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gjm comments on Open thread 7th september - 13th september - Less Wrong Discussion
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At least one of us is confused.
Right now you're on some branch B. It will have lots of future "descendants"; call them B1, B2, etc. All of them are possible futures for you-right-now-on-branch-B.
Viliam's account of a believer in "quantum immortality" has them reasoning as follows: If I take the deal then in (let's say) branches B1, B3, B5, etc., I will be $1M richer and in branches B2, B4, B6, etc., I won't exist. I only care about branches in which I exist, and in all of those taking the deal leaves me $1M richer. Therefore I should take the deal.
There's no suggestion that our hypothetical quantum-immortalitarian cares (or should care, or thinks she should care) about her analogues on "parallel" branches. Only that she cares about the branches that are possible futures for her.
Not caring about those branches surely just means not caring about your own future.
(Note: of course thinking about "branches" as nice neat discrete things to which one can give serial numbers is wrong, but it makes for simpler exposition.)
Yeah, perhaps writing about "you in other branches" was misleading. Let me try to clarify: a branch does not start with the point of departure, in every Bn there's also the entire B before that point. So you basically exist in every branch, only that in some branch you stop existing sooner.
'Not caring about other you' means in this case that I see no difference between the quantum russian roulette and a purely classical one: would you play a classical russian roulette with half the bullets, for a megadollar? I certainly wouldn't, so there's no reason I would play the quantum one.
I also see no important difference between classical and quantum Russian roulette, but I still don't think I understand how what you're saying about branches relates to that.
In any case, unless I've misunderstood Viliam's original comment, it seems like you and he are in agreement; his argument is meant as an anti-QI intuition pump and is really only directed at those who (unlike you, unless I'm confused) endorse QI.
On a second thought I too couldn't find any possible difference between quantum and classical roulette, if your preference is not shifted by the measure of the branches where you're not dead.