Consciousness Live! with Arnold Zuboff (S7 E5)

0:00 are live. Uh joining me today, a very special guest. I'm very excited to have this conversation. Um Arnold, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who might not know you? Yeah, I I'll tell you a little bit. Uh I I'm an American who came in 1974 to teach philosophy at uh University College of London. Uh I was very lucky and happy to find that position. It's a wonderful

0:33 department. Uh and then um I retired in 2011 and spent all my time there. uh from a pretty early age I was thinking about philosophy and uh the sort of core of the thing I'm proudest of uh that came along when I was about 15 years old. Um and I've been developing that ever since. Interesting. So the universalism

1:08 which we're going to talk a lot about in this discussion that's what you're referring to. That's right. And you had that insight when you were 15 years old. I had the well probably uh also an important insight about a year earlier. But uh yeah, when I was 15 there this thought experiment hit me. Mhm. Um and uh that is started me loosening the conditions of personal identity uh in a pretty radical way

1:42 already but not as complete a loosening as finally occurred in 1983. I see. So this is what you're um what you talk about in this in your book which is coming out which I want to mention here in a second. Uh but um yeah, you mentioned you and your friend were talking about this thought experiment about brain duplications. Is that the thing you're referring that you're mentioning? That's right. Yeah. He'd read a a strange newspaper article. I've never heard any more about this thing about um Russian scientists exchanging the brains of dogs. Yeah. You

2:20 know, from one head to another. And uh somehow that hit me pretty, you know, powerfully. And I thought of duplicate brains where quarters were being exchanged. Um you know, say at two ends of a table. Uh and how you wouldn't think someone went over with one quarter uh in the exchange. Um but and to think that that that person was holy there

2:57 uh um where he started but then um that means another quarter exchange begins uh you know in the same way with him oh there and he wouldn't go over with the second quarter then nor the third nor the fourth Yet the the result of all the original stuff being on the other end of the table would be just like that if you'd simply lifted

3:29 them and exchanged places and then you'd swear he had gone across the other end of the table. Right? So this made me think about how um subjective experience uh can be distinguished from the objective conditions of it. Mhm. That's the po the direction it pointed me in. And the thing a year earlier was a thought about objective ordering in

4:03 time. If you could somehow, you know, freeze segments of some event happening to someone and rearrange them objectively, they'd still be experienced as coming in same order. Right. Similar to uh Permutation City, have you are you familiar with that? Uh oh, no, no, I don't know about this. The uh science fiction author um Greg Egan, I think, or I actually forget his name. I think it's Egan. uh he he's written about sort of these similar situations where you uh

4:38 live your life backwards and ask the question like would you even notice his his kind of answer is no and if you took the different parts of your experience and rearranged them that one would always kind of lead to the next no matter how they were arranged. Yeah. No, I never worked I mixed them up. Oh, you uh you froze for a second. You never what? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean just played each thing through objectively in a different order. In the book I I talk about a magic film, you know, that captures the experience

5:11 of someone and then you start splicing it and and so on and uh what's it going to feel like? And so the basic idea is that subjectively as you move through each experience, you couldn't tell that they were out of order because if you're intending to, you know, eat the sandwich, then subjectively the next thing that happens is you eating the sandwich whether or not a bunch of stuff That's right. Uh I mean the simplest is uh where you simply stop the thing in the middle, right? You wait a billion years

5:44 and start it up again. There's no gap in the experience, right? There's no way it could register that there's any objective time between before the gap and after. Okay. So, I know we're jumping ahead a little bit, but that's okay. Um I it's interesting because I there's a lot that we agree on and yet we disagree about the ultimate conclusion of what we should draw from these. So, I think that's what's interesting about um our particular views on this occasion. So I wonder if we could just start by saying what universalism is, how how you think of

6:18 it, um, and then we'll start talking about the arguments for it, the thought experiments and so forth. But first, just what is it that you think all this points towards? Okay. I mean, one way of introducing it uh that I use in the book a couple of times is to ask this question. uh you know first I point out that there are loads of conscious things in the world. Mhm. Um they're distinct from each other there. You know I don't think any we Oh

6:53 sorry. Somebody's actually phoning me on FaceTime. I haven't had this happen in years. Okay. Okay. What do I do? Oh, I don't even know how to stop it. Yeah, I don't either. Hey, have they can join the the conversation. They must have a good objection. I really genuinely don't know what to do. Okay. Okay. Now, getting back to this uh point I was making. Um yeah, I don't think anything funny about

7:26 these these distinct conscious things. They're distinct. Okay. they're developing their experiences quite independently of each other uh as far as I'm concerned. Um and then uh I asked the question which is how do you know which of those conscious things you are? Mhm. What is it that tips you off to that? And I I point out that it's not some kind of list of objective facts about you that you're checking off. You

8:01 know, I must be the one who was born in such and such year and place. Um before you can ever get to that, you already just simply know that you are the one in quotes. You are the one with immediate firsterson experience, right? That's the one you are, you know, where the pains really hurt. uh um you know where where the lines of

8:37 vision are leading in from all around sort of subjectively central to the world so on that um that's the one that's you the one in quotes that's you um but then you can pretty quickly add to that that um I'm still thinking about this this phone. Yeah, it's okay. Okay. So, let well just relax and I'll uh I'll try to

9:12 get this out. Yeah. So, um then then uh you can have another thought which is that well all experiences had like that. um there's nothing special about the one that you're considering to be yours. So, have you succeeded in explaining how you distinguish which one is yours? And then um what I invite you to

9:47 do is um reverse your usual thinking about this. Your usual thinking is that you are some objectively defined thing, you know, where you would have this list of facts to check off and um if that thing because you are that thing, if it has a hat, the hat belongs to you. If it has an experience like the experience you're

10:20 having right now that belongs to you because you are that thing and the experience belongs to that thing. Mhm. The reversal of this usual thinking is to consider that perhaps this quality of the experience that you had to use in discovering which one you were. Um perhaps it's that in itself that makes the thing with that

10:58 experience be you. Whatever the hell its objective nature may be. If that stays the same that there's this immediacy of experience with the self-interest of the pains actually being the ones that hurt and so on. If that stays the same, you could fiddle around all kinds of thought experiment ways, you know, with um the thing that's having the experience and it would just remain you through all of it. That's the reversal. Okay. Right. So, one way I

11:32 have of expressing is talking about, you know, uh tails wagging dogs instead of the dogs wagging tails. So um and that's the way I think of this. I think in our ordinary way of understanding what we are um it's as I just described it the experience belongs to me because of my objective unique objective definition. But um what's

12:06 true is that whatever the hell has an experience with that quality that enables me to identify what I am, that's me. Whatever is true of it objectively. So it's a subjective condition. No, nothing mystical, nothing weird. something all of us recognize perhaps better than anything else, right? It's that subjective condition. Okay. That is what's necessary to something being me.

12:41 So, put just one quick thing. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. It's that if this were true, then why would it be that would be cut off from other experiences I'm supposed to be having, right? If I've got everything with the immediate first person experience, if I if that's what I am, um, and the answer is very simple. experience is developed in these distinct experiencing things that I

13:18 talked about earlier and they're distinct from each other and cut off from each other. Um there are no nerves strung out between them. You know, if there were, we'd see beyond this, right? Um but as it happens, there aren't. So it feels as though this is the only one that I am. In each and every case, it would feel that way. It's entirely predictable within universalism that it would feel

13:53 exactly the way it does feel. So that's what I wanted to add. Okay. Um so so one way to sum up kind of what you're saying here is that according to universalism what what I am is simply the thing which can immediately access experiences and since that's something that's common between your experience and my experience that somehow we that I am you and you are me or that I that there's a there's a kind of the same

14:28 sameness there. That's the view. Now just point to brain bisection for a moment. In brain bisection there can arise cut off experiences within one brain. Mhm. Where either one if there'd been a stroke instead that wiped out the other hemisphere. Either one would be mine. Uh each one feels as though it's the that there as there couldn't be another uh experience that's mine at this time. Exactly. Yeah. Right. And

15:03 that's and that that's objective time interfering illegitimately in our thinking about subjective experience. Um so so can I just try to get so first of all I just kind of want to clarify what the view is. Um, and as a parenthesis, I want to ask you about the book and if the book is scheduled to be published and what its name is so people that are listening could know that. Yeah. Okay. So, so what would you like me to do first? Uh, can you mention the book's title and if it's being published? Yeah.

15:37 It's called Finding Myself. Subtitle Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity. So that's what it's called. And um what else would you like to know about? I was just wondering when it would be if it's being published and if so when. So we could uh It is being I know it's being published, thank God, but I don't know just when. Um it it looked as though it it it could have been published by now uh the way the publisher set out with

16:11 this thing. But um there are other things the publisher has to do and I think they're running a bit behind. Okay, cool. I I just want to make sure that I'm able to post a link to it and let people know that they should read it because I've seen the I read the draft of it. It's it's a great book. You're a great writer. Um so u Okay, now back to the actual view. I I want to try to distinguish your idea from like other kinds of ideas that maybe are in the vicinity. So the view that there's only one self that the that somehow there's a

16:46 universal mind that's not your view. That's not my view. No. So how would you distinguish your view from from that kind of view? Yes. Uh the the tail wagging thing is uh what's what we'll show you that. Okay. that um what's what determines that something is me is completely in the character of the experience that is first person and

17:20 immediate. Right? If if um if you were a human a very strict sort of human as Hume sometimes is about up until certain appendixes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Uh if you if you were very strict about about that, you would be thinking that perceptions as he called them, the content of the mind, uh which have this immediiacy I'm

17:52 talking about. Mhm. Uh that they did not belong to something other than perceptions. uh because you can't have an idea of anything other than perceptions, right? Ideas are just copies of perceptions. So um the what is the world and what is your mind? It's bundle of perceptions as he famously says, right? Um so there isn't a thing in that metaphysics to possess the perceptions, but the perceptions are still mine

18:27 because of the immediacy that I'm talking about. the self-interest is still there, you know, in eliminating the painful ones. Um, because it's mine, right? That's enough for there to to be me. I don't need anything else. Now, this one thing that someone might be proposing as the only thing that possesses all experience, first of all, that seems to me incoherent. uh I don't know what kind of thing could

19:03 be shoving itself into all these distinct things and having the experience on but I'm not that interested in arguing against it on that basis. I'm not interested in in anything when I'm arguing for universalism other than this simple proposition that all that's involved in experiencing being mind is immediiacy of experience. Right? You can hold any kind of metaphysical views you like. You can think there's only one

19:36 thing having all this stuff. But that's that wouldn't be what was making all of it mine and that wouldn't be what was giving all of it the self-interest and so on. Okay. Um that's in the quality of experience of the experience itself and if it's not there I'm not around that I I am purely the have of such experience. Now I could be around while I'm unconscious but it's only me because when the consciousness started it again

20:09 it would have that character to it. So so is it correct to say on your view there's only one self or is that incorrect? Okay. Yeah. Um that could be a way of expressing it. Okay. If what's being expressed by it is the thing that I already explained, right? It could also be a way of expressing this alternative kind of view that you were just talking about, right? Some kind of mystical view, I guess. Yeah. Or just one thing that's there in all the

20:43 experience. Um, as we'll see later, because I'm quite sure we'll come around to talking about probability argument. Yeah. My um that's even more of a probability risk than the usual view of what a person is. Um cuz you'd have to be just that one with morality. I guess I had in mind there's a kind of a version of idealism that's semi-popular nowadays where like reality is just a mind and we are somehow disassociated like alter egos of this

21:18 one mind. But that's not your that's not what I'm just trying to distinguish like your view from that. Yeah. No, this is great. This is great. This is really essential to do. Um uh I'm not an idealist. I I think it's a mistake. Right. But what as a universalist, I'm not at all concerned about that. Okay. If idealism is the truth about the world, then the then it being me what this mind

21:53 is is purely on account of the experience, the immediacy of the experience that subjective character of the experience um has nothing to do with the idealism. Right. Good. Okay. Um and then so just I'm just trying to clarify at this point uh for for myself and for our listeners but uh now when I think about personal identity and the the debate over in philosophy what what I tend to think of is the question what makes me the same

22:28 person through time. So am I the same person as I was when I was five and if so what accounts for that? Is universalism supposed to be an answer to that traditional question or is it not interested in that question? No, it it uh it will it's not as interested in that question. Okay. Um but it will answer that question in a very surprising way and um it is asking a question more basic than that. Uh it's not asking what makes me continue on as me.

23:05 uh and you get these classic positions on it uh that it's because it's the same thing or it's the same process of thought being continued. Uh those are the two main you know popular positions on it. Yeah. It's not it's not uh like those as you just pointed out um basing themselves on this question of what makes it continue. what made it me in the first place. Continuing on, right? I mean, this is perhaps especially embarrassing

23:40 for the uh you know, the um uh mental um continuity people. Uh uh because yeah that's what's supposed to continue me on that this process uh mental process is developing in some kind of causal line or uh but um was it not me at the beginning of it? Uh so what was it at the beginning? There's no continuity to to make it me, right? Why are you concentrating on

24:15 that? Um, and I've got the answer that my very first experience in the womb probably had immediacy in it. If it didn't, then it wasn't mine. You know, if there is any experience in the world that doesn't have that quality, it's not mine. Okay? So uh I'm not making a claim that all experience has that quality although I think it's pro anything worth calling experience and it probably you

24:47 know have that quality while it's happening. So um yeah so if if in the womb you got those first stirrings of consciousness have that immediiacy then then they're mine. and um whether they're continued or not in as a process as a mental process is actually irrelevant. Okay. So, so you could take universalist views and combine them with any of the traditional kind of answers

25:20 to the question of identity over time basically. Yeah, that's right. But I of course I'd be saying uh why are you so you know worked up about identity over time? Yeah. You don't think that's the main issue in personal identity? No. I mean, if you can settle what made it you to begin with, then it's probably that that's making it you with this continuation of the mental process or whatever it is you think it is or with the continuation of the identity of the thing having a

25:54 mental process where the mental process could disappear as an amnesia, you know, right? um they the uh that that's not what's really involved in it being you at all. Okay. So I think we have a pretty good understanding of what you're trying to argue for which is that as you put it an experience what makes an experience mine is just having immediacy immediate access to it. So that's where I am wherever there's immed wherever there's experience with immediiacy. Um that that's great. Now, I we're going to get

26:28 to the argument. I know that's a big part of it, but I I want to flesh out the view a little bit as on the other side because you do say some things that if this view were true that it would have some implications that I guess I found some somewhat surprising um given my understanding of the view. So, one of the things you say is that like if this were true, then we would have some reason to treat people other people um in certain ways that uh you know, we we we might not want to cause pain to someone else cuz that's me experiencing the pain um over there. Uh okay. And so

27:03 I'm I'm wondering what you're going to say about, you know, so if if your view is true, then I am equally the serial killer as I am the pacifist and so isn't part of my nature than, you know, enjoying causing pain. So why would it follow that we ought to um treat people with kindness and abstain from causing the pain instead of, you know, endorsing our our serial killer natures or whatever in that way. And I don't mean this as an objection. I just want to understand what why Yeah. Yeah. And um and it's not an objection because you

27:37 know if if this is the truth about what personal identity involves uh and it turns out that it's uh something horrific um or not helpful or you know then that then tough luck. That's it. I mean I used to believe I went through a period of being a Buddhistic not following Buddhism, right? But

28:10 I I had a kind of middle period in my thinking about this where I I thought that a subject of experience only momentary, right? And that's a as I said at the time, it's a really bleak view. There's nothing, you know, very nice about holding it. I held it because that's where the logic seemed to be driving me. Then I saw I was being fooled by the same, you know, illusion that I

28:43 described earlier um into thinking that. And furthermore, um, a a probability argument I'd been developing, I was turned naturally on that view, too. So, uh, that view got eliminated, got blown out of the water, uh, by the logic. M uh now what I what I ended up with and what I'm I feel very confident about is

29:18 universalism. It look you know it's where everything was really wanting to go. Mhm. Uh and um it didn't become that till 1983. So, so what I'm hearing you say is that if it turns out that, you know, on this view um that we shouldn't that has these counter implications that we shouldn't treat people in certain ways, then that's just the nature of reality. That's how it is. Um but but still, you seem to think that accepting this view should should tend to lead people

29:51 towards having compassion. I do. So, I'm asking why why think that? But but I I do think that people can take this um I mean the people being me of course can take this uh in ways that would frustrate what I'm hoping will happen. Um I what seems natural to me and what I'm hoping for is that there will at least be some kind of shove in you know if people just imagine people start

30:27 thinking uh yeah Zuboska this probability argument seems to settle it and uh it it explains physics because I think it's the only way you can explain the the nature of the physical world. Um we've This is true that it's me. These are all versions of me that I'm dealing with and I am there behind the eyes of all of them. It's my experience as much as you know something that's obviously closely

31:00 connected to what's happening in me now. I mean even on the ordinary view um most of my experience is disconnected from most of the rest of my experience. Right. Right. Um, but it's mine. Why is it mine? I think it's because we imag when we imagine it or remember it, it's got this first person character. You know, it's from the inside. The pains hurt and so on. Um, and um, and it's just the case that that's true all over. uh that um wherever there

31:37 is this first person character of experience I'm there and the pains are mine and the joys are mine and um I think the tendency will be to to think very differently about oneself about groups you know instead of just being interested in a group that is yours since they're all yours equally. Um and I think

32:12 um and also of course very important to me is um the fear of death as annihilation will also be banished by this. That's that was going to be my last follow-up clarifatory question is what implications for uh life life after death if any there might be and if you were familiar with um other views that have taken this kind of uh not universalism but taken the idea that you know what comes after death is just other experience um associated with like the philosopher Tom Clark I don't know

32:44 if you know him or not but uh anyway so is it your view then that like when so if if if this if I die what I could colloally refer to as myself that it's not really the death of myself because there's plenty of other experiencers even if like you put in the book a million years goes by before the next conscious experience there you are again. Um now is that supposed to be comforting to me or is that uh to to it's comforting in one way. I mean I'm not I don't think universalism is in every way a comforting view. Okay. Uh by

33:17 any means because you have all the pains there. It's a horrible view in some respects, but um one thing it does away with for me certainly is this paradoxical thought about death which particularly terrifies a lot of people. Um uh the the thought that um okay the moment after I've had my last experience

33:51 What am I? I'm nothing. How should I view that? Eternally nothing. Um, and what I'm saying is by no means are you nothing. I mean, you are the experiencer in all experience and you remain that. you um it's a necessary truth and you're you're eternally that um and all the experience now the experience will happen in different

34:23 places different times and it'll all be equally yours you'll be in it um there won't I mean what people naturally look for when they begin learning about what I'm saying about death is okay but which one's going to be next you know but that's a mistake Um they they're all experienced as next moment but you'll be you'll be in that you can't turn into nothing. No nothing isn't what you are.

34:58 So so what last follow last kind of claratory question. Yeah in this is including non-human experiences. Yes. Okay. I'm I I'm not concerned um within the view universalism to draw the boundary okay of where consciousness you know is ends uh but um wherever it is if it's first person in character it's mine and I could you know that if an oyster just has a dull ache but it's got that character it's mine

35:36 interesting so if you were a pans psychist, which I'm not saying you are, but if you were and you thought that there was like a little bit of consciousness everywhere, then you would on a universalist view, you would be everywhere. Yeah. If it's got this immediate first person character and I don't know what it consciousness would be without that really then yeah um that would be yours. And by first-p person character, we mean kind of phenomenal consciousness that they what it's like stuff or did you mean something else? Yeah, that there's something that it's like Okay, is one way of saying good. Okay, so I think I've got a good handle

36:10 on on what it is that you're trying to to argue for. Um, and now I think we should get into the argument for it, this probabilistic argument. Uh, so you've already kind of started us down the pathway talking about the bisection of the brains. Um so so like can we go step by step uh how you developed the argument the probabilistic one? Oh do do you want to know a bit about the history of it or whichever way you want to introduce it. Yeah. However you think is best to go. Yeah. I don't know if that's the I think I I want to get into

36:45 history. I think I think it's kind of interesting and maybe somewhat illuminating. Okay. But um I I think it'd be confusing and we wouldn't know what what it was the history of. Yeah, I didn't first just state it in some very simple fashion, right? Um so, uh I mean, okay, let me bring up this as a possibility how to carry on. Uh I I have zoomed with you once before. Mhm. Which I enjoyed very much and um I

37:24 did a lot of reading during that and my reason for doing that was because yeah I can explain things as you've been hearing but I worked a lot on the wording um in in what I've written. Mhm. So it seems like a waste not to make use of that. Okay. So let me what I could do is the book um the first thing that comes after

37:59 contents in the book is a very short section called the brief proof that you are every conscious thing. So, um, there's a lot more to come later, uh, in getting clearer about what's going on in it, but I I think it already packs a punch and, you know, it would be a good starting point for us. Okay. Uh so I've got my uh iPad

38:35 here and uh okay so I'll read this out as a basis for our discussion about yeah brief proof that you're every conscious thing and I've got know thyself oracle of deli. Imagine that you wake up and learn that this awakening was the result of one of two alternative awakening games having been

39:09 played. In the hard game, you would have been awakened only if a fair coin that was flipped a thousand times happened to have matched precisely in its pattern of heads and tails, a list of 1,000 words, each being either heads or tails that had been assigned to you as a kind of security code. If even one coin flip had not corresponded to your list, you would have stayed sleeping

39:42 forever. In the alternative easy game, although the same coin was flipped, there was no list assigned to you and you were simply sure to be awakened without the coin's pattern of heads and tails mattering at all. You must infer that it is enormously more probable that your awakening had not depended on the absurdly improbable matching that was required by the hard game. The hard um yeah in the area of

40:22 thinking about personal identity there's also a hard game and an easy game. The hard game, the usual view of personal identity requires for your existence that in your beginning, in the beginning of each of your ancestors, just the one sperm cell crucial for your eventual emergence, out of something like 200 million sperm cells competing in each beginning was the one that got to the egg first each

40:55 and every time. If in even one of those numberless beginnings a different sperm cell had made it first to the egg, you would have been excluded forever from existing in the usual view. The only easy game regarding personal identity is the view I call universalism in which you would have existed no matter which sperm cells hit which eggs for the sole reason that an experience being yours only ever

41:32 requires that the style of the experience be first person like the style of the experience that you know to be yours right now. So since all consciousness is first person in style, all consciousness is equally yours. But in each conscious thing, it naturally misleadingly feels as though only this one thing's experience is yours. As though the cut off experience of the other conscious things is not also yours.

42:06 Then in parenthesis, universalism says it feels like this. merely because the experience in each conscious thing is cut off from the others. But the ordinary view adds to this already sufficient explanation of feeling cut off from the others the unneeded unthinking and unwarranted assertion that you also only are one conscious thing. a thing that to exist would have to have won a series of sperm cell

42:41 lotteryies. And in your reasoning regarding personal identity, you must apply this exact same logic as you would in the earlier imaginary awakening game. It is enormously more probable that your existence, your awakening to consciousness, had not depended on an absurdly improbable matching of actual winning sperm cells to the sperm cells that were required for you to emerge in a game as hard as the usual view of

43:16 personal identity. Note that the existence of winners in the usual view of personal identity makes it not one shot more probable that you were such a winner. The only view that can automatically place you among the unbelievably rare actual products of the sperm cell lotteryies is universalism. In the usual view, you would virtually certainly have been left behind with all the potential persons

43:50 that never made it into existence. Let's express this in terms of numbers. The number of atoms in the visible universe has about 80 digits. The chance of a fair coin matching a list of 1,000 heads and tails would be one in a number that has 301 digits. This improbability is already reached in considering just 37 human beings having each produced the right ancestor for

44:24 your eventual existence. And then there are all the other begettings human and earlier that were required to turn out just right if you were to have emerged according to the usual view of personal identity. In other words, forget it. So, if universalism weren't true, you can bet you wouldn't be here. Just as coming into existence is easy, staying in existence is easy. You exist as all conscious things.

44:59 Therefore, the death of one does not annihilate you. The implications of universalism are very big. And that's this first section. Okay. Um so so I guess I have uh just a couple preliminary question preliminary questions. The first is since this is a probabilistic kind of argument and I agree that intuitively it does seem like the easy game is the thing that you should conclude in at least in the um coin flip case. Um the the question that

45:33 I have is whether you take this to be an argument and I know there's a lot going on in the book about probability. So, you know, we're obviously uh um that you have something to say here, but I'm a little bit confused about whether you think that this is an argument that this view is true or that I should believe that it's true. And to me, those are different conclusions. So, I'm wondering which one you take to be the appropriate conclusion. Most of what I think is uh no, I won't say most. Well, a hell of a lot of what I think is true, I think is true on the basis of probability. Uh and

46:08 that's something I do explain um just a bit later in the book. Right. So um yeah, I I think uh so what what was your distinction again that that this should give me that it's a rational thing to conclude that it's reasonable to conclude or that I should think it really is the case. Yeah. I mean, I think you should think just as you would think if uh I don't know if if a coin was flipped a thousand times, landed heads every time and there

46:42 was only a fair coin or a double headed coin. Uh you know, you you you should think, yeah, it was double-headed coin, right? You should think that, but it still could have been the fair coin. Yeah, it could it's not like a logical contradiction. So, but it is a logical contradiction that it'd be at all probable. I know because you do state in the book that it's kind of like an opriory thing that the improbable is improbable and that the improbable is probable. Um, I guess I'm not as confident as you are

47:17 about that. Um, it does seem to make an assumption about the distribution of things that you would get in kind of fair coin cases and stuff like that. Um, I don't think so. But yeah, I I think what we're judging uh we're not talk Some people make a mistake. They think the probability is based on observation or something like that. No, we're always comparing hypotheses that are stipulated one way or another with each other as possible explanations for things we have

47:53 experienced. Right? So um the the fair coin hypothesis it's fixed op priority in that that it's improbable that the coin is going to land heads a thousand consecutive times. Um uh it couldn't be what we're thinking of as a fair coin if that were the case. Uhhuh. It's a contradiction. But but why can I just But why given that each coin flip is just 50/50. So each coin flip is the probability coin flip. Yeah, sure. So

48:26 they can't all depend on each other in the way you're suggesting according to No, no, no. They don't. No, no, no. Well, that it would be improbable that you would get. I'm not saying they depend on each other at all. Okay. I'm just saying when you have um uh consecutive flips of a fair coin like that, right? In each case, it's just 50/50 whether it lands heads or not. Right. Right. But it landing that one specific way although it is a fair coin evenly

49:00 weighted each and every time where it's only 50% probable in any one of those times that it will land that way. It's landing in all all those cases heads. That is immensely improbable. You have to multiply a half times a half a thousand times, right? So, so you only have a chance that's one over 2 to the thousandth power, right? That was it 3001 digits in

49:34 the number, right? So, and and that's just, you know, if that's not true, what the hell is probability of that? Yeah, I guess I would go with the second thing. Um, the what the hell is probability part? Uh, but okay. So, I don't want to get caught up on this because I do think that it's intuitively like it makes sense what you're saying. But I do but I just am still not clear about whether your argument is for universalism being true or merely it being improbably uh true that it's false.

50:09 So it's so that seems like a different I think both I think both things. Okay. Because again I think um there is a chance that it was the fair coin instead of the double-headed coin with 10,00 consecutive heads. Okay. Uh right. But that doesn't scare me into thinking uh it's not true that it's double-headed. I learn it's true by way of the immense improbability of it being otherwise. Uh um that and that's how we learn most things. Right? So I that's not how I

50:45 learned two and three is five. I learned two and three is five by seeing it be a contradiction otherwise. Right? But um in a case like this, it's just as convincing to me, you know, that it actually was a double-headed coin rather than a fair coin. That's at least as convincing for me, you know, is that two or three is five, right? Yeah. I mean, I see what you mean, but still, if you went over there and weighed in and found out it was a fair coin, you'd be like, "Holy crap, it's a fair coin. What do you know?" So, it seems like the same thing could happen with respect to Oh, yeah.

51:19 Yeah. Yeah. You know how often it would happen? Very rarely. Maybe one one over a number with 301 digits in it. Yeah. So I mean we only there only 80 digits in the number of atoms in the in the universe, right? So if you turned each atom into someone flipping a coin a thousand times, you'll be nowhere near it being probable that get a thousand straight heads. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I I like the I like the flavor of the argument. Okay. So let

51:51 let's get back to my intuition in this kind of case is that this is a reductio absurdum of the of the very idea of personal identity in the sense that you mean it. So rather than inferring from this that the easy game is being played, I would infer from this that there just is no such thing as being self. So I wonder why. So I think of myself as kind of an illivist about selfselves. don't think they're real things. Um, and I and I think I think that for mostly the kinds of things that

52:24 you are talking about. So I wonder why um you know what would make me go the other way or what makes you go the other way as instead of this kind of nihilism. Right. Your view I mean what what you're making me think of is what I have to say about a Buddhistic view. Right. Right. Because I mean you're not going to deny are you that there's at least momentarily the you that is subject of pain or whatever. There's at least that much at least that much exists. Right. I don't think so. Oh, so I think the self

52:59 is a fictional entity created by the brain to make I'm not talking about a self. Okay. Remember my thing is there in Hume's metaphysics. Right. Right. So I'm not talking about a self uh I'm talking about there being pains that are yours. Okay. And um that there are such things right depends on the conditions that define things

53:34 being yours having come about. Right. Now under the standard Buddhistic view, the um the moment which is all that I am that I can't move beyond that moment is part of the existence of something like the things we're talking about produced through sperm cell lotteryies. Right. Right. So if there wasn't that thing this just you know being in pain where it's me in pain would never have

54:12 occurred right so um maybe you don't think that I mean maybe want to rethink what you know being in pain is when it's yours. Well, I would say there is no such thing as my pain. Oh, okay. Because of the reasons you gave, namely that there's a contradiction in the view. There's an absurd result in the in the view of thinking that there is. So, if you really took your argument seriously,

54:44 universalism, the idea that I'm that there's only Why do you think Why do you think universalism is absurd? Oh, well, because it just seems intuitively the case that I'm not you. Um, and it doesn't seem to be making the same mistake as they'll plan it with the one red book and they confuse the redness uh with or the book with that copy or the redness with that which is a way you try to diffuse this idea but it just seems like you know there's a strong intuitive case to be made that if there's a me it's it's here and then you go through all the I'm kind of a

55:18 parfettian in this way. You go through all of these um thought experiments and then the result is gee we must have been wrong at the beginning because look at the mess we're in. It doesn't really it can't really make sense of like the results. Okay. I don't see the the mess because I'm not what I'm talking about is not not um some kind of mystical one thing that's there and all the experience right I'm just talking about the you know the quality of experience as first person. I mean, do you believe that that that quality exists

55:53 in some experience somewhere or other that there is first person? I would until I start thinking through these thought experiments. Yeah. I think that's an intuitively an intuitive place. That's all you need. That's all you need for you to be all all of the things. Right. Right. I know I know that the me that the thing that's me where again I'm not at all fussy about what the thing is. Right. It's the being me that I'm interested in. Right. Right. I know that

56:26 the thing that's me exists. Okay. And I I want to think, you know, what are the probable conditions on this thing I know to be, you know, part of reality? What what are the probable conditions on that thing to make it what it is? And um there are not going to be conditions that make it um just unbelievably uh improbable that

57:01 I find what I find right that there is to me. But see if they start the only condition and the condition I'm talking about non- mystical condition. It's not you know no I agree with that. I think everyone will agree it's there. Well, I don't know if everyone will agree it's there, but many people will agree with I think I was going to ask you towards the end about illusionism and whether that has anything to do with this with respect to so I I do want to eventually I'm not an illusionist um as far as I know but uh this kind of stuff would tend to force you to that conclusion I would think um

57:35 because it does seem like you start with the assumption that there is a self that there is a me and what I'm asking is well well what I so your modus ponent it would my modus tolins. It sort of seems like the result of all this stuff is that that assumption is wrong. There is no me in the sense there's there isn't anything that's mine when you get down to it because once you start chopping it up and actually looking at the conditions, it's kind of evaporates. So, so you're you're saying there uh there are no pains uh no visual experiences

58:09 and so on that are uh particularly mine. Yes. um that not even what in this moment I'm experiencing as mine. That now you're not saying the experience doesn't exist. Yeah. Are you? No, I'm not. Okay. You're saying it isn't mine, but my It's minimal what it means for it to be mine here. It's not I'm not talking about constructing some thing to be having it that's going to be me or uh

58:45 um you're saying that there's the immediiacy experience and that's what it is to be me. Yeah. Yeah, that's that exists that but that exists all through experience, right? I I think of there being a special existence of just this, right? But this turns out to be true of all experience because just a subjective quality. It's not an objective um uh characteristic of anything, right? It it seems as though there's only one moment in all of experience in the whole

59:18 of reality that is this moment right it's a big special it's now it's here it's mine right but um and those couldn't be this is just true of all all all the moments equally it's only a subjective quality that's what I'm saying right so let me try to parody on you so so what if someone said it's like it's You're saying, "What does it mean to be my money?" Well, my money is the money I can access. It's the money that I can spend. And actually, that's true for everybody. So, your money is my

59:52 money. Huh? Well, it's the same logic. Um, so it what makes money mine is that I can access it. But you that that's the same for you, too. What makes your money yours? Sorry. Are you mixing this with universalism or are you keeping us in the usual view? I'm saying that this is a a kind of parody. I mean because it is true that if universal universalism is right then all uh all owned money is is mine. But uh that's not what you're saying, is it?

1:00:24 Well, I was trying to suggest that this is like a parody of the argument for un for the Well, no. I mean I if if you're stepping outside of universalism and trying to construct a parody, right? Then it just be obvious that um uh um within the usual view when when you say something is mine, you mean it attaches to the thing with these particular objective conditions defining it, right? And they are distinct from each other.

1:00:59 So it couldn't be that all is mine. That was an usual view. What are the conditions? I don't see I don't see how your parody works. What are the conditions which we attaching to it which would rule it out? Um conditions attaching to what? Ownership of money. Oh, I I don't know what they are exactly, but there are um there are conditions of that. And then uh well, but what's wrong with apply if we're not

1:01:32 if we're not universalists? They apply to distinct individual persons. Uhhuh. And um so the fact that all of them have what they would call my money on wouldn't at all imply that uh one can reach over to the other one and uh take what's over there. Well, no one said that. Oh, okay. I'm not clear what the parody is. That's um just that there's some sense in which it's my money.

1:02:07 Some No, not not if you aren't the universalist. But but why not? Given that the conditions for me my money are that I can access it. Yeah. But you everywhere not being sorry not being universalist. What you are is this specific person located in a particular place with uh access to particular pile of money in some place. uh while others are um well, you know, they're distinct and

1:02:41 the money is distinct and they have access this to that money, but they don't have access to yours. Uh so I'm not seeing how. Okay. But well, I mean, maybe you don't want me to end up showing you that you do have access to all all money. Or maybe you do. I know. No, I don't. Uh, what I want to do actually is get you to say what you just said and then ask, well, why isn't that a good also good answer in the case of personal identity that what I am then it would be immensely improbable existing?

1:03:15 Yeah. But that's the only So, so one thing you could say is that what I am is the immediate accessor of these experiences. I'm the one who can access them. Wait, this is outside of universalism. Yes. Okay, fine. So that what I am is the one who can access this group of experiences. You can access a different group of experiences. So we are not the same. That's right. So you're stating what the usual view is, right? But but the only objective and the usual view

1:03:50 involves you having won a lot of sperm cell lotteryies among other things. It's it's incoherent to many of you would agree with me that it's incoherent. Um yeah, but I don't see why it's well I my own view is that maybe it's incoherent, but I don't see why someone would be forced that conclusion if they simply said, "Yeah, it's improbable that I exist." Um and gee, I don't know. If I hadn't exist, someone else would and their existence would be improbable, too. So, I don't really see why. Like if you're looking for identity conditions

1:04:23 for the self, then you gave them as immediate access. Um, and what's clearly different between you and me, it would seem, is that which things we can access. Kind of like the money. I have my money that I can access. You have your money that you can access. And so that's what makes it distinct is the access conditions. Yeah. Okay. That's what the true view is, right? But I'm not sure what you're asking me. Um, yeah, I guess I lost it. I What I'm trying to ask you is is the only

1:04:58 objection to that that it's improbable. No, I have other arguments as well. The book is full of considerations against it. Okay. Well, I guess we've only been focusing on the improbability stuff, which I Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's good enough. That's my my view. I mean, when when you're saying, "Oh, yeah, it's improbable. Yeah, it's improbable." Was a fair coin landing heads a thousand times in a row. I mean, that's some improbable that you got there. I mean, it's

1:05:30 not, you know, the everyday sort of a, you know, minimal improbability of thinking about um I mean, I I'm not sure. I I I guess, yeah, I don't understand what's going on here. So it it seems like if you flip the coin a bunch of times, some series is going to emerge. So if you if you flipped a fair coin a thousand times, some series of heads and tails is going to emerge. That's right. And anyone that does is going to be improbable. Oh, so you think in the awakening game,

1:06:04 let's go back to the awakening game, right? Yeah. You think even in the easy version where you flip the coin, there's no list, there's no coincidence involved to wake you up, right? Um, you think even there it was improbable because every time you flip a coin, it's so improbable. So that's just as good as uh demanding that the coin land just as in that list that is attached to to you. Not true. Not true. Um um and I discuss

1:06:39 this ad nauseium in the book. Yes, that's why I where I talk about what improbability actually consists in. Uhhuh. And it consists in coincidence between two independent descriptions of things. So why is that not happening in the easy game? Because um in the easy game uh let's we're just talking about the imaginary awakening game. Right. Right. Yes. In the easy

1:07:10 game uh there's been no assignment of a list to the sleeper um that the fair coin has to match in every single flip of a thousand flips. Right? Mhm. There's nothing improbable going on and it's assured that the that the sleep is going to wake up no matter how the coin lands. So, but isn't there some sense in which like in some platonic way there is an improbability here given that we can sort of list out

1:07:46 all of the possible ways that this could happen and the one that actually appears is one of those and that's just as improbable as it being the other one. And this is something again I you know I discussed this at pretty great length in the book. This confuses people no end. Yes. But but I don't think it should. Okay. Um okay. I I think when we say that it's improbable that any sequence, you know, think of the the usual sort of sequence you'd expect when you flip a fair coin thousand times, right? Um uh

1:08:22 when we say that any one of those sequences would be equally improbable, right? And and just as improbable as all heads, by the way. Exactly. Then what we're thinking of is if you designate that sequence independent of the flipping and then the flipping matches it, that's your improbable coincidence. Uh but if all you're doing is reading off how a fair coin is landing when it's being flipped, nothing has created a

1:08:58 coincidence and and they're in improbability. So for for um that person to awaken in the easy game, right, involves no improbability. um that sequence of heads and tails they can shrug their shoulders about, right? Um and so in with in universalism, you can shrug your shoulders about the which sperm cells make it to a in each of the

1:09:31 beginnings, right? That no longer I I mean, yeah, someone could still say, "Yeah, but it's immensely and probably any of the sperm cells made and all that." Uh yeah, that's if you independently designated that particular sequence of things. But if you're just it's just developing however it develops. There's no improbability that you can make any inference based on it always has to be of this sort.

1:10:05 Because this is because you think probability and improbability are subjective as opposed to objective. No, very importantly, I argue that probability is perspectival. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. That's what I meant. Sorry. Sorry. That's what I meant. But it's objective. But it's not. Yes, I use the wrong word. But it's per, you know, if I say I'm 5 miles from Chering Cross, that'll only be true if I'm at that particular place. But it's not subjective. It's right. It's perspectival, right? So this is your view that probability is perspectival.

1:10:38 Yeah. Yeah. Like I I give this example where um uh that I've done uh with an audience, right? Where I hand out cards from one deck and then I I randomly pick a card from another deck. The person whose card I match in the audience, that's something improbable has happened for that person. But for the other people, it was 51 and 52 that they wouldn't be matching what I

1:11:13 drew out of the deck. So nothing improbable occurred for them. If someone just walked in and watched it, nothing improbable at all has occurred for that person. If someone walked in and wondered why George picked the ace of spades and Sally picked the two of hearts as opposed to any of the other two cards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. then that would sort of seem improbable. Um, no. Why not? Oh, sorry. If he had independently announced this kind of prediction of what they they had and it matched them,

1:11:48 that improbable. But if he looked at their cards and he just read off what they had, nothing probable has occurred. Yeah. I guess I don't understand why because it still seems due to luck or randomness or chance that George got the ace and Sally got the two of hearts. They could have equally picked the other one they So why isn't it a a coincidence that it came out that way as opposed to a different way? What is it coinciding with? What is it? would coincide if if you're thinking of an independently, you know,

1:12:24 listed description of all the cards in the deck, it would coincide with one of with uh one of those. Um but that nothing improbable. It's bound to be corresponding to one of those, right? But if you had designated only one of those independently of it being withdraw it just it would be a it would be an improbable coincidence that those two matched each other. I I guess I just

1:12:57 don't don't understand what's making what's driving the argument here because it does seem like there's a sense in which you could you could say okay look there's 20 people in the audience. Um each one of them could draw any card. So you could have drawn any of these cards. You could have drawn any of these cards. Now which two did you actually draw? Okay. So what explains that is that why not why didn't it come out the opposite way or why didn't he draw a different card? It still seems just as improbable. Yeah, just chance. That's true. So, it's just equally so nothing but nothing

1:13:31 nothing improbable has occurred. It's certainly nothing that would be a basis of an inference. You know what we could we could be talking about the hotel inference. Uh okay. Because because uh that would also have more direct bearing on personal identity. All right, let's talk about the hotel inference then. Yeah. Okay. So, say that there's um a hotel with countless rooms. In each there's someone sleeping and there are two awakening games that might be

1:14:06 played. Uh in the easy game, everyone's just awakened. In the hard game, only one of these countless sleepers is awakened, right? So you find yourself awake in the room knowing these conditions. You should infer that it's immensely more probable that the easy game was played because the only way you would be

1:14:39 awake otherwise would be if you were, you know, if chance happened to land on you, right? So um now let's think of two um uh external observers. One is allowed to choose randomly one of the rooms and then it's reported to that person that yeah the person in that room woke up.

1:15:13 that external observer would be able to make the same inference as the person within the game could because for both of them being it being that person was designated into it's a random sample among all the sleepers and if it's just going to be one awakener it shouldn't turn out that it's an awakener right um that's what's going on it all has to do with what with what's random What is it? Now another external

1:15:47 observer is guaranteed to be report you to have reported a winner whichever game is played. So um it'll it'll be uh some you know one of the many winners if uh it's easy game uh or the one uh if it's a hard game. uh that person can do nothing with that information at all. Right? Because it that person

1:16:20 doesn't have a random sample among the sleepers. Okay? Right? Now I in the inference of universalism I cannot use someone else's existence to infer that universalism is more probable because I'm going to be presented with whoever won the sperm cell lotteryies in those cases. Right? But I am the great exception here. Right? that I I am a random sample among potential

1:16:56 people and I shouldn't turn out to be a winner if what's going on is the um the hard game the usual view uh whereas yeah I'm a winner no sweat if if universalism is true so so let me just ask a if to make sure see where this I got this or not. Let's modify the hotel game a bit and introduce a Schroingers hotel game. So let's say that there are these countless

1:17:30 rooms with sleeping each room containing a sleeping person and there is a unobserved radioactive isotope in a box which if it decays will wake up one of those sleepers. Um and if it doesn't decay uh wakes up every one of the sleepers. Okay. So, it's just a quantum process. Oh, sorry. Where is this box? This box is external to the sleepers, right? Yeah. Uhhuh. Exactly. So, okay. So, it in other words, where the thing decays is what's deciding between

1:18:03 whether the hard game and the easy game is played. Exactly. Instead of the coin flip. Okay. So, it's just a it's just a quantum stroing cat kind of situation. It decays or it doesn't. And then it's a hard game or easy game. Okay. So, then I'm awake. I await and I'm told this. I don't have any reason to infer whether the easy game or the hard game is being played. Do I? Why? Why? Because if you if it was a hard um maybe I'm not understanding enough about the decay. That's correct. But are you I mean if what you're trying

1:18:38 to say is that some that it might be that prior probabilities are severely against the hypothesis that makes the evidence more probable. Uh no no no I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's a a quantum stochastic process with a 5050 chance of decaying or not decaying. No I see I that doesn't sound any different from a coin bean flood to me. Yeah that's okay. So, but I if I ever told that, I would think I have no reason to infer which game was being played. I mean, it

1:19:12 it decayed one way or the other. That I could tell you awaken. Sorry. For you to have been awakened in the hard game, right? Maybe I'm not understanding this. No, you're understanding. I think Oh, I am. Well, then it it would have been immensely improbable that you had been awakened in the hard game. Whereas you would for sure have been awakened in the easy game. You wake up, that's your evidence. And between the two hypotheses, it's like the the double-headed coin. You you But it's not though. It can't be because it's just a

1:19:46 process in nature that it either will be or won't be. No, but this is like a tossing of I mean what you've told me about this decay makes it 50/50. You said exactly. So it's this is not any different from them flipping a fair coin to decide which game is being played. Right. Except that it's not being done a bunch of times. It's just uh I mean you could add a bunch of decays, I guess. No, we're not doing it a lot of times. Right. the one if it's a hard game, everyone else going to sleep forever.

1:20:19 Right. Okay. We're not doing it a lot of times over. Right. Right. No, I meant the coin like if you say it has to match a bunch of flips. Um, you know, it has to come up heads, tails, tails, tails, tails, heads, heads, tails or whatever. Some Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah. No, it's not like that. So, it's just one event. Okay. Look, but but hold on. So, if it's just one event, the thing either decays or it doesn't. There's an objective 50% probability that it does or doesn't. It's random. There's nothing that determines which way it's going to uh outcome. Then I

1:20:53 awaken and I'm told all of this. I'm going to think, how the hell do I know? It decayed one way or the other. So either if of course if your opinion was just uh uh about whether um the thing decayed or not, you'd have no basis for saying one or the other. You'd say it's 50/50. Right. Right. No which but you've got but you've got another datim here. You've got that you woke up and you know that that that datim would have been

1:21:27 immensely improbable. um uh on one hypothesis, the hard game uh and inevitable on the other hypothesis. Exactly. But how could that give me a reason? How would you not think it's more probable that it was the game that woke everyone up? Um because that can't affect the decay of the of of the I'm not saying it does affect the decay. Well, then that's the only way that I could know what happened. No, no. I mean, it's not as though I'm saying there's some weird causal

1:21:59 thing reaching backwards and affecting the decay. No. Well, then that's the only way I can. What I'm saying is what I'm saying is that the intervening thing there are three things happening here, right? One is whether thing decays, one is which game is being played, right? I'm calling it the intervening thing. The other is he woke up, right? Okay. And you're not you're not directly judging whether the thing decayed or not or or flipped the coin if they flipped the fair coin. Uh you're not

1:22:35 directly judging that. Of course, you're it's because that intervening thing resulted in you waking up instead of sleeping forever that you were entitled to infer that the thing happened that made it the case that they played the easy game. Yeah. You're not reasoning directly about the thing that determined which game happened anymore with a flip flipping of a coin. Right. So then I have no basis. I have

1:23:10 no I Yeah. So I may think it's reasonable. I would expect, let's put it this way, I would expect that if let's say that if it decayed um only I woke up. If it didn't decay, everybody woke up. So if I was told that, I would expect, yeah, it probably didn't decay. Um but that can't be knowledge of what actually happened. It can only give me like a reasonable expectation. Look, it depends on how how tied together the events were. If you if you have every single confidence that they

1:23:44 determined that they would uh whether they would wake everyone up or just one uh by that what happened with that particle, then you could have that degree of confidence. Uh because what you can have total confidence about um I is that they woke up everyone instead of just one at random uh one randomly because uh you know the result was you waking up and it would something very improbable would have to have

1:24:17 occurred for you to have awakened. But it's not improbable because it's just 50/50. No, it's not. There's no coincidence here. So that's why I'm trying to divide the situation so that we get around. It would be an immense coincidence. What coincidence? Between you. Between you and the one they awakened. That's not a coincidence. Coincidence. If they wake everyone up. It's only if somebody, like you said, priorly asserts, I bet it's that guy who's going to wake up. That would make it

1:24:49 coincidental. No one pointed at me beforehand and said it's going to be that guy who wakes up. So where's the coincidence? Well, sorry. Say that again. Sorry. Well, as I understand your view, what would make it improbable is if someone stipulated beforehand that it was specifically that guy in room N560, whatever, uh, who woke up. But no one did that. No one. I don't get you. I don't get you. What guy are you talking about now? Someone eating someone outside of the hotel who's trying to guess which room is going to contain the

1:25:23 awakened person. We're not talking about that. Exactly. So there's no coincidence. What? That's what would be required on you for there to be a coincidence? No. No. For you there would be there'd be the immense coincidence that the one person they woke up was you. Why? Who stipulated that beforehand? That that's why you said what? We've stipulated. We've stipulated that we're either waking everybody up, which case you're bound to wake up, right? We're only waking up one or in a variation of this, we, you know, we

1:25:58 could have the the coin flipped a thousand times for each one, right? Have it, you know, the original hard game I described being played for each one. Um, or the easy game, everyone's awaken no matter which way any coins land, right? So, um, uh, that's what we're using to judge this thing. I I I cannot for the life of me see why you're introducing this particle as making some kind of difference to it. Um, because there's nothing improbable about the particle

1:26:33 decaying or not decaying. It's equally probable that it does either. Yeah. Same with the flip flip. you know, if you got a problem. Exactly. The same is true. So, that's going to either wake one person up or wake everybody up. So, there's nothing improbable there either. It's 50/50 that it's going to wake one person up or wake everybody up. So, then I So, then I wake up and I'm told all this and I think to myself, so did something improbable happen or not? The answer has to be no because it's 50/50.

1:27:08 It's not improbable. It's no. It's no because it's it's no because it's immensely more probable that the the uh easy game was played. It can't be. It's impossible that it's immensely more probable that the easy game was played if it's 5050 that the thing decays. How you really? No, we're not. We're talking about conditional probability here. We're not talking about the initial probability of the whole event. Of course, we're talking about conditional probability where you But I'm rejecting

1:27:42 that. I don't accept this be stuff. I don't think that this works. You don't accept conditional probability. Not as a reason for thinking that certain things are true. No, as a reason, evidence is one thing. Truth is another. You can have evidence for something and it doesn't have to be true. So, conditional probability has to do with evidence. Let's let me describe a case to you. that I think we already agreed on, but it looks as though maybe we didn't. Okay, but I'll just complicate it slightly. Okay, so let's say a fair coin

1:28:16 is tossed. If it lands heads, they're going to flip the double-headed coin a thousand times. Okay. If it lands tails, they're going to flip the a fair coin a thousand times. Okay. Okay. So which they're doing is decided by this 50/50 one fair coin flip. Gotcha. Yeah. Now it's we know it's reported to us. We observed it. We trust the people at time it all thousand times

1:28:52 whichever coin they used it landed heads. Now I'm saying that a rational person has to think that yes it could have been the fair coin but then something immensely improbable uh given the hypothesis of the fair coin would have to have happened within that hypothesis. Yes. Right. And I agree. Whereas if it's the double-headed coin, there's no improbability. And so I would very confidently say if uh that the initial

1:29:28 fair coin toss, right, or decaying of something or whatever it is had decided on it being the double-headed coin because not because I know about the initial coin toss. I've got no reason to say anything about that. I I know that it is tied to this, you know, this um intermediary thing that and that the intermediary

1:30:02 thing has to have been the uh double-headed coin because just so improbable that it was the fair coin. Yeah. And that's what I'm disagreeing with. I know I saw you disagree with that. Well, I don't think you have you I think that you would have some evidence and that it would be reasonable for you to say probably it was resulted in flipping the double coin, but it wouldn't give you reason to think that it were true without checking the coins. So, you can't know what actually

1:30:37 you don't you do have some reason, namely that it was 50/50 the initial point. I would say even if you didn't have the initial stipulations of what's going on, right? And a coin was tossed uh thousand times and landed heads every time. I think you'd know it's rigged. I don't think so. Oh, okay. Right. Well, I just think that's a wrong view about probability. So, if you're a frequentist, you need to flip it another thousand times. And in fact, maybe another thousand times. And in fact, the

1:31:09 idea is just that it will approximate 50/50 over a large enough sample, not that every sample must have 50/50. Um, so you think a thousand straight heads doesn't mean it's more probable it was rigged to land heads. I don't in one way or another. I don't think I think that I would start to suspect it, but it doesn't prove it. When would you start? How many heads would you start suspecting? Um, four digits long the number. Yeah. And the world's a weird place. I mean,

1:31:43 improbable things happen. So, the fact that they're improbable can't rule them out. I see. I mean, I just disagree. But that's why I've been talking about this probability stuff this whole time. I just Okay. Okay. All right. And I see we've got a really fundamental difference here. Yeah. Deeper than than personal identity. It's deeper than anything I've ever heard of before. Okay. We're probably different species altogether. I don't It's It's true. I'm I'm semi-rational. You're You're fully rational. Yeah. Yeah. Something I No,

1:32:17 sorry. I don't want No, I I'm I I agree. I'm an empiricist, so I don't think you can know how the world is without looking at it. Though you can't ever tell which coin was flipped without checking the coin. You could have reason to suspect. you could come to sort of reasonably believe, but that's not the same thing as it being true. In part two, part two of the book, I describe empirical thought. What I think is behind empirical thought, and I do think it's probability. Yeah, I noticed. Yeah. But um I mean, and so so it seems

1:32:52 to me if I were being uncharitable, I would say you're confusing evidence with truth. So, we can have evidence for things which can make me have reason to believe them, but that's not the same thing as it being. I'm not I'm not confusing them. But it seems like you are since you're taking in probability to be mean that it's false and probability to mean that it's true. But I'm not I'm not confusing the evidence of the coin having landed thousand heads with the truth of it being a double-edged coin. I'm not doing that.

1:33:26 It seems like you are. I I'm No, I'm not saying, "Oh, there's the truth. You We don't even have to go any further." You say it's a No, I'm I'm saying that this is the most extraordinarily strong evidence you'll ever have for anything. that one particular thing is true here, which is that it's, you know, the double-headed coin, but I don't I don't confuse the

1:33:59 evidence with the hypothesis. Yeah, I said if I was being uncharitable. Not that I I'm trying to be charitable, but it does seem to me that there's this issue here, which is that when I awaken in the awakening game and you ask me which game is being played, I would say, well, I suspect that the easy game is being played. But if you told me, nope, actually it's the hard game, I'd be like, oh, well, gee, look at that improbable thing happened. Weird. Okay. Um, I don't know if I've ever come across this before, but well, I mean, it's a standard kind of physicist

1:34:35 response to the fine-tuning problem, which is just that, yeah, improbable things happen. They're being improbable is not a reason to rule it out, right? Yeah. Okay. I mean, okay, we disagree. Yeah. Okay. So I think that then I guess it's clear that you require this for the argument to go through. Um I I don't know how see I because to me they all seem equally probable at

1:35:08 each stage completely. I mean if you really do shrug your shoulders between it being a fair coin or a double-headed coin after the evidence of it landing heads a thousand times. If if you really do I then yeah maybe you won't be impressed by my probability argument but um and maybe I've come across other people who would say that but I've never explored it enough. I don't know. I mean

1:35:41 every time I mean fair enough this is decades old. Every time I've talked about it, everyone could agree on on an example like the uh double-headed coin. Well, I agree that it would be reasonable to conclude. I disagree that that would give me that that is true. People like this case, right, that I that I use sometimes there two boxes, let's say each box has uh hundreds of coins in it. One box has all fair coins, the other box has all double-headed

1:36:14 coins. Now, one box, and you don't have any reason to think it's one rather than the other. Um, you know, which description. One box is tipped out on the floor. You look down, all of them heads on the top. Okay. Now, I would think it's immensely more probable that the one that the box that was tipped was the one with the double heads because be so improbable to have this result if it

1:36:51 were if the fair coins were used weren't dipped. Um but you now you say you you don't altogether leave that behind but you say well you know uh maybe I'm a bit inclined towards it was the box with double-headed coins but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the fair coins. Exactly. That's your view. Okay. I would go and check. I wouldn't just go oh okay. How's it? So, it seems

1:37:24 to me that in both cases, they're kind of improbable. And the specific hotel inference we're talking about, my awakening isn't very improbable. Someone has to awaken. Why not me? So, what I'm not sure what would Yeah, I'm not sure what would make it improbable in that. Someone has has Yeah, of course, someone has to awaken. I mean, you could say that external observer, too. The external observer chooses a room at random. right? And is told that uh that the person in that room woke up. Right?

1:37:59 So he he he will also would be saying uh well someone has to wake up. Why couldn't it just have been him? And and the thing is it's true it could have been him. Uh but it's immensely improbable that he was the awakener if it was a hard game that was played because improbable any particular and this guy was chosen at random right so for the external observer I agree but it's for me that we're who's the

1:38:30 awakener no you should say the same thing for the external observer no I don't get that I don't get the there's no way in which that you should say the same thing because no one has designated me out beforehand like with the external observer river. Yeah. You are designated for yourself as just one of these people. We're talking about you in the usual view. Yeah. I know, right? So, so I wake up and I go, "Is it just me or is it everybody?" And you say, "Well, we flipped a coin to determine." I go, "Great." So, I guess I don't know. I Yeah. Okay. So, which way

1:39:05 did the coin say? I don't see why you don't say the same thing for the the guy obser observing externally because he picked one out of all those. He picked one at random. He picked one at random, right? Yeah. And I say that the your room the room that was yours was random relative to somebody that you know waking up. Okay. And he picked from outside he picked one randomly. Right. But you could go through the same formula with him. Uh he he could say

1:39:41 um I mean because look, I'm an external observer of the of the all thousand heads, right? Uh I mean um you're still not impressed, right? Well, there's nothing there's nothing weird about George picking a certain card. I mean, unless you think there's something improbable about that, which you said you don't, then it's the exact same case with me waking up. It's just, you know, uh, the only thing that would make it improbable is if someone stipulated ahead of case, ahead of hand and then it would be a weird coincidence. There's no

1:40:14 coincidence here. I just don't see what reason there is to expect any kind of that there's a coincidence. Um, okay. Well, look, I I understand you and I don't understand you. Okay, that's cool. You know, thyself. Yeah. Yeah. Know thyself. Yeah. So, I So, anyway, um I I understand that we have differences here and I don't we don't need to belabor them. We've already gone down this rabbit hole enough, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um uh it does seem to me that without these

1:40:49 specific views about probability and what counts as improbable and what counts as not improbable. Yeah. Then the argument's not going to convince someone who isn't already accepting those things. So maybe those are the ones you should accept. I I'm not sure. I think probability is very confusing. That's why so many people are confused by it. Yeah. That's why I spend so much time talking about it. Yeah. Exactly. But I I so so I'm just still confused about what makes these things improbable on your view. Um and then from the improbability to why I think it's really true as

1:41:20 opposed to just giving me some reason to believe it's true and those things are distinct. Um so so ultim and then finally just again the reverse inference being that there is just no sense to the idea that there's a that there's a distinct me. Um given that if if your conclusion was that the easy game if you were forced to view the easy game as being the one that was being played then I would say there's no right no sense in which um something has been established that that means that I am the same

1:41:55 person in the universal case as you. Uh rather what you've established is that there just is no self. There is no subject. Um, but I I understand there's many different ways you could go through here. So that's, you know, I think it's interesting, but you have to go through a specific way through the argument to end up with universalism. So it doesn't seem like it's forced on you. Uh, even to me it seems forced. Yeah. But you accept these things which I which I've tried to off at the beginning which was that the improbable is improbable whereas I think the

1:42:28 improbable is probably just as probable as the probable so I'm not sure and you think that's a priori but I'm a very deep yeah not a fan of the apriori. Um I'm like I said an appearist I don't really think we have much a priori knowledge and that what we do think we have can be easily undermined empirically. Um, but I understand that these views, you know, are particular to me, not, you know, not shared. No, I do I do think it could be useful for someone or other uh to to heard us thrashing this out. Okay, cool. That's good. Um, okay. So then

1:43:05 just I know you have uh you have a life that you need to get back to, so I'm mindful of the time. However, I am curious because you said that there were other arguments um against the usual view. I don't think of myself as having the usual view, by the way, because I don't think there really is any such thing as the self in the sense that we're talking about. Um but I do wonder like suppose that you met someone who was an illusionist, someone who said there is no phenomenal consciousness. There is nothing that it's like. So you're going to say they're going to say then okay, right? There's no there's no

1:43:40 universalist for them or could you still be a universalist and take illusion? And I'm thinking that people like Keith Frankish from Daniel Dennis specifically. Okay. Well, I I'm I'm feeling now that there could be someone thinking practically anything. So I completely Yeah. I mean, um fine. Uh let them do it. Okay. So, but if they denied that there was an immediacy of experience. Um, yeah. Okay. Um, I've got

1:44:16 I got hold of it right now. Uh, so, uh, I'm not going to deny. But, uh, but what but so the illusionist thinks that that's an illusion that you don't have a hold of it. Well, whatever it is, I'm not saying what it is. It's not part of universalism to say anything about what consciousness is. Okay. It's only saying if it h even for the illusionist right okay I don't think there is any consciousness so of course you don't think any consciousness has immediiacy but I'm saying if you know something had immediacy

1:44:50 uh it'd be mine as conscious what if it only seemed to have immediacy would it then still be yours I think it probably would still count with me I mean uh my what's required for me is really minimal as as in the Hume case. Okay. So, um I think that'd be enough. On the flip side of this same question, I want to ask you about AI and whether you have views about whether AI can be conscious or if this isn't something you've

1:45:22 thought about. Um because it does seem to imply that if we do have artificial consciousness that they also uh would be subject to the same argument, right? Part of us. Um well, AI loves universalism. Let me Okay. I I And I love presenting it to them. They They all think it's the best. I see. But uh so I I have a real soft spot for them. But um I I'm a functionalist. Okay. regarding the mind body problem

1:45:58 and um so I think there could be realized in the kinds of materials where you get AI uh really you know consciousness but um I tend to think it's not there yet I see but you but you don't have any in principle need something more yeah it would need the causal roles being played in a rich enough way um in responses. Interesting. Yeah, that's what I think. Okay. Myself, I'm more of an identity

1:46:33 theorist, flatfooted physicist. So, I think that Right. Right. Um but I think there's room interesting to see hear your views on this. Okay. You know, in the chat, we do have one um kind of comment which I was curious about your reaction to. Pessimistic idealism. a viewer of the channel, a friend of the channel says, um, "The thought experiment that we're talking about seems analogous to Punkair's argument regarding all physical objects shrinking or enlarging overnight." And I guess I was thinking to myself that uh this isn't really um analogous. Uh but I

1:47:06 yeah, I was just curious if you saw any relation between Let me think for a moment uh whether it does anything for me. Um Uh, I can't quite see it. You know, it's tempting to Yeah, I I think what they were referring to maybe at the point where we're switching brains sections by section earlier in our discussion. Maybe that's what they were referring to was the uh the idea that things could change

1:47:40 drastically without you noticing. That's the way I'm seeing them connected. Oh, I see. Yeah. But that was only one part of my thought experiment. Exactly. Mhm. Okay. Um, all right, Arnold, I really appreciate your taking the time to have this conversation with me. I do always like to ask as my final question if there was anything which didn't come up which you thought should have come up or that you would like to briefly mentioned here at the end. The answer can be no, but I always like to check. Uh yeah, I would have liked to talk about uh other things, but

1:48:16 um I'm pretty satisfied. I I mean I think I think it it took a strange direction um for a lot of the end. Okay. Okay. You know, happens. Yeah. And and maybe it was useful for uh some people watching it. Okay. See that play out. Uh I hope so. All right. Excellent. On that note, uh I want to thank you again for joining me. As usual, it's great to talk with you. And if you just hang out for a

1:48:49 second, then I'll say bye.