I read your post in the other thread by Mitch_Porter, asking about why your post here got downvoted. As someone who would also have responded with the answer "uncountably many" and was in fact surprised to find that that wasn't quickly established as the obvious correct answer, I thought I might come take a look.

I would guess that the (mild) downvoting on this post comes from the fact that after your first sentence, you stop talking about specific instances of decoherence and start talking about omniverses and probabilities of 1 and 0. your language is more technical than it needs to be and grammatically odd.

It is also so

it is absurd to suppose

if there be anything

contains only this one...among uncountably many

all of these fragments make me cringe and have to parse what you're saying.

I hope this helps!

The behavior isn't negative, but the perception of it is, therefore I'm unjustified in being quite disgusted by it?

I express disgust with specific instances of voting. I downvote generalised defiance and "I'm going to leave" bluster. It's not a big deal - I just prefer that people don't make comments like that and so I downvote them.

And suggesting that someone is a troll is by far the most bathetic exercise of non-rational discourse. But, go ahead, down-vote this, too, if you feel better by it.

The specific comment contained trollspeak - you are not a troll.

That sounds believable. My post has already been down-voted. Why? Who knows.

I downvoted you for the troll speak - that is, the billigerent defiance of the negative perception of your own behavior and the generalization of the defiance of karma to all cases, not just a specific disagreement.

That sounds believable. My post has already been down-voted. Why? Who knows.

I downvoted you for the troll speak - that is, the billigerent defiance of the negative perception of your own behavior and the generalization of the defiance of karma to all cases, not just a specific disagreement.

Is LW supposed to be a popularity contest, where gang affiliation is measured in the "karma" one has gained by not stepping on the toes of those who might down-vote (whatever that means) something they either dislike or don't comprehend (and don't want to admit they don't comprehend)?

I can assure you that stepping on toes doesn't interfere with karma gain all that much.

Uncountably many is the correct answer, and yet it's one of the down-voted posts. In another thread, my posts were also down-voted, despite their well-reasoned bases.

Personally, I think the voting system is corrupt, and – especially given that one can create an account, get a few votes, and start wreaking havoc with the presumed perception of posts – LW will only be more wrong than anything I might imagine. Is LW supposed to be a popularity contest, where gang affiliation is measured in the "karma" one has gained by not stepping on the toes of those who might down-vote (whatever that is supposed to suggest; one guesses 1= "yay" and -1="boo") something they either dislike or don't comprehend (and don't want to admit they don't comprehend)? If so, I'm already counting the days I continue "participating".

The measure of a post should consist in its merits, but the way LW invites censors, I hardly think the improvement of the "art of human rationality" will manifest. After all, an excellent exercise of rational thought is to show in what way faults are present in specific claims, not the arbitrary employment of "yay" or "boo" ascriptions.

(This was edited a few times after initial posting.)

I certainly hope others do not continue to down-vote what they don't grasp, because LW will only be the worse off for it.

I was the first person to downvote. Not because I don't grasp, but because I believe your explanation is in the best too brief to be generally intelligible. My negative opinion can be, of course, due to my stupidity, but as for my downvoting strategy, my own judgment is all I can rely upon. (My judgment also tells me that you appear a bit oversensitive to downvoting.)

state in what exactly you don't follow

From the former comment:

Consider that on the scale of the Omniverse

I don't see how it is relevant. Quantum branching doesn't require Omniverse. That alone makes your argument seemingly irrelevant. But let's proceed.

the probability for any event is 1

I have no clear idea what a probability of event happening in the Omniverse means. Could you elaborate? (Possible issues: From an observer-independent point of view, the event either happens or not. The observers are restricted to their own universes, how do they construct probabilities over events in different universes? If the generic word "event" is replaced by the actual specification of the event, is the number of universe included - i.e. do you replace it by "two protons collide at given x,y,z,t" or rather "two protons collide at given x,y,z,t in universe #554215"? How do you solve the apparent problem that the given definition of the event may not have sense in some universes, e.g. if the universe happens to be one-dimensional and have no protons in it for the example given above? If you simply mean "for any event, we can imagine a universe that contain it", why did you start speaking about probabilities?)

It is also so, because it is absurd to suppose there is a universe in which something, if there be anything, does not exist.

Is this supposed to justify the previous claim, i.e. that the probability of any event in Omniverse is 1? If so, I don't regard "each universe contains something, therefore any event has probability 1 in the Omniverse" a valid inference, whatever interpretation of both the premise and the conclusion I can imagine.

Furthermore, even if the probability for an event in our universe were 0 that would in no way serve as an impediment to its occurring in the long run.

What is "long run"? Does it mean "in other universes" (that would make sense, but the choice of words "long run" to denote that seems bizarre) or does it mean "sometimes later in this universe" (that would be the natural interpretation of "long run", but then the statement says "p(the event happens) = 0 and the event can happen", which is a contradiction).

And of all that, how does anything imply, or even relate to, the "uncountably many" answer you gave at the beginning?

From the immediate parent:

Taking the universe as a QM event most definitely implies there are uncountably many universes.

This is an assertion without explanation. I even don't understand what do you mean by "taking the universe as a QM event".

The OP very clearly asked for non-standard instances of the question

From the single sentence the OP consists of, could you quote the section where it very clearly asks for non-standard instances of the (which?) question?

In fact there are many continuous outcomes in quantum mechanics. The overved velocity or momentum of an electron or any other mass. In fact the number of stated problems where the results are broken down in to discrete states is small compared to the ones with continua. In fact, the heisenberg cat example, there are not just two states of outcome, either alive or dead. Rather there are a myriad of state outcomes where the cat is alive, and another myriad of outcomes where the cat is dead.

I personally think the many worlds hypothesis is ludicrous, failing Occams Razor by such an astonishing margin that it might as well just grow a long beard. Admittedly, I have not read any respected physicists argument for it (or at least I didn't respect the arguments I did already read). I think the many worlds hypothesis is just a very dopey hack for people who have decided ahead of time that the universe "just HAS to be" deterministic. I say if you observe indeterminism in the universe, then it is your theory that is broken, not the universe.

The answer is only true if the measured quantity has continuous spectrum, therefore not applying to the only explicitly mentioned example of the cat. Furthermore I don't follow your subsequent reasoning.

Uncountably many. Consider that on the scale of the Omniverse (which contains only this one particular universe among uncountably many) the probability for any event is 1. It is also so, because it is absurd to suppose there is a universe in which something, if there be anything, does not exist. Furthermore, even if the probability for an event in our universe were 0 that would in no way serve as an impediment to its occurring in the long run.