MichaelVassar comments on The Contrarian Status Catch-22 - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 December 2009 10:40PM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 20 December 2009 01:31:06AM *  5 points [-]

a number of people seem to think that MWI means that any world you can verbally describe exists somewhere, rather than just worlds that have split off from quantum events. No, there is not necessarily a world out there in which the Nazis won WWII.

But all but the most fundamental (e.g. particle masses) asymmetry/"randomness" in the world comes from quantum events, no? Which would imply that every physically possible world (up to the size of the universe, if it's finite) exists in the wavefunction under a pretty broad definition of "physically possible", including Nazi victories and simulations of all physically impossible but logically possible worlds.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 21 December 2009 07:57:24AM 1 point [-]

I don't think that this is certain at all. Also, our intuitions of what counts as logically possible are terribly terribly unreliable.