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AllanCrossman comments on On dollars, utility, and crack cocaine - Less Wrong
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On a whim, I once played the lottery on the theory that the Many Worlds Interpretation is true, and some branch of me would win. I like to think he's out there somewhere.
(Of course, if MWI really is true, then some other me in some other branch would have played the lottery even if I hadn't, so strictly speaking I didn't even need to...)
Did you use a quantum random number generator?
There's no law of physics stating that you make all possible decisions in different MWI branches, though sufficiently different people who otherwise resemble you might.
All random number generators are quantum, just with very skewed probabilities. Maybe a lot of electrons will spontaneously be somewhere unlikely and cause my computer to miscompute the next term of a Mersenne Twister.
This is a somewhat useless point, though...
In this sense, you don't need "random number generators" at all, just wait for your computer to spontaneously transform into a fire-breathing dragon.
That's actually quite a good way of deciding when to buy lottery tickets and when not to.
In that case I shall use a quantum random number generator to give myself a 10^-6 chance of playing the lottery :-)
Alas no. I was thinking that, if bought sufficiently far in advance, quantum noise and chaos theory together would ensure that any ticket would win in some branch...
(But yes, I see now that making the choice of ticket itself depend on quantum noise would have been better... hmm...)
In some paths, you used a quantum number generator to decide... in others, you didn't.
In some paths, you conclude that you don't have to do anything because of Many Worlds, and so you simply stop doing. In others, you do not reach that conclusion. In still others, you actively reject it... and in some, you reach the conclusion but continue to do anyway.
Even giving up because nothing means anything is meaningless.
I've done this too.