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army1987 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: David_Gerard 26 July 2014 11:26AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 26 August 2014 11:46:39PM *  0 points [-]

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 <P> at L1, Particle of type <P> 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.

What do you mean by identity?

Comment author: [deleted] 27 August 2014 04:37:40PM *  0 points [-]

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.

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