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Sarunas comments on Open thread 7th september - 13th september - Less Wrong Discussion
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Imagine that someone offers you a deal: a quantum random number generator will randomly display a message "WIN" or "LOSE". (The chances of each result are non-zero.) If it is "WIN", you will get million dollars. If it is "LOSE", you will be immediately killed painlessly in your sleep.
According to the Quantum Immortality hypothesis, you should take this deal, because in all quantum branches where you will exist you get million dollars, and the quantum branches where you don't exist are simply not your problem. So there is no downside to this bet. Do you agree?
If you said yes, imagine that there are two quantum random number generators available. One of them displays "WIN" with probability 99.99% and "LOSE" with probability 0.01%. The other displays "WIN" with probability 0.01% and "LOSE" with probability 99.99%. Do you have any preference at all about which of these two generators should be used in your case?
My intuition is that this is one of those cases where given t "evaluation on the left side of t" and "evaluation on the right side of t" give different results. It seems to me that at any given time decision is made about future actions (and not the past), thus "evaluation on the left side of t" seems to be more important and it is the one that makes me reluctant to play this game. It seems to me that using "evaluation on the right side of t" (in cases where they differ) might give some strange results, e.g. murder having no victims.
It seems that left side of t and right side of t differs whenever there is different number of people on both sides. E.g. if you make an exact copy of a person and their entire memory, the "left identity" and "right identity" (perhaps there are better terms) intuitively seem to become two different things.