Are you sure that this hypothesis makes no observable predictions?
For one of many possible predictions, I ask whether the tunneling is truly independent of the arrangement of matter and energy in the area. If there is some arrangement that makes it more possible, we should see effects from it. Exotic matter physics experiments seem like a good candidate to create such. Perhaps high energy particle collisions, or Bose-Einstein condensates, or negative temperature quantum gases, Ccassimir effect setups, or something else.
If those experiments, when successful, decrease the measure of their resultant universe, we should expect to see them fail more often than normal.
So, a proposed test: set up an experimental apparatus that flips a quantum coin, and then either performs or doesn't perform the experiment in question. You expect to see the "not performed" result with p > 0.5 in your recorded data.
Of course, the effect may be very weak at that scale, if it "only" reduces the measure of the universe by a factor of 10^12 per second across the entire universe. You might have trouble getting enough of the measure from your experiment to detect something.
(Also, a minor nitpick: the per-microsecond discount rate should be about 0.0028%, as 1.000028^(1E6) ~= 1E12.)
So, a proposed test:
That test only works if you take quantum measure as probability in the first place.
(Also, a minor nitpick: the per-microsecond discount rate should be about 0.0028%, as 1.000028^(1E6) ~= 1E12.)
Urg! Annoying mishap. I will correct it before you have time to read this response.
Imagine that the universe is approximately as it appears to be (I know, this is a controversial proposition, but bear with me!). Further imagine that the many worlds interpretation of Quantum mechanics is true (I'm really moving out of Less Wrong's comfort zone here, aren't I?).
Now assume that our universe is in a situation of false vacuum - the universe is not in its lowest energy configuration. Somewhere, at some point, our universe may tunnel into true vacuum, resulting in a expanding bubble of destruction that will eat the entire universe at high speed, destroying all matter and life. In many worlds, such a collapse need not be terminal: life could go one on a branch of lower measure. In fact, anthropically, life will go on somewhere, no matter how unstable the false vacuum is.
So now assume that the false vacuum we're in is highly unstable - the measure of the branch in which our universe survives goes down by a factor of a trillion every second. We only exist because we're in the branch of measure a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of... all the way back to the Big Bang.
None of these assumptions make any difference to what we'd expect to see observationally: only a good enough theory can say that they're right or wrong. You may notice that this setup transforms the whole universe into a quantum suicide situation.
The question is, how do you go about maximising expected utility in this situation? I can think of a few different approaches: