1) Saying you can’t tell after the fact whether something occured is not the same as saying it never occured. The fact that we can’t experimentally determine if two carbon atoms have distinct identity is not, repeat not the same as saying that they don’t have separate identity. Maybe they do. You just can’t tell.
2) That has nothing to do with continuity of consciousness. Assume the existence of a perfect matter replicator. What do you expect to happen when you make a copy of yourself? Do you expect to suddenly find yourself inside of the copy? Let’s say that regardless of what you expect at that point, you end up in your same body as before, the old one not the new one. What do you expect to experience then, if you killed yourself? This has nothing, nothing to do with statements about quantum identity and equivalence of configuration spaces. It is about separating the concept of a representation of me, from an instance of that representation which is me. I expect to experience only what the instance of the representation which is currently typing this words will experience as it evolves into the future. If an exact copy of me was made at any time, that’d be pretty awesome. It’d be like having a truly identical twin. But it wouldn’t me me, and if this instance died, I wouldn’t expect to live on experiencing what the copy of me experiences.
3) Sleeping is a total non-sequiter. Do you expect that your brain is 100% shut off and disarticulated into individual neurons when you are in a sleeping state? No? That’s right—just because you don’t have memories, doesn’t mean you didn’t exist while sleep. You just didn’t form memories at the time.
1) As far as I understand it, atoms don’t have a specific ‘location’, there are only probabilities for where that atom might be at any given time. Given that it is silly to speak of individual atoms. Even if I misunderstood that part, it is still the case that two entities which have no discernible difference in principle are the same, as a matter of simple logic.
2) Asking “which body do you wake up in” is a wrong question. It is meaningless because there is no testable difference depending on your answer, it is not falsifiable even in principle. The simple fact is that if you copy Sophronius, you then have 2 Sophronius waking up later, each experiencing the sensation of being the original. Asking whose sensation is “real” is meaningless.
3) It is not a non-sequitur. Sleep interrupts your continuity of self. Therefore, if your existence depends on uninterrupted continuity of self, sleep would mean you die every night.
I notice that you keep using concepts like “you”, “I” and “self” in your defence of a unique identity. I suggest you try removing those concepts or any other that presupposes unique identity. If you cannot do that then you are simply begging the question.
1) Saying you can’t tell after the fact whether something occured is not the same as saying it never occured. The fact that we can’t experimentally determine if two carbon atoms have distinct identity is not, repeat not the same as saying that they don’t have separate identity. Maybe they do. You just can’t tell.
The linked article by Elizer Yudkowsky is straight up wrong for the following reasons:
(1) Eliezer’s understanding of the physics here is bunk. I’m actually a trained physist. He is not. But bonus points to you if you reject this argument because you shouldn’t accept my authority any more than you should accept his. I assume you read Griffiths’ Quantum Mechanics or a similar introductory book and came to your own conclusions?
(2) Specifically the experimental result Eliezer quotes has to do with how we calculate probabilities for quantum mechanical events. There are an infinitely many ways one could calculate probabilities—math describes the universe, it doesn’t constrain it. But if you do so naively, you end up with one answer if you treat “P1 at L1, P2 at L2” as a different state than “P1 at L2, P2 at L1″ than if you treat them as the same state. Experimental results show that the latter probabilities are correct. One interpretation is that P1 and P2 are the same particle, so the state is “P at L1, P at L2”. That’s one interpretation. Another perfectly valid interpretation is that “Particle of type
at L1, Particle of type
at L2″ is the actual state—that is to say that the particles keep their identity but identity doesn’t factor into the probabalistic calculus. That’s why the term used by phsyisits is distinguishable rather than identity. These particles are indistinguishable, but that does not mean they are identical. That would be an unwaranted inference.
(3) All of that is a moot point, because it doesn’t match up at all with what we are talking about: the continuity of self as it relates to human minds. Calculating probabilities about particles in boxes tells us nothing about whether I would expect to wake up in a computer after a destructive upload, or how that relates to a personal desire to cheat death. I don’t care about the particles making up my mind: I care about sustaining the never stopping information processing system which gives rise to my subjective experiance. It does not obviously follow that if my mind state were perfectly saved before I was shot in the head, and then at some distant point in the future a brain configured exactly like mine was created, that I would subjectively experience living on in the future. Not anymore than it makes sense to say that my recently deceased aunt lives on in my mother, her identical twin.
I assume you read Griffiths’ Quantum Mechanics or a similar introductory book and came to your own conclusions?
FWIW, I have a master’s degree in physics and I’m working to get a PhD (though in a subfield not closely related to the basics of QM; I’d trust say Scott Aaronson over myself even though he’s not a physicist).
Another perfectly valid interpretation is that “Particle of type
at L1, Particle of type
at L2″ is the actual state—that is to say that the particles keep their identity but identity doesn’t factor into the probabalistic calculus.
FWIW, I have a master’s degree in physics and I’m working to get a PhD.
Awesome. Please forgive my undeserved snark.
What do you mean by identity?
Honestly I’m not sure. I only envoke the concept of identity in response to nonsense arguments appearing on LessWrong. Normally when I say ‘identity’ i mean the concept of ‘self’ which is the whatever-it-is which experiences my perceptions, thoughts, inner monologues, etc, or whatever it is that gives rise to the experience of me. How this relates to distinguishability of particles in quantum mechanics, I don’t know.. which is kinda the point. When calculating probabilities, you treat two states as the same if they are indistinguishable … how this gets warped into explaining what I’d expect to experience while undergoing a destructive upload is beyond me.
Yes you are missing a few things.
1) Saying you can’t tell after the fact whether something occured is not the same as saying it never occured. The fact that we can’t experimentally determine if two carbon atoms have distinct identity is not, repeat not the same as saying that they don’t have separate identity. Maybe they do. You just can’t tell.
2) That has nothing to do with continuity of consciousness. Assume the existence of a perfect matter replicator. What do you expect to happen when you make a copy of yourself? Do you expect to suddenly find yourself inside of the copy? Let’s say that regardless of what you expect at that point, you end up in your same body as before, the old one not the new one. What do you expect to experience then, if you killed yourself? This has nothing, nothing to do with statements about quantum identity and equivalence of configuration spaces. It is about separating the concept of a representation of me, from an instance of that representation which is me. I expect to experience only what the instance of the representation which is currently typing this words will experience as it evolves into the future. If an exact copy of me was made at any time, that’d be pretty awesome. It’d be like having a truly identical twin. But it wouldn’t me me, and if this instance died, I wouldn’t expect to live on experiencing what the copy of me experiences.
3) Sleeping is a total non-sequiter. Do you expect that your brain is 100% shut off and disarticulated into individual neurons when you are in a sleeping state? No? That’s right—just because you don’t have memories, doesn’t mean you didn’t exist while sleep. You just didn’t form memories at the time.
1) As far as I understand it, atoms don’t have a specific ‘location’, there are only probabilities for where that atom might be at any given time. Given that it is silly to speak of individual atoms. Even if I misunderstood that part, it is still the case that two entities which have no discernible difference in principle are the same, as a matter of simple logic.
2) Asking “which body do you wake up in” is a wrong question. It is meaningless because there is no testable difference depending on your answer, it is not falsifiable even in principle. The simple fact is that if you copy Sophronius, you then have 2 Sophronius waking up later, each experiencing the sensation of being the original. Asking whose sensation is “real” is meaningless.
3) It is not a non-sequitur. Sleep interrupts your continuity of self. Therefore, if your existence depends on uninterrupted continuity of self, sleep would mean you die every night.
I notice that you keep using concepts like “you”, “I” and “self” in your defence of a unique identity. I suggest you try removing those concepts or any other that presupposes unique identity. If you cannot do that then you are simply begging the question.
Well...
The linked article by Elizer Yudkowsky is straight up wrong for the following reasons:
(1) Eliezer’s understanding of the physics here is bunk. I’m actually a trained physist. He is not. But bonus points to you if you reject this argument because you shouldn’t accept my authority any more than you should accept his. I assume you read Griffiths’ Quantum Mechanics or a similar introductory book and came to your own conclusions?
(2) Specifically the experimental result Eliezer quotes has to do with how we calculate probabilities for quantum mechanical events. There are an infinitely many ways one could calculate probabilities—math describes the universe, it doesn’t constrain it. But if you do so naively, you end up with one answer if you treat “P1 at L1, P2 at L2” as a different state than “P1 at L2, P2 at L1″ than if you treat them as the same state. Experimental results show that the latter probabilities are correct. One interpretation is that P1 and P2 are the same particle, so the state is “P at L1, P at L2”. That’s one interpretation. Another perfectly valid interpretation is that “Particle of type
at L1, Particle of type
at L2″ is the actual state—that is to say that the particles keep their identity but identity doesn’t factor into the probabalistic calculus. That’s why the term used by phsyisits is distinguishable rather than identity. These particles are indistinguishable, but that does not mean they are identical. That would be an unwaranted inference.
(3) All of that is a moot point, because it doesn’t match up at all with what we are talking about: the continuity of self as it relates to human minds. Calculating probabilities about particles in boxes tells us nothing about whether I would expect to wake up in a computer after a destructive upload, or how that relates to a personal desire to cheat death. I don’t care about the particles making up my mind: I care about sustaining the never stopping information processing system which gives rise to my subjective experiance. It does not obviously follow that if my mind state were perfectly saved before I was shot in the head, and then at some distant point in the future a brain configured exactly like mine was created, that I would subjectively experience living on in the future. Not anymore than it makes sense to say that my recently deceased aunt lives on in my mother, her identical twin.
FWIW, I have a master’s degree in physics and I’m working to get a PhD (though in a subfield not closely related to the basics of QM; I’d trust say Scott Aaronson over myself even though he’s not a physicist).
What do you mean by identity?
Awesome. Please forgive my undeserved snark.
Honestly I’m not sure. I only envoke the concept of identity in response to nonsense arguments appearing on LessWrong. Normally when I say ‘identity’ i mean the concept of ‘self’ which is the whatever-it-is which experiences my perceptions, thoughts, inner monologues, etc, or whatever it is that gives rise to the experience of me. How this relates to distinguishability of particles in quantum mechanics, I don’t know.. which is kinda the point. When calculating probabilities, you treat two states as the same if they are indistinguishable … how this gets warped into explaining what I’d expect to experience while undergoing a destructive upload is beyond me.