Quantum Russian Roulette

6 Christian_Szegedy 18 September 2009 08:49AM

The quantum Russian roulette is a game where 16 people participate. Each of them gets a unique four digit binary code assigned and deposits $50000. They are put to deep sleep using some drug. The organizer flips a quantum coin four times. Unlike in Russian roulette, here only the participant survives whose code was flipped. The others are executed in a completely painless manner. The survivor takes all the money.

Let us assume that none of them have families or very good friends. Then the only result of the game is that the guy who wins will enjoy a much better quality of life. The others die in his Everett branch, but they live on in others. So everybody's only subjective experience will be that he went into a room and woke up $750000 richer.

Being extremely spooky to our human intuition, there are hardly any trivial objective reasons to oppose this game under the following assumptions:

  1. Average utilitarianism
  2. Near 100% confidence in the Multiple World nature of our universe
  3. It is possible to kill someone without invoking any negative experiences.
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