[extropy-chat] Mangled Worlds

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Robin Hanson wrote:
> At 10:41 AM 2/24/2006, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky  wrote:
> 
>>Robin, I don't have time to respond to this in full, at least not today,
>>but when you're talking about how mangled worlds look from a
>>first-person perspective, you're invoking a transition about whose
>>nature you are yourself confused.  It is very dangerous to try and
>>manipulate concepts about which you are confused, especially the C-word.
> 
> Well I am certainly confused by this paragraph.  C-word = confused?

(whispers) "Consciousness"

>>People exist atop causal relations in timeless patterns of quantum mist.
>>When a blob of timeless quantum mist branches its determination of
>>other sectors of quantum configuration space, this is experienced as a
>>split, since multiple computations continue from the same original
>>state.  When one of the branches overruns a barrier of mist already
>>present in greater intensity as the shadow of other blobs, then that
>>branch doesn't govern causal relations in that section of configuration
>>space; since there is no causal relation, there is no computation, and
>>hence no computation continuing from your current state to experience
>>anything continued from your current state.
> 
> Couldn't I say something similar if I smashed your head in with a hammer?
> As I smash your brain I disrupt the causal relations, preventing the relevant
> computations, and making you cease to exist.   Still might hurt like hell as
> you died though.

Bearing in mind that I myself am not wholly unconfused...

As you smash my brain, I die in *all* the branches.  The pain and 
suffering occurs while my brain is still processing.  My brain 
experiences a continuous reduction of processing which trails into 
death.  It's not that the computation stops but that my death is what is 
computed.

There are separate questions for (a) whether quantum immortality works, 
that is, the subjective outcome when nearly all computations continue 
with your death but a few continue with you alive; and (b) what happens 
if the underlying computation itself only continues in certain 
directions, all of them containing you.  I don't see any "aborted 
destiny" about the branches that halt at a barrier of mist shadowed from 
other sources; the computation just never goes there to begin with. 
Follow the computation, not the mist; this is a more sophisticated 
version of the mental error of following material substances to 
determine personal identity.

I really have a hard time visualizing any way in which quantum mangling 
would correspond to experienced "mangling".  I think there may be a 
runaway metaphor here.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence