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PedroCarvalho comments on Mixed Reference: The Great Reductionist Project - Less Wrong
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I have had this question in my mind for ages. You say that these counterfactual universes don't actually exist. But, according to Many-Worlds, don't all lawful Universes actually really really exist? I mean, isn't there some amplitude for Mr. Oswald to not have shot Kennedy, and then you get a blob where Kennedy didn't get murdered?
I've been banging my head against a wall on this and still can't come to a conclusion. Are the decoherent blobs actually capable of creating multiple histories on the observable level, up here? It looks, to me, that they should be. I mean, if these particles have each an amplitude to "be" here and there, then there is some amplitude for the combination of all particles in the Universe to correspond to a completely different macro Universe.
On the other hand, that seems to also imply that there's some amplitude for things like President Kennedy being shot, and then suddenly his wounds closed and he was up and running again. And that doesn't sound okay at all.
So... I am very, very confused.
I just read Mr. Yudkowsky's articles on Boltzmann Brains and the Anthropic trilemma... and I had thought of those questions a while ago. While they're not directly related to this comment, I guess I should comment about them here, too.
I have no problem thinking of myself as a Boltzmann Brain. Since most (if not all) such Brains will die an instant after existing, I guess my existence could be accurately described as a string of Boltzmann Brains in different regions of spacetime, each containing a small (not sure how small) slice of my existence. Perhaps they all exist at the same time. And the Anthropic Principle would explain the illusion of continuity, somewhat. My main thoughts on the Boltzmann Brain idea is that any hypothesis that has no way to be tested even in principle is equivalent to the Null hypothesis. I guess what I mean is, if I found out right now, with P ~ 1, that my existence is a string of Boltzmann Brains, that would not affect my predictions. I'm not sure I should be thinking this... because this whole matter confuses the hell out of me, but that's my current mental state.
As for the Anthropic Trilemma... well, I guess it pretty much means mr. Yudkowsky has the same doubts as I do. Very, very confusing business indeed. Sometimes I think I should just quit thinking and become a stripper. That was a joke, by the way.