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Wei_Dai comments on Non-Malthusian Scenarios - Less Wrong
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I don't believe in MWI, but I try to understand it, and I can't get this to make sense. Reproduction is made conditional on some quantum event, so that it happens in some futures and not in others - OK. These futures are supposed to be in coherent superposition - not sure what the point of that stipulation is; is the idea that the separate futures are given a chance to recombine at some point?? But they can't recombine unless they come to resemble each other, which is a bit of a problem when one future contains lots of people who don't exist in the other one! And finally, doesn't this situation result in a Malthusian scenario in the branch which does reproduce??
I think you're misunderstanding an important part.
I think the idea is that you flip a quantum coin, and if it's heads you do nothing, otherwise you replace yourself with your child. So the population of each branch stays the same.
But the coherent superposition part doesn't make sense to me either. And the scheme also doesn't say what prevents people from reproducing the normal way and driving up the per-branch population.