No, the distinction between MWI and Copenhagen would have actual physical consequences. For instance, if you die in the Copenhagen interpretation, you die in real life. If you die in MWI, there is still a copy of you elsewhere that didn't die. MWI allows for quantum immortality.

The distinction between presentism and eternalism, as far as I can tell, does not imply any difference in the way the world works.

The original distinction. My reconstruction is what I came up with in an attempt to interpret meaning into it.

I agree that my reconstruction is not at all accurate. It's just something that occurred to me while reading it and I found it fascinating enough to write about it. In fact, I even said that in my original post.

The meanings are much clearer now.

However, I still think that it is an argument about semantics and calef's argument still holds.

After reading your comment, I agree that this is probably just a semantic question with no real meaning. This is interesting, because I completely failed to realize this myself and instead constructed an elaborate rationalization for why the distinction exists.

While reading the wikipedia page, I found myself interpreting meaning into these two viewpoints that were probably never intended to be there. I am mentioning this both because I find it interesting that I reinterpreted both theories to be consistent with my own believes without realizing it, and because I would like to see what others have to say about those reinterpretations. I should point out that I am currently really tired and only skimmed the article, so that probably wouldn't have happened under ordinary circumstances, but I still think that this is interesting because it shows the inferential gap at work:

I am a computationalist, and as such the distinction between the two theories was pretty meaningless to me at first. However, I reinterpreted the two theories in ways that were almost certainly never intended, so that they did make sense to me as a reasonable distinction:

• the A theory corresponds to living in a universe where the laws of physics progress like in a simple physical simulation, with a global variable to measure time and rules for how to incrementally get from one state to the next. I assume for the purpose of this theory that quantum-mechanical and relativistic effects that view time non-linearly can be abstracted in some way so that a single, universal time value suffices regardless. I interpreted it like this because I thought the crux of the theory was having a central anchor point for past and future.

• the B theory corresponds to living in a highly abstracted simulation where many things are only computed when they become relevant for whatever the focus of the simulation is on. For instance, say the focus is on accurately modelling sapient life, then the exact atomic composition of a random rock is largely irrelevant and is not computed at first. However, when the rock is analyzed by a scientist, this information does become relevant. The simulation now checks what level of detail is required (i.e. how precise the measuring is) and backpropagates causal chains on how the rock came to be, in order to update the information about the rock's structure. In this way, unnecessary computations are avoided. I interpreted it like this because I thought the crux of the theory was the causal structure between events.

In essence, the A theory would correspond to a mindless, brute-force computation, while the B theory implies a deliberate, efficient computation that follows some explicit goal. This is nowhere near what the A and B theory actually seem to say now that I have read the article in more detail. In fact, the philosophical/moral implications are almost reversed under some viewpoints. I find it very interesting that this is the first thing that came to mind when I read it.

I find it surprising to hear this, but it cleans up some confusion for me if it turns out that the major, successful companies in silicon valley do follow the 40 hour week.

That's what I'm asking you!

This isn't my theory. This is a theory that has been around for a hundred years and that practically every industry follows, apparently with great success. From what I have read, the 40 hour work week was not invented by the workers, but by the companies themselves, who realized that working people too hard drives down their output and that 40 hours per week is the sweet spot, according to productivity studies.

Then along comes silicon valley, with a completely different philosophy, and somehow that also works. I have no idea why, and that's what I made this thread to ask.

No, that's not what I mean. The studies I am talking about measure the productivity of the company and are not concerned with what happens to the workers.

I also think that is a possibility, especially the first part, but so far I couldn't find any data to back this up.

As for drugs, I am not certain if boosting performance directly, as these drugs do, also affects the speed with which the brain recuperates from stress, which is the limiting factor in why 40 hour weeks are supposed to be good. I suspect that it will be difficult to find an unbiased study on this.

True, and I suspect that this is the most likely explanation.

However, there is the problem that unless need-for-rest is actually negatively correlated with the type of intelligence that is needed in tech companies, they should still have the same averages over all their workers and therefore also have the same optimum of 40 hours per work, at least on average. Otherwise we would see the same trends in other kinds of industry.

Actually I just noticed that maybe this does happen in other industries as well and is just overreported in tech companies. Does anyone know something about this?

The problem is that during the industrial revolution it also took a long time because people caught on that 40 hours per week were more effective. It is really hard to reliably measure performance in the long term. Managers are discouraged from advocating a 40 hour work week since this flies in the face of the prevailing attitude. If they fail, they will almost definitely be fired since 'more work'->'more productivity' is the common sense answer, whether or not it is true. It would not be worth the risk for any individual manager to try this unless the order came from the top. Of course, this is not an argument in favor of the 40 hour week, it just shows that this could just as well be explained by a viral meme as by reasonable decisions.

This is part of the reason why I find it so hard to find any objective information on this.