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Article 6147 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a Transducer (Formerly "Virtual Grounding")
Message-ID: <1992Jun8.132658.182@cs.ucf.edu>
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Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992Jun5.195713.27280@guinness.idbsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 13:26:58 GMT
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In article <1992Jun5.195713.27280@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu  
(Randall Holmes) writes:
> In article <1992Jun5.170559.305@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas  
Clarke) writes:
> [...]
> >
> >Many worlds does eliminate the requirement that a conscious
> >observer determines the moment of observation.  It does so,
> >however, by postulating that all possible outcomes of all
> >possible experimental observations occur and continue to 
> >evolve in parallel.  Conscious observers then must have
> >the peculiar ability to sense only one possible observational
> >track.  How this observational track is selected is not
> >specified.
> 
> The whole point is that it is not _selected_!
> 
>   It always struck me that selecting a single 
> >observational track for a conscious observer in Many Worlds 
> >was exactly equivalent to the conscious observer "collapsing
> >the wavefunction" in more conventional approaches.
> 
> There is no selection; it is simply that the different versions of the
> observer in different worlds (all of whom exist) have no way to
> communicate with one another, so are not aware of one another
> (presumably interference phenomena remain possible, but are unlikely
> due to the macroscopic nature of the observer).  Each one wonders why
> he was "selected", along with all of the others.
> 
So there are O(2^2^(H/P)) observers and climbing? (H is age of universe,
P is fundamental time unit - say Planck time). One observer for each
possible decision path, each a boolean function (one 2^) from the number 
of paths from current possibilities (another 2^).

I think I'll take up pantheism :-)  
--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu


