dadadarren

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The more I think about it the more certain I am that many unsolved problems, not just anthropics, are due to the deep-rooted habit of a view-from-nowhere reasoning. Recognizing perspective as a fundamental part of logic would be the way out.

Problems such as anthropics, interpretive challenges of quantum mechanics, CDT's problem of non-self-analyzing, how agency and free will coexist with physics, Russel's paradox and Godel's incomplete theorem etc

Maybe I am the man with a hammer looking for nails. Yet deep down I have to be honest to myself and say I don't think that's the case. 

I think this discussion is focusing  on what other's would behave towards me, and derive what ought to be regarded as my future self from there. That is certainly a valid discussion to be had. However my post is taking about a different (thought related) topic. 

For example, if I for whatever crazy reason thinks that me from tomorrow:—the one with (largely) the same physical body and no trick on memory whatsoever— not my future self. Then I would do a bunch of irresponsible things that would lead to others' dislike or hostility toward me that could eventually lead to my demise. But so what? If I regard that as a different person, then to hell with him. The current me wouldn't even care. So being detrimental to that future person would not compel current me to regard him as my future self. 

Luckily we do not behave that way.  Everyone, rational ones at least, considers the person with the same physical body and memories of the current self as themself in the future. That is the survival instinct, that is the consensus. 

But that consensus is about an idiosyncratic situation: where memory(experience) and physical body are bound together. Take that away, and we no longer have a clear, unequivocal basis to start a logical discussion. Someone's basis could be the survival of the same physical body would not step into the teletranporter, even if it is greatly convenient and could benefit the one steps out of it. Someone else could start from a different basis. They may believe that only patterns matters. So mind uploading into a silicon machine to make easy copies at the cost of adversely affecting the carbon body would be welcomed. None of these positions could be rebutted by the cost/benefit analysis of some future minds. Because they may or may not care about those minds, at different levels, in the first place. 

Sure, logic is not entirely irrelevant. It comes into play after you pick the basis of your decision. But values, instead of logic, largely determines the answer to the question. 

If one regard physics as a detached description of the world— like a non-interacting yet apt depiction of the objective reality, (assuming that exists and is attainable) then yes there is no distinct "me".  And any explanation of subject experience ought to be explained by physical processes, such that everyone's "MEness" must be ultimately reduced to the physical body. 

However my entire position  stems from a different logical starting point.  It starts with "me". It is an undeniable and fundamental fact that I am this particular thing, which I later referred to it as a human being called Dadadarren.  (Again I assume the same goes for everyone) Everything I know about the world is through that thing's interaction with its environment, which leads to accessible subjective experience. Even physics is learned in such a way, as well as the conception that other things could have perspective different from mine own.  I am not interacting with the world as someone of something else, from those thing's perspective, is just a simple realization after that. 

This way physics would not be taken as the detached fundamental description of objective reality. The description has to originate from a given thing's perspective, working based on its interaction from the environment. That given perspective could be mine, could be Elon's, could be a thermometer's or an electron's.  We strive for concepts and formulas that works from a wide range of perspectives. That's what physical objectivity should mean. 

So it follows that physics cannot explain why I am Dadadarren and not Elon:  because perspective is a prior.  This makes way more sense to me personally: the physical knowledge about the two human beings doesn't even touch on why I am Dadadarren and not Elon. (and that was the purpose of the thought experiment) At least better than the alternative: that they is no ME, or that I am Elon just as I am me,  in some convoluted sense such as open individualism. 

So from where I stand, it is physicalism that requires justification. 

Please do not take this as an insult. Though I do not intend to continue this discussion further, I feel obliged to say that I strongly disagree that we have the same position in substance and only disagree in semantics. Our position are different on a fundamental level. 

The description of "I" you just had is what I earlier referred to as the physical person, which is one of the two possible meanings. For the Doomsday argument, it also used the second meaning: the nonphysical reference to the first-person perspective. I.E. the uniform prior distribution DA proposed, which is integral to the controversial Bayesian update, is not suggesting that a particular physical person can be born earlier than all human beings or later than all of them due to variations in its gestation period. In its convoluted way thanks to the equivocation, it is effectively saying among all the people in the human beings' entire history, "I" could be anyone of them. i.e. "The fact that I am Ape in the Coat living in the earlier 21 century (with a birth rank around 100 billion), rather than someone living in the far future with a birth rank around 500 billion, is evidence to believe that maybe there aren't that many human beings in total". Notice the "I" here is not equivalent to a particular physical person anymore but a reference to the first-person perspective. This claim is what gives the DA a soul-incarnation flavour. 

Therefore, if we take the first-person perspective and the physical person combination as a given and deny theorizing alternatives,  there won't be a Doomsday argument."I am this particular physical person, period (be it Ape in the Coat in your case or Dadadarren for me). There's no rational way of reasoning otherwise." is what ends the DA. There really is no further need of inquiring into the particular physical person's birth rank variations due to pregnancy complications. And as you said, this won't fall into the trap of soul incarnations. 

And that is also my long-held position,  that there is no rational way of theorizing "which person I could be", regard the first-person perspective as primitively given: "I am this physical human being" and be done with it, avoid the temptation of theorizing what the first-person could be as SSA or SIA did. Then there won't be any paradoxes. 

The point of defining "me" vigorously is not about how much upstream or physically specific we ought to be, but rather when conducting discussions in the anthropic field, we ought to recognize words such as "me" or "now" are used equivocally in two different senses: 1, the specific physical person, i.e. the particular human being born to the specific parents etc. and 2, just a reference to the first person of any given perspective. Without distinguishing which meaning in particular is used in an argument, there is room for confounding the discussion, I feel most of our discourse here unproductive due to this confusion. 

 

As long as we are not talking about me being born to different parents but simply having a different birth rank - I'm born a bit earlier, while someone else is born a bit later, for example, - then no souls are required.

This is interesting. I suppose being born to the same parents is just an example you used. e.g. are you a sample of all your siblings? And are other potential children your parents could have if a different sperm fertilize a different egg still you? In those cases there still would be the same problem of soul incarnations. 

So my understanding to your position is that there is no problem as long as you consider yourself to be the same physical person, i.e. the same parents, the same sperm and eggs. The variation in birth rank is due to the events during pregnancy that makes the particular physical person born slightly earlier or later. And this is the correct way to thing about your birth rank. 

If that's your position, then wouldn't your argument against regarding oneself as a random sample among all human beings (past, present, and future) ultimately be : "Because I am this particular physical human being".  And that there is no sense discussing alternatives like "I am a different physical human being"?

While I agree with the notion that we cannot regard ourselves as random samples from all human beings past, present and future, I find the discussion wanting in vigorously defining the reference of "us", or "me" or by extension "my parents". Without doing that there's always the logical wiggle room for arriving at an ad hoc conclusion that does not give paradoxical results, e.g. while discussion SBP, you suggested that "today" could mean any day, then attempting to derive the probability of "today is Monday" from there. That just doesn't sit comfortably with me. 

Similarly, in this post, while discussing the possibility of "my birth rank" you focused on the history of my family tree, arriving at the conclusion that I cannot be born much earlier/later than I really did (realistically speaking a few month earlier at most, otherwise I cannot physically be alive/exist). But that is not DA's claim, the uniform distribution does not imply that your physical body could be born so prematurely such to predate the first ever human being. It simply says as an unknown prior, you being the son of your current parents and you being a different human being - e.g. someone born in the 2500s, ceteris paribus, are equally likely.  And the fact that you are not someone born in the 2500s is the evidence of doom soon which drives the Bayesian update.  The satisfactory rebuttal to DA should undermine that. 

Let's say I concede to your argument.: since I cannot be born much earlier or much later than I really am, therefore cannot regard myself as a random sample from all time. Then what? Is it reasonably to regard myself as a random sample of all human beings born within that short timeframe of my possible birth? Are you comfortable with that? Doesn't it also carry the underlying assumption of preexistence of souls being incarnated into bodies? 

This post highlights my problem with your approach: I just don't see a clear logic dictating which interpretation to use in a given problem—whether it's the specific first-person instance or any instance in some reference class. 

When Alice meets Bob, you are saying she should construe it as "I meet Bob in the experiment (on any day)" instead of "I meet Bob today" because—"both awakening are happening to her, not another person". This personhood continuity, in your opinion, is based on what? Given you have distinguished the memory erasure problem from the fission problem, I would venture to guess you identify personhood by the physical body. If that's the case, would it be correct to say you regard anthropic problems utilizing memory erasures fundamentally different from problems with fissures or clones? Entertain me this, what if the exact procedural is not disclose to you, then what? E.g. there is a chance that the "memory erasure" is actually achieved by creating a clone of Alice and wake that clone on Monday, then destroy it. Then wake the original on Tuesday. What would Alice's probability calculation then? Anything changes if the fissure is used instead of cloning? What would Alice's probability of Tails when she sees Bob when she is unsure of the exact procedure?

Furthermore you are holding that if saw Bob,  Alice should interpret "I have met Bob (on some day) in the experiment". But if if she didn't see Bob, she shall interpret "I haven't met Bob specifically for Today". In another word, whether to use "specifically today" or "someday" depends on whether or not she sees Bob or not. Does this not seem problematic at all to you?

I'm not sure about what you mean in your example, Beauty is awakened on Monday with 50% chance, if she is awaken then what happens? Nothing? The experiment just ends, perhaps with a non-consequential fair coin toss anyway? If she is not awakened then if the coin toss is Tails then she wakes on Tuesday? Is that the setup? I fail to see there is any anthropic elements in this question at all. Of course I would update the probability to favour Tails in this case upon awakening. Because that is new information for me. I wasn't sure that I would find myself awake during the experiment at all. 

I guess my main problem with your approach is that I don't see a clear rational of which probability to use, or when to interpret it as "I see green" and when to interpret it as "Anyone see green" when both of the statement is based on the fact that I drew a green ball. 

For example, my argument is that after seeing the green ball, my probability is 0.9, and I shall make all my decisions based on that. Why not update the pre-game plan based on that probability? Because the pre-game plan is not my decision. It is an agreement reached by all participants, a coordination. That coordination is reached by everyone reasoning objectively, which does not accommodate any any first-person self identification like "I".  In short, when reasoning from my personal perspective,  use "I see green"; when reasoning from an objective perspective, use "someone see green".  All my solution (PBR) for anthropic and related questions are based on the exact same supposition of the axiomatic status of the first-person perspective. It gives the same explanation, and one can predict what this theory says about a problem. Some results are greatly disliked by many, like the nonexistence of self-locating probability and perspective disagreement, but those are clearly the conclusion of PBR, and I am advocating it. 

You are arguing the two interpretation of "I see green" and "Anyone sees green" are both valid, and which one to use depends on the specific question. But, to me, what exact logic dictates this assignment is unclear. You argue that the bets structured not depending on which exact person gets green, then "my decision" shall be based on "anyone sees green", it seems to me, a way of simply selecting whichever interpretation that does not yield a problematic result.  A practice of fitting theory to results. 

To the example I brought up in the last reply, what would you do if you drew a green ball and were told that all participants said yes, you used the probability of 0.9. Rational being you are the only decider in this case. It puzzles me because in exactly what sense "I am the only decider?" Didn't other people also decide to say "yes"? Didn't their "yes" contributed to whether the bet would be taken the same way as your "yes"?  If you are saying I am the only decider because whatever I say would determine whether the bet would be taken.  How is that different from deriving other's responses by using the assumption of "everyone in my position would have the same decision as I do"? But you used probability of 0.5 ("someone sees green") in that situation. If you are referring you being the only decider in a causal—counterfactual sense, then you are still in the same position as all other green ball holders. What justifies the change regarding which interpretation—which probability (0.5 or 0.9)—to use?

And also the case of our discussion about perspective disagreement in the other post where you and cousin-it were having a discussion.  I, by PBR, concluded there should be a perspective disagreement. You held that there won't be a probability disagreement, because the correct way for Alice to interpret the meeting is "Bob has met Alice in the experiment overall" rather than "Bob has met Alice today". I am not sure your rational for picking one interpretation over the other. It seems the correct interpretation is always the one that does not give the problematic outcome. And that to me, is a practice of avoiding the paradoxes but not a theory to resolve them. 

I maintain the memory erasure and fission problem are similar because I regard the first-person identification equally applies to both questions. Both the inherent identifications of "NOW" and "I" are based on the primitive perspective. I.E., to Alice, today's awakening is not the other day's awakening, she can naturally tell them apart because she is experiencing the one today. 

I don't think our difference comes from the non-fissured person always stays in Room1 while the fissure person are randomly assigned either Room 1 or Room 2. Even if the experiment is changed, so that the non-fissured person is randomly assigned among the two rooms, and the fissured person with the original left body always stays in Room 1 and the fissured person with the original right body always in Room 2 my answer wouldn't change. 

Our difference still lies in the primitivity of perspective. In this current problem by cousin-it, I would say Alice should not update the probability after meeting Bob, because from her first-person perspective, the only thing she can observe is "I see Bob (today)" vs "I don't see Bob (today)", and her probability shall be calculated accordingly. She is not in the vantage point to observe whether "I see Bob on one of the two days" vs "I don't see Bob on any of the two days", so she should not update that way. 

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