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Yvain comments on MWI, weird quantum experiments and future-directed continuity of conscious experience - Less Wrong
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Google tells me that my argument isn't new: even Wikipedia had a short paragraph on "quantum insomnia" sometime ago, though it's gone now.
If there are any believers in quantum immortality around here, I'd really like to hear their responses.
Quantum immortality does not predict that you will not sleep any more than it predicts that you will not observe someone else's death. There is a subjective experience of having been asleep, and a subjective experience of observing someone else's death, but not a subjective experience of having died.
The reason I don't trust quantum immortality is that I expect that whatever explains the Born probabilities will be a problem for a subjective experience continuing indefinitely in a quantum branch of vanishing measure.
If you flip a quantum coin 1000000 times, you will get into equally improbable branches. I don't see how your suggestion would work without any symmetry breaking.
Consider Robin's idea of World Mangling which, if true, would explain the Born probabilities. The idea is that a quantum branch with small measure could be "mangled" by a branch with larger measure, and that branches with smaller measure are more likely to further decohere into branches small enough to be mangled.
If this were true, then we would assign each of 2^1000000 branches split by your quantum coin flips equal probability of experiencing sufficient further decoherence to be mangled. But, the symmetry of our map is our ignorance, not the absence, of asymmetry in the territory. The effects of the different coin flip results could cause different rates of decoherence, that causes some branches to split faster and actually get mangled. And I would not want to be alive in only those branches.
Thanks. Very interesting indeed. This is the first comment so far on this topic that seems to have a chance of providing logical evidence against the viability of the game.
[EDIT] AFAICT, the mangled world hypothesis also suffers from the mathematical ugliness issues as the single world interpretation: nonlinear, nonlocal discontinuous action. Of course, you can assume that for the sake of eliminating quantum roulette type scenarios, but it makes the theory much uglier.
Believers? What sort of belief do you mean? I believe it works. But I also think it's a terrible idea. 90% chance of me being dead. 90% of quantum-goo me being dead. Whatever.
That reminds me of the movie version of The Prestige, where the Hugh Jackman character perngrf graf bs pbcvrf bs uvzfrys juvyr cresbezvat n gryrcbegngvba gevpx, ohg rafherf gung bar bs gurz qvrf rnpu gvzr. Ng gur raq ur vf xvyyrq, juvpu ur pbhyq rnfvyl unir ceriragrq ol nyybjvat n srj pbcvrf gb yvir.
So yes, let's not be profligate with our probability space.
What could "being me being dead" possibly mean?
Thanks, edited.
Quantum-goo maximization. Hmmm...
I remember reading some very convincing arguments of Eliezer why filling the multiverse with our copies is a wrong objective.
Which would be relevant if we were considering copies. We aren't. It's us. Just us.
We are considering giving ourselves a significant chance of being dead. If Sfor's (rather well presented) explanations and accompanying skull imagery are not sufficient to demonstrate that this is a bad thing, it may help to substitute death for, perhaps, a 9/10 quantum determined chance of being given bad arthritis in our right knee. We can expect a 90% of experiencing mild chronic pain after the quantum dice are rolled and a 10% chance of experiencing the more desirable outcome. Then, we can decide whether we prefer being put to death to a sore knee.
The pain is real pain. The death is real death. They don't stop being bad things just because quantum mechanics is confusing.
If many-worlds quantum uncertainty leads you to make different decisions than you would when exposed to other kinds of uncertainty then it is probably far safer to assume quantum collapse. Sure, it may make you look silly and your decision making would be somewhat complicated by the extra complexity in your model. But at least you'll refrain from doing anything stupid.