proof "by the absurd", that we should be very
careful before mixing type of uncertainty.
Remember that the goal will not even consist in deriving some tools for
computing the comp proba, but consists in deriving the mathematical
structure of those comp-proba, so as to compare them with the empirical
QM proba.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jan 26 2006 - 07:15:45 PST