Jack comments on A note on the description complexity of physical theories - Less Wrong

19 Post author: cousin_it 09 November 2010 04:25PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (177)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: humpolec 11 November 2010 11:14:33AM *  2 points [-]

If you observe 30 quantum heads in a row you have strong evidence in favor of MWI.

But then if I observed any string of 30 outcomes I would have strong evidence for MWI (if the coin is fair, "p" for any specific string would be 2^-30).

Comment author: Jack 12 November 2010 01:30:32AM 0 points [-]

You have to specify a particular string to look for before you do the experiment.

Comment author: humpolec 12 November 2010 06:45:15AM 0 points [-]

Sorry, now I have no idea what we're talking about. If your experiment involves killing yourself after seeing the wrong string, this is close to the standard quantum suicide.

If not, I would have to see the probabilities to understand. My analysis is like this: P(I observe string S | MWI) = P(I observe string S | Copenhagen) = 2^-30, regardless of whether the string S is specified beforehand or not. MWI doesn't mean that my next Everett branch must be S because I say so.