It would seem to suggest that if I want to be rich I should buy a bunch of lottery tickets and then kill myself when I don't win.
I don't think that's the case, but even if it were, using that to argue against the likelihood of MWI would be Appeal to Consequences.
I have not seen the local discussion of MWI and everett branches, but my "conclusion" in the past has been that MWI is a defect of the map maker and not a feature of the territory.
That's what I used to think :)
I'd be happy to be pointed to something that would change my mind or at least rock it a bit
If you're prepared for a long but rewarding read, Eliezer's Quantum Physics Sequence is a non-mysterious introduction to quantum mechanics, intended to be accessible to anyone who can grok algebra and complex numbers. Cleaning up the old confusion about QM is used to introduce basic issues in rationality (such as the technical version of Occam's Razor), epistemology, reductionism, naturalism, and philosophy of science.
For a shorter sequence that concentrates on why MWI wins, see And the Winner is... Many-Worlds!
Has somebody provided an experiment that would rule MWI in or out? If so, what was the result? If not, then how is a consideration of MWI anything other than confusing the map with the territory?
The idea is that MWI is the simplest explanation that fits the data, by the definition of simplest that has proven to be most useful when predicting which of different theories that match the same data is actually correct.
The source is here. I'll restate the problem in simpler terms:
You are one of a group of 10 people who care about saving African kids. You will all be put in separate rooms, then I will flip a coin. If the coin comes up heads, a random one of you will be designated as the "decider". If it comes up tails, nine of you will be designated as "deciders". Next, I will tell everyone their status, without telling the status of others. Each decider will be asked to say "yea" or "nay". If the coin came up tails and all nine deciders say "yea", I donate $1000 to VillageReach. If the coin came up heads and the sole decider says "yea", I donate only $100. If all deciders say "nay", I donate $700 regardless of the result of the coin toss. If the deciders disagree, I don't donate anything.
First let's work out what joint strategy you should coordinate on beforehand. If everyone pledges to answer "yea" in case they end up as deciders, you get 0.5*1000 + 0.5*100 = 550 expected donation. Pledging to say "nay" gives 700 for sure, so it's the better strategy.
But consider what happens when you're already in your room, and I tell you that you're a decider, and you don't know how many other deciders there are. This gives you new information you didn't know before - no anthropic funny business, just your regular kind of information - so you should do a Bayesian update: the coin is 90% likely to have come up tails. So saying "yea" gives 0.9*1000 + 0.1*100 = 910 expected donation. This looks more attractive than the 700 for "nay", so you decide to go with "yea" after all.
Only one answer can be correct. Which is it and why?
(No points for saying that UDT or reflective consistency forces the first solution. If that's your answer, you must also find the error in the second one.)