Re: David Gerrold - War with the Cthorr

On 2008-05-20, Michael Alan Chary <mchary@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article <g0svnj$mja$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> William December Starr <wdstarr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>I'm not sure _when_ in the sequence you're asking about.  Fred's
>>mind-state is recorded at time T1.  Fred2 has that data poured into
>>him and is awakened at time T2.  Are you asking "What makes Fred2 at
>>T2 the same as Fred was at T1?", or "Are they still the same after
>>additional experiential time has passed for least one of them?"
>>
>>Re the first question:
>>
>>If the recording of the mind-state of Original Fred was perfect, and
>>the pouring of that recorded data into Fred2 was equally perfect,
>>then either (1) Fred2, when he starts existence, is the same person
>>as Original Fred was when the recording was made or (2) there's
>>something of O.F. missing from Fred2, because there was more to
>>O.F. than just his mind-state.  If (1), they're the same; if (2),
>>what is it that's missing?
>
> Aren't you violating Heisenberg?

Nope.  At most he's violating quantum no-cloning.

Heisenberg is commonly stated as "you can't measure two complementary
things, such as position and momentum such that the uncertainty in
their product is less than a certain amount."  This is a common
misunderstanding, that conflates two separate quantum mechanical effects.
The first is that is that two complementary variables aren't ever both
even well-defined.  That's what I mean by the Heisenberg uncertainty
relation****p.

This is essentially a /math/ theorem about Fourier transforms.  If
a sound-wave has a well-defined time-it-happened-during, then it
is a large combination of frequencies.  If it has a well-defined
frequency-it's-happening-on than it has to exist over a large range of
times.

The second is that measurement disturbs a system.  In the Copenhagen
picture, (projective) measurement collapses a superposition and selects
a random eigenstate according to the Born probabilities.  But this is
only affects things is theire is a combination of different eigenstates.

Measurement of a system in an eigenstate of the measurement won't
disturb it.  But again, if it's in an eigenstate of position, there's no
momentum value you can point at and say "that's it's momentum".  It is
instead in a superposition of momentum values.

Another question is "how fine a copy do we need to be able to call a
mind a reasonable copy"?  The thing is brains are very warm and wet.
It is unreasonable to expect coherent quantum effects to come into play
in the operation of consciousness.

-- 
Aaron Denney
-><-