You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Oscar_Cunningham comments on Open Thread, February 2011 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: David_Gerard 09 February 2011 04:01PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (37)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 14 February 2011 08:09:29PM 2 points [-]

Quantum immortality + Time Symmetry of Physics = Birth is impossible

Discuss.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 February 2011 08:24:34PM *  1 point [-]

Everything is possible. Quantum immortality refers to subjective anticipation, a ranking of future observations according to their importance for future plans that one can prepare and carry out with an impact on environment (utility). Since an agent can't personally carry out plans in possible worlds where it's dead, these worlds have low priority in reflection on possible plans, thus most of anticipation is concentrated where the agent survives, however improbable that is.

On the other hand, one doesn't prepare plans for carrying out in the past, and so the heuristic of subjective anticipation doesn't apply. There is no salient decision-theoretic measure to be concentrated in the possible worlds where the agent operated in the past.