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Mitchell_Porter comments on Problems of the Deutsch-Wallace version of Many Worlds - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 16 December 2011 06:55AM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 26 December 2011 10:29:28AM 0 points [-]

My question was constructed in order to completely sidestep questions of persistent identity (i.e., which future duplicate, if any, is me?). It could have been phrased as follows: "What percentage of my future duplicates will be gunned down?" The answer is 50%, because by hypothesis, there are two duplicates, one is shot, the other isn't. There is nothing there about random selection or any other sort of selection. There is also no uncertainty about which future copy "is me"; that's not what I'm asking; a future entity counts for such a question if it is a duplicate of me, and by hypothesis there are two of them.

So why can I not reason in exactly this way about my quantum successors according to MWI? I am not asking "What should I expect to see?"; I am asking, "How many of my decohered successors will have a certain property?"

Comment author: pragmatist 27 December 2011 11:37:48PM 1 point [-]

I am not asking "What should I expect to see?"; I am asking, "How many of my decohered successors will have a certain property?"

If that's the question you're asking, then it's obvious frequencies are the way to go. But why is this a problem for the MWI?