Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

OpenThreadGuy

From Costanza's original thread (entire text):

"This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant."

Meta:

How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.

Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.

Meta:

I still haven't figured out a satisfactory answer to the previous meta question, how often these should be made. It was requested that I make a new one, so I did.
I promise I won't quote the entire previous threads from now on. Blockquoting in articles only goes one level deep, anyway.

From the last thread:

From Costanza's original thread (entire text):

"This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant."

Meta:

How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.

Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.

Meta:

I still haven't figured out a satisfactory answer to the previous meta question, how often these should be made. It was requested that I make a new one, so I did.
I promise I won't quote the entire previous threads from now on. Blockquoting in articles only goes one level deep, anyway.

On a macro level, a Many Worlds model should be mathematically equal to One World + Probabilities model. Being unhappy that in 0.01% of Many Worlds you are a murderer, is like being unhappy that with probability 0.01% you are a murderer in One World. The difference is that in One World you can later say "I was lucky" or "I was unlucky", while in the Many Worlds model you can just say "this is a lucky branch" or "this is an unlucky branch".

But it seems to me that whether or not I murder someone, the total number of murder-paths and the total number of non-murder-paths is the same?

At this point it seems to me that you are mixing a Many Worlds model with a naive determinism, and the problem is with the naive determinism. Imagine saying this: "on the day I turned 17, there is one fixed path towards the future, where I either commit a murder or don't, and the result is the same whatever I do". Is this right, or wrong, or confused, or...? Because this is what you are saying, just adding Many Worlds. The difference is that in One World model, if you say "I will flip a coin, and based on the result I will kill him or not" and you mean it, then you are a murderer with probability 50%, while in Many Worlds you are a murderer in 50% of branches. (Of course with the naive determinism the probability is also only in mind -- you were already determined to throw the coin with given direction and speed.)

Simply speaking, in Many Worlds model all probabilities happen, but higher probabilities happen "more" and lower probabilities happen "less". You don't want to be a murderer? Then behave so that your probability of murdering someone is as small as possible! This is equally valid advice for One World and Many Worlds.

So, fine, live in my world and don't worry about the others. But whence that rule?

Because you can't influence what happen in the other branches. However, if you did something that could lead with some probability to other person's death (e.g. shooting at them and missing them), you should understand that it was a bad thing which made you (in some other branch) a murderer, so you should not do that again (but neither should you do that again in One World). On the other hand, if you did something that could lead to a good outcome, but you randomly failed, you did (in some other branch) a good thing. (Careful! You have a big bias to overestimate the probability of the good outcome. So don't reward yourself too much for trying.)

Being unhappy that in 0.01% of Many Worlds you are a murderer, is like being unhappy that with probability 0.01% you are a murderer in One World.

That doesn't seem plausible. If there's a 0.01% probability that I'm a murderer (and there is only one world) then if I'm not in fact a murderer, I have committed no murders. If there are many worlds, then I have committed no murders in this world, but the 'me' in another world (who'se path approximates mine to the extent that would call that person 'me') in fact is a murderer. It seems like a difference betwee... (read more)

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

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