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Strilanc comments on Open thread, 24-30 March 2014 - Less Wrong
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I disagree that Bob's expected value drops to -0.5$ during the experiment. If Bob is aware that he will be "super-duper quantum memory erased", then he should appropriately expect to receive 1$.
There may be more existential dread during the experiment, but the expectations about the outcome should stay the same throughout.
Ok, User:Manfred makes the same point here. It implies that at any point, heretofore invisible worlds could collide with ours, skewing the results of experiments and even leaving us with no future whatsoever (although admittedly with probability 0). Would you agree with that?
No, I don't think that's likely at all.
Worlds only interfere when they evolve into the same state. Because the state space is exponentially large, only worlds that are already almost-equivalent to our world are likely to "collide with us".
If you've based a decision on some observation, worlds where that observation didn't happen are not almost-equivalent. They differ in trillions (note: massive underestimate) of little ways that would all need to be corrected simultaneously, lest the differences continue to compound and push things even further apart. Their contributions to the branch we're in is negligible.
Your thought experiment used a "super duper quantum eraser", but in reality I don't think such a thing is actually possible. The closest analogue I can think of is a quantum computer, but those prevent decoherence/collapse. They don't undo it.