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rwallace comments on References & Resources for LessWrong - Less Wrong
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Everett's daughter, Elizabeth, suffered from manic depression and committed suicide in 1996 (saying in her suicide note that she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father)
Not even the most optimistic interpretations of quantum immortality/quantum suicide think it can bring other people back from the dead. Does it count as a memetic hazard if only a very mistaken version of it is hazardous?
Why not? If you kill yourself in any branch that lacks the structure that is your father, then the only copies of you that will be alive are those that don't care or those that live in the unlikely universes where your father is alive (even if it means life extension breakthroughs or that he applied for cryonics.)
ETA: I guess you don't need life extension. After all it is physical possible to grow 1000 years old, if unlikely. Have I misunderstood something here?
The way I understand quantum suicide, it's supposed to force your future survival into the relatively scarce branches where an event goes the way you want it by making it dependent on that event. Killing yourself after living in the branch where that event did not go the way you wanted at some time in the past is just ordinary suicide; although there's certainly room for a new category along the lines of "counterfactual quantum suicide," or something.
edit: Although, to the extent that counterfactual quantum suicide would only occur to someone who'd heard of traditional, orthodox quantum suicide, the latter would be a memetic hazard.
What difference does it make if you kill yourself before event X, event X kills you or if you commit suicide after event X? In all cases the branches in which event X does not take place are selected for. That is, if agent Y always commits suicide if event X or is killed by event X then the only branches to include Y are those in which X does not happen.
The difference, to me, is how you define the difference between quantum suicide and classical suicide. Everett's daughter killing herself in all universes where she outlived him only sounds like quantum suicide to me if her death was linked to his in a mechanical and immediate manner; otherwise, with her suffering in the non-preferred universe for a while, it just sounds like plain old suicide.
The difference between quantum and classical seems to be distinct from that between painless and painful.
No, that's not what would happen. Rather, being faithful to your commitment, you would go on a practically infinite suicide spree (*) searching for your father. A long and melancholic story with a suprise happy ending.
(*) I googled it and was sad to see that the phrase "suicide spree" is already taken for a different concept.
I'm not sure where you think we disagree? Personally if I was going to take MWI and quantum suicide absolutely seriously I'd still make the best out of every branch. All you do by quantum suicide is to cancel out the copies you deem having unworthy experiences. But why would I do that if I do not change anything about the positive branches.
My reply wasn't meant to be taken seriously, and I don't take the idea of quantum suicide seriously. But to answer your question, here is the disagreement, or really, me nitpicking for the sake of comedic effect:
In your scenario, most of the copies will NOT be in universes with your father. Most of them will be in the process of committing suicide. This is because -- at least the way I interpreted your wording -- your scenario differs from the classic quantum lottery scenario in that here it is you who evaluates whether you are in the right universe or not.
Yes, we agree. So how serious do you take MWI? I'm not sure I understand how someone could take MWI seriously but not quantum suicide. I haven't read the sequence on it yet though.
Surely actually performing quantum suicide would be very stupid.
Easy - if you believe in MWI, but your utility function assigns value to the amount of measure you exist in, then you don't believe in quantum suicide. This is the most rational position, IMO.
I am absolutely uninterested in the amount of measure I exist in, per se. (*) I am interested in the emotional pain a quantum suicide would inflict on measure 0.9999999 of my friends and relatives.
(*) If God builds a perfect copy of the whole universe, this will not increase my utility the slightest.
The is a potentially coherent value system but I note that it contains a distinct hint of arbitrariness. You could, technically, like life, dislike death, like happy relatives and care about everything in the branches in which you live but only care about everything except yourself in branches in which you die. But that seems likely to be just a patch job on the intuitions.
I get the impression that some people consider "take quantum suicide seriously" equivalent to "think doing it is a good idea". That makes not taking it seriously a good option.