From: Krekoski Ross (rosskrekoski@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Feb 14 2009 - 02:21:25 MST
On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 3:05 AM, Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com
> wrote:
>
>>
> I'm sure this isn't SL4, and I'm not part of the coterie arguing that
> quantum
> differences produce different people (I'm one of the process heretics), but
> I'd say that it seems obvious that even if there were *no* differences at
> all
> on that day when I was six, I could well be a different person now if it
> were
> rerun.
I disagree-- the 'symmetrical room' thought experiment directly addresses
concerns related to uploading. See below.
John K. Clark wrote:
>This getting rather silly, now even the room must be quantum perfect?!
Yes. The reason being is related to the complexity of the underlying system.
We both agree that quantum procedures interact with classical procedures all
the time. Given a self contained environment, the total information
complexity required to completely describe the state of the self contained
environment cannot decrease over time. Now, a qubit describing the vector of
a ball moving through space is no different in terms of complexity than the
qubit describing an electron's vector. Given that there are constant
interactions at all levels happening all the time, a significant amount of
information passes back and forth between 'classical' and 'quantum' levels
of interaction. I concede that what constitutes a classical level and a
quantum level is somewhat arbitrary, and we cannot be sure of the bandwidth
of information exchange between the two levels, but I will operate under the
(I believe fairly reasonable) assumption that it isn't insignificant and has
an upper bound of the total complexity of the classical system. If the room
is not quantum perfect, it will diverge quickly.
This is directly related to a simulated environment, i.e. the connection
with uploads. Even though our brains may be describable in terms of a
classical computational system, the potential trajectories of a simulated
vs. a non-simulated individual in a simulated vs. non-simulated environment
will be drastically different unless the simulated environment contains
quantum information. Not including such represents a drastic reduction in
complexity, and the 'experience' will be qualitatively different, among
other things.
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