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Gurkenglas comments on timeless quantum immortality - Less Wrong
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I set up an experiment to test quantum anthropics.
Flip four quantum coins. If they all came up heads, stop. If any of them came up tails, flip 5 more coins and (using mnemonics) think really hard about the exact coin flip sequence. If I find myself in a universe where first four coins came up all heads, then with p < 0.0625, quantum weirdness kept me from finding myself in one of the universes the state of my consciousness split me 512-ways.
I got access to a quantum random number generator, resolved to do the experiment, called a friend and told them I was about to do the experiment, and... chickened out and didn't do the experiment.
I do not know how to interpret these results :-/
Here's how I predict your setup to work, and shame on you for chickening out:
http://sketchtoy.com/66313589
You start doing the experiment, you flip four coins, 15/16 of you memorize a sequence, 15*32 of you memorized pairwise probably different sequences. In the end, you have a probability of 15/16 to find yourself having memorized a sequence. If QI works and half of you who find a tails in a first four coins commit suicide, start-experiment-you only has a 15/17 chance to find themselves having found tails and failed to kill themselves.
What do you mean by "commit suicide" here? Memorize the results of 5 more coins?
No, that would do nothing to the anthropic weights of each subtree. I meant ending your life as part of the thought experiment. Why would memorizing numbers do anything special?