This assumes there is such a thing as a particular stream of consciousness, rather than your brain retconning a stream of consciousness to you when you bother to ask it (as is what appears to happen).
Yes it does assume that. However, we have plenty of evidence for this hypothesis.
My memory, and the memory of humans and higher mammals alike, has tremendous predictive power. Things like I remember a particular National Lampoon magazine cartoon with a topless boxer chanting “I am the queen of england, I like to sing and dance, and if you don’t believe me, I will punch you in the pants,” from about 40 years ago. I recently saw a DVD purporting to have all National Lampoons recorded digitally on it, I bought this and sure enough, the cartoon was there.
It seems clear to me that if conscious memory is predictive of future physical experience, it is drawn from something local to the Everett Branch my consciousness is in.
Let me design an experiment to test this. Set up a Schrodinger’s cat experiment, include a time display which will show the time at which the cat was killed if in fact the cat is killed. If I once open the lid of the box and find the cat, and look at the time it was killed, record the time on a piece of paper which I put in a box on the table next to me and then close the box. I reopen it many subsequent times and each time I record the time on a piece of paper and put it on the box, or I record “N/A” on the paper if the cat is still alive.
My prediction is that every time I open the box with the memory of seeing the dead cat, I will still see the dead cat. Further, I predict that the time on the decay timer will be the same every time I reopen the box. This in my opinion proves that memory sticks with the branch my consciousness is in. Even if we only saw the same time 99 times out of 100, it would still prove that memory sticks, but not perfectly, with the branch my consciousness is in, which would then be a fact that physics explaining what I experience of the world would have to explain.
Having not explicitly done this experiment, I cannot claim for sure that we will conclude my consciousness is “collapsing” on an Everett Branch just as in Copenhagen interpretation it was the wave function that collapsed. But I will bet $100 against $10,000 if anybody wants to do the experiment. The terms of the bet are if you have a set-up that shows the counter result, that consciousness apparently dredges up memories of different nearby Everett branches by seeing different times on the timer, then I will come to where you are with your set-up and if you can show me it working for both you and I you get the $10,000, otherwise I get the $100 to defray my travel expenses. I’ll reserve the right to pass on checking your set-up out if travel costs would be over $600, but for me that covers a good fraction of the world (I am in Sandy Eggo in this Everett Branch).
Fortunately for you cat lovers, the experiment can be done without the cat. You simply need to measure the time of radioactive decay, killing a cat with cyanide on detection of the radioactive decay is not necessary to win or lose the bet (or to prove the point.)
Note the box of papers with recorded times in it can also be used as evidence. If I open that box and all the papers have the same time written on them, and that is the time I remember, then I take this as strong evidence that my memory has been returning memories from only the current everett branch. If my memory were unhooked from this everett branch, then one would expect the physical evidence of what I had previously remembered which is in this everett branch, to include times from other everett branches. If it does not, then I think we can conclude that human consciousness, including its memories, are branch local, that a “collapse” occurs in MWI when we attempt to use it to predict what we will experience in this universe.
And indeed, I think predicting what we will experience is the hallmark of all good theories of how the universe works. We may say we want to predict “what will happen,” but I believe by this we mean “what I will see happen.”
It seems clear to me that if conscious memory is predictive of future physical experience, it is drawn from something local to the Everett Branch my consciousness is in.
Whatever makes you think that your consciousness is in only one Everett branch? (And what do you think is happening on all those other branches that look so much like this one but that lack your consciousness?)
Surely the right account of this, conditional on MWI, is not that your consciousness is on a particular branch but that each branch has its own version of your consciousness, and each branch has its own version of your memory, and each branch has its own version of what actually happened, and—not at all by coincidence—these match up with one another.
What happens to your consciousness and your memories is much more like splitting than like collapse.
(It sounds as if you think that this ought to mean that you’d have conscious memories in one branch from other branches, but I can’t see why. Am I missing something?)
(It sounds as if you think that this ought to mean that you’d have conscious memories in one branch from other branches, but I can’t see why. Am I missing something?)
I misunderstood what David Gerard was suggesting and took a long riff proposing an experiment to address something he wasn’t saying.
The tricky part for me is the extremely clear conscious experience I have of being on only one branch. That there are other consciousnesses NEARLY identical to mine on other nearby Everett branches, presumably having the same strong awareness that they are on only one Everett branch and have no direct evidence of any other branch is clearer to me. MWI seems to truly be an interpretation, not a theory, with apparently absolutely no Popperian experiments that could ever distinguish it from wave function collapse theories.
You can upload a person into a quantum computer and do Schrödinger’s cat experiments on them. If you have a computational theory of mind, this should falsify at least some informal collapse theories.
You could have that predictive power without actually having a continuous stream of awareness. Consider sleepwalkers who can do things and have conversations (if not very good ones) with no conscious awareness. You’re using philosophy to object to observed reality.
OK, i misunderstood what you were implying in your previous post. So there are multiple streams of consciousness, one on each everett branch, and the memories returned on each everett branch are the ones in the (conscious+unconscious) brain that exists on that everett branch.
So I experience my mind always returning memories consistent with my branch even as other branch-mwengler’s experience memories consistent with their branch, and like me, use that as evidence for their uniqueness.
So it really is an interpretation, predicting nothing different in experience than does copenhagen.
I haven’t seen one example of a precise definition of what constitutes an “observation” that’s supposed to collapse the wavefunction in Copenhagen interpretation. Decoherence, OTOH, seems to perfecty describe the observed effects, including the consistency of macro-scale history.
This in my opinion proves that memory sticks with the branch my consciousness is in.
Actually it just proves that memory sticks with the branch it’s consistent with. For all we know, our consciousnesses are flitting from branch to branch all the time and we just don’t remember because the memories stay put.
We may say we want to predict “what will happen,” but I believe by this we mean “what I will see happen.”
Yeah, settling these kinds of questions would be much easier if we weren’t limited to the data that manages to reach our senses.
In MWI the definition of “I” is not quite straightforward: the constant branching of the wavefunction creates multiple versions of everyone inside, creating indexical uncertainty which we experience as randomness.
Yes it does assume that. However, we have plenty of evidence for this hypothesis.
My memory, and the memory of humans and higher mammals alike, has tremendous predictive power. Things like I remember a particular National Lampoon magazine cartoon with a topless boxer chanting “I am the queen of england, I like to sing and dance, and if you don’t believe me, I will punch you in the pants,” from about 40 years ago. I recently saw a DVD purporting to have all National Lampoons recorded digitally on it, I bought this and sure enough, the cartoon was there.
It seems clear to me that if conscious memory is predictive of future physical experience, it is drawn from something local to the Everett Branch my consciousness is in.
Let me design an experiment to test this. Set up a Schrodinger’s cat experiment, include a time display which will show the time at which the cat was killed if in fact the cat is killed. If I once open the lid of the box and find the cat, and look at the time it was killed, record the time on a piece of paper which I put in a box on the table next to me and then close the box. I reopen it many subsequent times and each time I record the time on a piece of paper and put it on the box, or I record “N/A” on the paper if the cat is still alive.
My prediction is that every time I open the box with the memory of seeing the dead cat, I will still see the dead cat. Further, I predict that the time on the decay timer will be the same every time I reopen the box. This in my opinion proves that memory sticks with the branch my consciousness is in. Even if we only saw the same time 99 times out of 100, it would still prove that memory sticks, but not perfectly, with the branch my consciousness is in, which would then be a fact that physics explaining what I experience of the world would have to explain.
Having not explicitly done this experiment, I cannot claim for sure that we will conclude my consciousness is “collapsing” on an Everett Branch just as in Copenhagen interpretation it was the wave function that collapsed. But I will bet $100 against $10,000 if anybody wants to do the experiment. The terms of the bet are if you have a set-up that shows the counter result, that consciousness apparently dredges up memories of different nearby Everett branches by seeing different times on the timer, then I will come to where you are with your set-up and if you can show me it working for both you and I you get the $10,000, otherwise I get the $100 to defray my travel expenses. I’ll reserve the right to pass on checking your set-up out if travel costs would be over $600, but for me that covers a good fraction of the world (I am in Sandy Eggo in this Everett Branch).
Fortunately for you cat lovers, the experiment can be done without the cat. You simply need to measure the time of radioactive decay, killing a cat with cyanide on detection of the radioactive decay is not necessary to win or lose the bet (or to prove the point.)
Note the box of papers with recorded times in it can also be used as evidence. If I open that box and all the papers have the same time written on them, and that is the time I remember, then I take this as strong evidence that my memory has been returning memories from only the current everett branch. If my memory were unhooked from this everett branch, then one would expect the physical evidence of what I had previously remembered which is in this everett branch, to include times from other everett branches. If it does not, then I think we can conclude that human consciousness, including its memories, are branch local, that a “collapse” occurs in MWI when we attempt to use it to predict what we will experience in this universe.
And indeed, I think predicting what we will experience is the hallmark of all good theories of how the universe works. We may say we want to predict “what will happen,” but I believe by this we mean “what I will see happen.”
Whatever makes you think that your consciousness is in only one Everett branch? (And what do you think is happening on all those other branches that look so much like this one but that lack your consciousness?)
Surely the right account of this, conditional on MWI, is not that your consciousness is on a particular branch but that each branch has its own version of your consciousness, and each branch has its own version of your memory, and each branch has its own version of what actually happened, and—not at all by coincidence—these match up with one another.
What happens to your consciousness and your memories is much more like splitting than like collapse.
(It sounds as if you think that this ought to mean that you’d have conscious memories in one branch from other branches, but I can’t see why. Am I missing something?)
I misunderstood what David Gerard was suggesting and took a long riff proposing an experiment to address something he wasn’t saying.
The tricky part for me is the extremely clear conscious experience I have of being on only one branch. That there are other consciousnesses NEARLY identical to mine on other nearby Everett branches, presumably having the same strong awareness that they are on only one Everett branch and have no direct evidence of any other branch is clearer to me. MWI seems to truly be an interpretation, not a theory, with apparently absolutely no Popperian experiments that could ever distinguish it from wave function collapse theories.
You can upload a person into a quantum computer and do Schrödinger’s cat experiments on them. If you have a computational theory of mind, this should falsify at least some informal collapse theories.
You could have that predictive power without actually having a continuous stream of awareness. Consider sleepwalkers who can do things and have conversations (if not very good ones) with no conscious awareness. You’re using philosophy to object to observed reality.
OK, i misunderstood what you were implying in your previous post. So there are multiple streams of consciousness, one on each everett branch, and the memories returned on each everett branch are the ones in the (conscious+unconscious) brain that exists on that everett branch.
So I experience my mind always returning memories consistent with my branch even as other branch-mwengler’s experience memories consistent with their branch, and like me, use that as evidence for their uniqueness.
So it really is an interpretation, predicting nothing different in experience than does copenhagen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
I haven’t seen one example of a precise definition of what constitutes an “observation” that’s supposed to collapse the wavefunction in Copenhagen interpretation. Decoherence, OTOH, seems to perfecty describe the observed effects, including the consistency of macro-scale history.
Actually it just proves that memory sticks with the branch it’s consistent with. For all we know, our consciousnesses are flitting from branch to branch all the time and we just don’t remember because the memories stay put.
Yeah, settling these kinds of questions would be much easier if we weren’t limited to the data that manages to reach our senses.
In MWI the definition of “I” is not quite straightforward: the constant branching of the wavefunction creates multiple versions of everyone inside, creating indexical uncertainty which we experience as randomness.