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Nisan comments on [LINK] Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer? - Less Wrong Discussion
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If all the Everett branches that branched off of ours since Jobs discovered he had cancer were represented by a football field, then the branches in which Jobs made a different decision regarding that cancer would be represented by a single blade of grass way off on the touchdown line.
This is my understanding of the matter.
EDIT: The blade of grass next to it is one where Jobs forgets he has cancer, the one next to it is one where Jobs gives up his material possessions and becomes a monk, the one next to it is one where Jobs suffers brain damage due to an unexplainable quantum event in his skull...
The last one is a much smaller blade of grass than the other two. But your basic point seems correct.
Do you think so? Maybe forgetting about the cancer could be caused by something happening to a handful of neurons or synapses. I'm not sure how many neurons would have to be messed with to make him an ascetic. A burst blood vessel in his brain could be lethal; I don't know if this would have to come about through a mechanical anomaly, or if an anomaly on the molecular scale could trigger it by inducing apoptosis.
You are right. It isn't as obvious as I thought. The rough thought process was that we know that very rarely people on occasion do due the first two in response to diseases and terrible tragedies. But I wasn't thinking about the issue that I don't have a good estimate for what fraction of strokes and similar events are caused by unlikely quantum events. Without a better idea of how those numbers stand and a comparison for how much quantum dice rolling would be required for Jobs to have decided to become a monk I can't tell. I do suspect that the monk thing is more likely because Jobs was a member of a religious tradition that actually did that sort of thing. But without a lot more thinking this isn't much more than a vague intuition.
Yeah, I have a lot of uncertainty in this domain too.