I've written a prior post about how I think that the Everett branching factor of reality dominates that of any plausible simulation, whether the latter is run on a Von Neumann machine, on a quantum machine, or on some hybrid; and thus the probability and utility weight that should be assigned to simulations in general is negligible.
I think this is mistaken. Quantum mechanics adds up to what we think of as normal in this case. The simulations split in into everett branches the same way the non-simulations split. It makes basically no difference.
Yes, the simulations split, but those splits tend to either give the identical in-simulation result, or in rare cases to break the simulation altogether. That is, one necessary precondition for my idea is that the "felt measure" of being in a million identical copies of a simulation is identical to that of being in one; and that this is not true for non-identical copies with even apparently-trivial differences.
A quantum computer, or a hybrid of a conventional computer with a quantum source of entropy (random number generator), would be splitting ...
I've written a prior post about how I think that the Everett branching factor of reality dominates that of any plausible simulation, whether the latter is run on a Von Neumann machine, on a quantum machine, or on some hybrid; and thus the probability and utility weight that should be assigned to simulations in general is negligible. I also argued that the fact that we live in an apparently quantum-branching world could be construed as weak anthropic evidence for this idea. My prior post was down-modded into oblivion for reasons that are not relevant here (style, etc.) If I were to replace this text you're reading with a version of that idea which was more fully-argued, but still stylistically-neutral (unlike my prior post), would people be interested?