Well, first of all, I would like to say a great thanks to you for those posts. They are very interesting, pleasant to read, they follow a clear and coherent progression.
But I disagree with you in one “tactical” point : arguing Many Worlds for arguing that you don’t require the same atoms for personal identity seems like building and then using a liquid-helium refrigerated computer to compute 3+5 = 8. I mean, yes, Many Worlds implies that personal identity is not in individual atoms, but even if Many Worlds were false, even without QM at all but just classical chemistry, biology, neuroscience, understanding of neural networks, … identity is not in individual atoms.
Even after reading the whole QM sequence and other posts in LW/OB, I’m not yet fully convinced about MWI. I do give it a much higher chance of being “right” than the Copenhaguen interpretation. I’m not too sure about the other interpretations (transactional for example) which I didn’t dig in fully enough. But well… we still have holes : no way to derivate the Born rule, no answer to quantum gravity. Those two holes are not specific to MWI—but they are in MWI. The day we’ll find a way to fill those two holes, it may require a switch to another view of the reality, one we just can’t really think about now, like in the 20s they didn’t think of MWI, or like Newton didn’t think of curvature of space to explain gravity. It may look like MWI, or it may look quite different from it… so I wouldn’t bet on MWI with a probability close to 1. Maybe like to 0.5. Or somewhat less, if I read more about the other interpretations. Even if I admit that the timeless MWI looks very … awesome.
But even before reading LW/OB, I was already betting with almost 1 probability of me not being made of my atoms, if you scan me, disintegrate me and rebuild on Mars close to thermal nose, yes, it’s “me”. Maybe I’m not the target for that part of those posts in that case… but still, I don’t think that we need to go as far as MWI to justify that identity and consciousness is in the way the neurons are organized/interconnected, and the way the currents flows in them, and not in individual atoms. I guess that comes, at least in huge part, from my experience as a computer scientist… so maybe speaking of computer science/artifical intelligence would help for that point ?
Well, first of all, I would like to say a great thanks to you for those posts. They are very interesting, pleasant to read, they follow a clear and coherent progression.
But I disagree with you in one “tactical” point : arguing Many Worlds for arguing that you don’t require the same atoms for personal identity seems like building and then using a liquid-helium refrigerated computer to compute 3+5 = 8. I mean, yes, Many Worlds implies that personal identity is not in individual atoms, but even if Many Worlds were false, even without QM at all but just classical chemistry, biology, neuroscience, understanding of neural networks, … identity is not in individual atoms.
Even after reading the whole QM sequence and other posts in LW/OB, I’m not yet fully convinced about MWI. I do give it a much higher chance of being “right” than the Copenhaguen interpretation. I’m not too sure about the other interpretations (transactional for example) which I didn’t dig in fully enough. But well… we still have holes : no way to derivate the Born rule, no answer to quantum gravity. Those two holes are not specific to MWI—but they are in MWI. The day we’ll find a way to fill those two holes, it may require a switch to another view of the reality, one we just can’t really think about now, like in the 20s they didn’t think of MWI, or like Newton didn’t think of curvature of space to explain gravity. It may look like MWI, or it may look quite different from it… so I wouldn’t bet on MWI with a probability close to 1. Maybe like to 0.5. Or somewhat less, if I read more about the other interpretations. Even if I admit that the timeless MWI looks very … awesome.
But even before reading LW/OB, I was already betting with almost 1 probability of me not being made of my atoms, if you scan me, disintegrate me and rebuild on Mars close to thermal nose, yes, it’s “me”. Maybe I’m not the target for that part of those posts in that case… but still, I don’t think that we need to go as far as MWI to justify that identity and consciousness is in the way the neurons are organized/interconnected, and the way the currents flows in them, and not in individual atoms. I guess that comes, at least in huge part, from my experience as a computer scientist… so maybe speaking of computer science/artifical intelligence would help for that point ?