Vladimir_Nesov comments on Quantum Russian Roulette - Less Wrong
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Comments (55)
Here's a funny reformulation of your argument: if you live in a quantum world where deaths are swift and painless, it makes sense to bet a lot of money on the assertion that you will stay alive. This incentivizes many other people to bet on your death and try hard to kill you. The market takes this into account, so your payoff for staying alive grows very high. Sounds like a win-win situation all around!
That said, at root it's just a vanilla application of quantum immortality which people may or may not believe in (the MWI doesn't seem to logically imply it). For a really mindblowing quantum trick see the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester. For a deeper exploration of the immortality issue, see Quantum suicide reality editing.
Interesting.
See also:
As I understand it, the only way to have a known-live undetonated bomb in this branch is to cause it to actually detonate it in other branches.
Sorta, but not quite, as the probability of it actually detonating can be brought as close to 0 as one likes (if I'm not mistaken).
Yes - I didn't mean all other branches.