[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

[John K Clark]

Michael Miller Wrote:

> I for one would argue that "red" is entirely metaphysical: unless you can
> point to a physical object which fits the noun red

"Red" is an adjective as is "eleven" and "I", this is a fact however much
 third grade English teachers misinform their students.

> if you think the self is comprehensible via the scientific method, can you
> elaborate on precisely what it is that the word points to?

I can't prove that the soul doesn't exist. And maybe some atoms really do
have your name and only your name scratched on them in a way the
scientific method cannot detect. And maybe by pure coincidence in your
entire life you only ate drank and breathed atoms that just happened to
have your name scratched on them. And maybe the other 6 billion people
on the planet also just happened to eat drink and breathe atoms that had
their names scratched on them too. Maybe, but I doubt it.

> Regarding the two groups of identical atoms idea - one of my basic
> problems with this is that they will not be experiencing precisely the
> same thoughts, because they are located in different spaces.

Position cannot possibly be the key to identity because of The Identity
Of Indiscernibles; Leibniz discover the idea about 1690. He said that
things that you can measure are what's important, and if there is no
way to find a difference between two things then they are identical
and switching the position of the objects does not change the physical
state of the system.

Leibniz's idea turned out to be very practical, although until the
20th century nobody realized it, before that his idea had no observable
consequences because nobody could find two things that were exactly
alike. Things changed dramatically when it was discovered that atoms
have no scratches on them to tell them apart.

By using The Identity Of Indiscernibles you can deduce one of the
foundations of modern physics the fact that there must be two classes of
particles, bosons like photons and  fermions like electrons, and from there
you can deduce The Pauli Exclusion Principle, and that is the basis  of the
periodic table of elements, and that is the basis of chemistry, and that is
the basis of life. If The Identity Of Indiscernibles is wrong then this
entire chain breaks down and you can throw Science into the trash can.
Believe it or not I'm not exaggerating, it really is that important!

One of the first and greatest discoveries in Quantum Mechanics was The
Schrödinger Wave Equation. It proved to be enormously useful in
accurately predicting the results of experiments, and as the name implies
it's an equation describing the movement of a wave, but embarrassingly
it was not at all clear what it was talking about.

Exactly what was waving? Schrödinger thought it was a matter wave, but
that didn't seem right to Max Born. Born reasoned that matter is not
smeared around, only the probability of finding it is. Born was correct,
whenever an electron is detected it always acts like a particle, it makes a
dot when it hit's a phosphorus screen not a smudge, however the probability
of finding that electron does act like a wave so you can't be certain
exactly where that dot will be. Born showed that it's the square of the wave
equation that describes the probability, the wave equation itself is sort of
a useful mathematical fiction, like lines of longitude and latitude, because
experimentally we can't measure the quantum wave function F(x) of a
particle, we can only measure the intensity (square) of the wave function
[F(x)]^2 because that's a probability and probability we can measure.

Let's consider a very simple system with lots of space but only 2 particles
in it. P(x) is the probability of finding two particles x distance apart,
and we know that probability is the square of the wave function, so
P(x) =[F(x)]^2. Now let's exchange the position of the particles in the
system, the distance between them was x1 - x2 = x but is now
x2 - x1 = -x.

But The Identity Of Indiscernibles tells us that because the two particles
are the same, no measurable change has been made, no change in probability,
so P(x) = P(-x). Probability is just the square of the wave function so
[F(x) ]^2 = [F(-x)]^2 .

>From this we can tell that the Quantum wave function can be either an even
function, F(x) = +F(-x), or an odd function, F(x) = -F(-x). Either type of
function would work in our probability equation because the square of minus
1 is equal to the square of plus 1. It turns out both solutions have
physical significance, particles with integer spin, bosons, have even wave
functions, particles with half integer spin, fermions, have odd wave
functions.

All that came from The Identity Of Indiscernibles, it's the foundation of
the idea of Exchange Forces, if it's wrong then most modern physics is
gibberish.

> If you ask me a question, I will respond, if you ask the other group the
> question, I will know it is not directed at me.

Yes, if you put them into an uncontrolled environment the world will soon
treat them differently and then they will diverge and you would have 2
individuals not one. I would not be happy about having my body destroyed
unless I had a copy that was made right now. How long is now? About a
second, maybe two.

  John K Clark