Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on [LINK] Fate of our meta-stable Universe: killed by a vacuum bubble? - Less Wrong

0 Post author: shminux 19 February 2013 10:29PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 February 2013 05:36:44AM 2 points [-]

Would we actually notice if our amplitude was constantly diminishing by such a tiny factor? I wonder what that would be like to be...

Comment author: shminux 22 February 2013 06:08:38PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not sure that's how it works. As I understand it, the model predicts bubble nucleation, not state leakage, due to spatial inhomogeneities: a local energy fluctuation leads to a true-vacuum bubble forming and expanding.

However, let's leave aside the spatial inhomogeneity for the moment. As I understand it, tunneling in many worlds would result in a continuum of decayed worlds being continuously spawned, all with equal and infinitesimal probability, with the un-decayed one slowly decreasing in probability.

Assuming a Schrodinger cat-type experiment, with Eliezer being the cat, and assuming that Eliezer dies in every decayed world (not an unreasonable assumption if it's vacuum that decays), and assuming quantum immortality-type ontology (quite a number of assumptions), Eliezer will only ever perceive the surviving branch, with no measurable leakage.