CronoDAS comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: gwern 01 October 2009 12:49PM

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Comment author: CronoDAS 01 October 2009 09:53:25PM 3 points [-]

This all could just be an issue of me being massively off on the probabilities, but aren't there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English? And in this particular example, there are a number of universes that have branched off that I would have spoken Klingon. I'm not understanding the limitation that would demonstrate that there are more universes where I spoke English instead (i.e. why would there be a bell curve distribution with English sentences being the most frequently demonstrated average?)

Not all "possibilities", as you describe them, are equally likely. If I enter 2+2 into my calculator, and MWI is correct, there would be some worlds in which some transistors don't behave normally (because of thermal noise, cosmic rays, or whatever), bits flip themselves, and the calculator ends up displaying some number that isn't "4". The calculator can display lots of different numbers, and 4 is only one of them, but in order for any other number to appear, something weird had to have happened - and by weird, I mean "eggs unscrambling themselves" kind of weird. (Transistors are much smaller than chicken eggs, so flipped bits in a calculator are more like a microscopic egg unscrambling itself, but you get the idea.)

MWI basically says that, yes, someone will win the quantum lottery, but it won't be you.

Comment author: zaph 01 October 2009 10:11:39PM 1 point [-]

This and the other probability discussions above have greatly helped me to understand what MWI was getting at. I wasn't fully grasping what the limitations were, that MWI wasn't describing limitless possibilities happening infinitely.