Joel2 comments on Quantum Non-Realism - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 May 2008 05:27AM

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Comment author: Joel2 08 October 2008 07:48:40PM 4 points [-]

"Is there anything the experimenters could ask for but never get?"

Well, I'd guess they couldn't get anything incompatible with the actual laws of physics, like FTL (if that's impossible). Even so, the problem with this scenario as I see it is that there wouldn't just be the three types of world "wish granted"/"machine failed, nothing happened"/"earth disintegrated", but quite likely partial "successes" as well, where the machine failed in disastrous but not apocalyptic ways, e.g. only a third of humanity died. Whether or not that's ethical I'm not sure, but those surviving folks in the "a third of humanity died" world sure would be upset.