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RichardKennaway comments on False vacuum: the universe playing quantum suicide - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 09 January 2013 05:04PM

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Tags: quantum quantum_suicide ethics infinite utility quantum_physics

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 August 2013 10:32:48AM 4 points [-]

If anyone has a less crazy method of avoiding these dilemma's though, please, please, please let me know.

Ignore them?

Why do you need answers to these questions, so intensely that being unsure is "making [you] a little sick"? There is no Omega, and he/she/it is not going to show up to create these scenarios. What difference will an answer make to any practical decision in front of you, here and now?

Comment author: Ghatanathoah 28 August 2013 12:18:25AM 1 point [-]

There is no Omega, and he/she/it is not going to show up to create these scenarios. What difference will an answer make to any practical decision in front of you, here and now?

While Omega is not real, it seems possible that naturally occurring things like false vacuum states and Boltzmann brains might be. I think that the possibility those things exist might create similar dilemmas, am disturbed by this fact, and wish to know how to resolve them. I'm pretty much certain there's no Omega, but I'm not nearly as sure about false vacuums.

Comment author: lmm 18 November 2013 12:44:23PM 0 points [-]

I'm reminded of this part of The Moral Void.

If you believe that there is any kind of stone tablet in the fabric of the universe, in the nature of reality, in the structure of logic—anywhere you care to put it—then what if you get a chance to read that stone tablet, and it turns out to say "Pain Is Good"? What then?

Maybe you should hope that morality isn't written into the structure of the universe. What if the structure of the universe says to do something horrible?

And if an external objective morality does say that the universe should occupy some horrifying state... let's not even ask what you're going to do about that. No, instead I ask: What would you have wished for the external objective morality to be instead? What's the best news you could have gotten, reading that stone tablet?

Go ahead. Indulge your fantasy. Would you want the stone tablet to say people should die of old age, or that people should live as long as they wanted? If you could write the stone tablet yourself, what would it say?

Maybe you should just do that?

I mean... if an external objective morality tells you to kill people, why should you even listen?

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