To say that the number of blots depends on definition is a lot closer to being true, but that undermines the argument,
How? What argument? I may very well have misunderstood the standard LW position here, so perhaps I agree with you and just don’t know it yet. But I thought Eliezer did in fact suggest we lack a precise enough definition of consciousness to locate ourselves in the quantum ink-blot picture. And he certainly wants to find a better definition.
Approaching Emile’s metaphor from this perspective, I thought it pointed out the need for better understanding of the question.
You could blame Robin, of course. But the part about consciousness doesn’t actually look like confusion to me:
So it actually is possible that we could pawn off the only non-linear phenomenon in all of quantum physics onto a better understanding of consciousness. The question “How many conscious observers are contained in an evolving amplitude distribution?” has obvious reasons to be non-linear.
(!)
Robin Hanson has made a suggestion along these lines.
(!!)
Decoherence is a physically continuous process, and the interaction between LEFT and RIGHT blobs may never actually become zero.
So, Robin suggests, any blob of amplitude which gets small enough, becomes dominated by stray flows of amplitude from many larger worlds.
A blob which gets too small, cannot sustain coherent inner interactions—an internally driven chain of cause and effect—because the amplitude flows are dominated from outside. Too-small worlds fail to support computation and consciousness, or are ground up into chaos, or merge into larger worlds.
I alluded to this in the quantum-randomized memory discussion, when I said the configurations we were talking about all seemed to have equal amplitude. (So if we find ourselves definitively living in one of them through observation, Mangled Worlds does not appear to change that earlier question). Then another commenter suggested I read about Mangled Worlds. So clearly someone’s missed something.
from my understanding of MW, the question of how many worlds can be answered pretty well by ~2 to the power of the average number of decoherence events since the beginning. Unless there’s some wierdness with a lot of worlds getting terminated or still-lifed early.
The difference between counting the states in a quantum computer (for example) as one world or many is at most a constant factor, so the fuzziness on our concept of “world” isn’t actually that much of a big deal. (I chose a quantum computer because it is probably the most definition-stretching phenomenon).
barring weird stuff like quantum computers, branches get very separate very fast, so I don’t think it’s all that weird to talk about number of worlds.
Eliezer’s objection is more about his distaste for infinite sets than about any mysterious properties of consciousness; he feels that the universe should be a large but finite thing rather than a continuum, and thus the granularity of that finite thing becomes an issue.
How? What argument? I may very well have misunderstood the standard LW position here, so perhaps I agree with you and just don’t know it yet. But I thought Eliezer did in fact suggest we lack a precise enough definition of consciousness to locate ourselves in the quantum ink-blot picture. And he certainly wants to find a better definition.
Approaching Emile’s metaphor from this perspective, I thought it pointed out the need for better understanding of the question.
Getting consciousness confused with QM doesn’t sound like Eliezer!
You could blame Robin, of course. But the part about consciousness doesn’t actually look like confusion to me:
I alluded to this in the quantum-randomized memory discussion, when I said the configurations we were talking about all seemed to have equal amplitude. (So if we find ourselves definitively living in one of them through observation, Mangled Worlds does not appear to change that earlier question). Then another commenter suggested I read about Mangled Worlds. So clearly someone’s missed something.
from my understanding of MW, the question of how many worlds can be answered pretty well by ~2 to the power of the average number of decoherence events since the beginning. Unless there’s some wierdness with a lot of worlds getting terminated or still-lifed early.
The difference between counting the states in a quantum computer (for example) as one world or many is at most a constant factor, so the fuzziness on our concept of “world” isn’t actually that much of a big deal. (I chose a quantum computer because it is probably the most definition-stretching phenomenon).
barring weird stuff like quantum computers, branches get very separate very fast, so I don’t think it’s all that weird to talk about number of worlds.
Deocherence evernts aren’t well defined .. they are always FAPP. That;s the source of the problem.
Eliezer’s objection is more about his distaste for infinite sets than about any mysterious properties of consciousness; he feels that the universe should be a large but finite thing rather than a continuum, and thus the granularity of that finite thing becomes an issue.