Forgive me, I only scanned. You’re talking about exponentially unlikely physical states, like the kind where you disintegrate from location 1 and just by chance an identical copy of you appears in location 2 for no reason, or the thermodynamic arrow of time runs backwards, or states that encode a mind you can’t decode without the right homomorphic key but then the homomorphic key appears in your alphabet soup just by chance, or your whole life was an elaborate prank for a reality TV show and most of the universe is actually made of cheese, or there’s a giant superintelligent pink elephant in every room but just by chance nobody notices them, or the Easter Bunny and Harry Potter both appear and their magic works just by chance each time they try to use it (in a way conforming to the standard model), or whatever. These states with ≈0 measure might be theoretically possible but personally I don’t put much stock in thought experiments about them?
EDIT still only scanned, but I think I misread the post. I (unconfidently) think the post is about if someone homomorphically encrypts a mind computation, then moves the information in the key past the cosmic event horizon of the expanding universe so the information in the key and the encrypted mind can never return together again. (Or are exponentially unlikely to). You can get an effect like this by e.g. burning the key and letting the infrared light of the fire escape to the blackness of the night sky.
That only comes in in step 10. I agree it’s somewhat suspect. The main reason to imagine these scenarios is temporal locality of natural supervenience. That is, I believe that an agent does not have mental access to the distant past except mediated by the recent past and the present. Any access implying mental states would have to make no behavioral difference, else physical causality would be contradicted. So the randomly generated key is a supporting intuition for temporal locality, and I agree it has problems, but I still think temporal locality is correct, otherwise there would be strange consequences about knowing about the distant past not mediated by the recent past.
Forgive me, I only scanned.
You’re talking about exponentially unlikely physical states, like the kind where you disintegrate from location 1 andjust by chancean identical copy of you appears in location 2 for no reason, or the thermodynamic arrow of time runs backwards, or states that encode a mind you can’t decode without the right homomorphic key but then the homomorphic key appears in your alphabet soupjust by chance, or your whole life was an elaborate prank for a reality TV show and most of the universe is actually made of cheese, or there’s a giant superintelligent pink elephant in every room butjust by chancenobody notices them, or the Easter Bunny and Harry Potter both appear and their magic worksjust by chanceeach time they try to use it (in a way conforming to the standard model), or whatever. These states with ≈0 measure might be theoretically possible but personally I don’t put much stock in thought experiments about them?EDIT still only scanned, but I think I misread the post. I (unconfidently) think the post is about if someone homomorphically encrypts a mind computation, then moves the information in the key past the cosmic event horizon of the expanding universe so the information in the key and the encrypted mind can never return together again. (Or are exponentially unlikely to). You can get an effect like this by e.g. burning the key and letting the infrared light of the fire escape to the blackness of the night sky.
That only comes in in step 10. I agree it’s somewhat suspect. The main reason to imagine these scenarios is temporal locality of natural supervenience. That is, I believe that an agent does not have mental access to the distant past except mediated by the recent past and the present. Any access implying mental states would have to make no behavioral difference, else physical causality would be contradicted. So the randomly generated key is a supporting intuition for temporal locality, and I agree it has problems, but I still think temporal locality is correct, otherwise there would be strange consequences about knowing about the distant past not mediated by the recent past.