Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example

From: Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 12:19:40 +1000

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 03:59:39PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> > Schroedinger came up with his
> > cat's paradox. Tegmark came up with the quantum suicide experiment.
>
>
> I came up first with the comp suicide, and much later after with the
> quantum suicide and with the "kill the user" sort of quantum
> computation, well before Tegmark, and I am not sure this has helped to
> make my work more "acceptable" or "comprehensible". For me "quantum
> suicide" was a confirmation of the fact, easily derivable from comp,
> that even for purely empirical reason we can doubt "mortality", or
> doubt that the mortality issue is simple, like so many materialist tend
> to think.

James Higgo published a web page describing the history of quantum
suicide aka comp suicide. The notion obvious predates both Tegmark and
Marchal - and there is some anecdotal evidence that Edward Teller knew
about the argument in the early eighties. It appears to have been a
"dirty little secret", which has only really been considered
acceptable talk in polite scientific circles in the last 10 years or so.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics                         	       0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052         	         R.Standish.domain.name.hidden             
Australia                                http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Received on Wed May 10 2006 - 03:40:26 PDT