High status individuals, being older, tend to rely on memory more than creativity to solve problems. As a result, their first response to a given situation is often slightly mistuned; the first answer they remember was appropriate to a similar situation but often slightly inappropriate to the current situation.

I'm a chemist; we actually have to use quantum physics on a routine basis. The main reason many-worlds never got traction is that it doesn't make a testable prediction. Most physicists realize that making a model of reality that predicts experiment (as far as possible) is, well, science; BSing about what the implications are is more of a late night and beer thing.

In other words, if the model implies that there may be other worlds, but they can't conceivably be detected, then who cares?

One last thing: there's some pretty good evidence of nonlocal physics these days. It's inconsistent with general relativity, but no biggie. We already knew that general relativity and quantum physics were incompatible. The current situation in physics (for the last 30 years or so) is considerable confusion at the level of fundamental theory, but extremely robust models for every actual physical situation that we can probe. The robustness of the models is exactly what has halted progress.

All possible worlds are real, and probabilities represent how much I care about each world.

Right, so maybe we need to rethink this whole rationality thing, then? I mean, since there are possible worlds where god exists, under this view, the only difference between a creationist and a rational atheist is one of taste?

To me, the god world seems much easier to deal with and more pleasant. So why not shun rationality all together if probabilities are actually arbitrary - if thinking it really does make it so?

It depends. We use the term "probability" to cover a variety of different things, which can be handled by similar mathematics but are not the same.

For example, suppose that I'm playing blackjack. Given a certain disposition of cards, I can calculate a probability that asking for the next card will bust me. In this case the state of the world is fixed, and probability measures my ignorance. The fact that I don't know which card would be dealt to me doesn't change the fact that there's a specific card on the top of the deck waiting to be dealt. If I knew more about the situation (perhaps by counting cards) I might have a better idea of which cards could possibly be on top of the deck, but the same card would still be on top of the deck. In this situation, case 1 applies from the choices above.

Alternately consider photons going through a double slit in the classical quantum physics experiment. If the holes are of equal size and geometry, a photon has a 50% chance of passing through each slit (the probabilities can be adjusted, for example by changing the width of one slit). One of the basic results of quantum physics is that the profile of the light through both slits is not the same as the sum of the profiles of the light through each slit. In general, it is not possible to say which slit a given photon when through, and attempting to make that measurement changes the answer. In this situation, case 3 of the above post seems to apply.

My point is that the post's question can't be answered for probabilities in general. It depends.

Parapsychology is one of the very few things we can reject intuitively, because we understand the world well enough to know that psychic powers just can't exist.

Do you think it is possible that we are "living in the Matrix"? If so, then you should consider something functionally indistinguishable from psychic powers to be possible.

A discussion on Hacker News contained one very astute criticism: that some things which may once have been considered part of parapsychology actually turned out to be real, though with perfectly sensible, physical causes.

What gwern said.

Why would you try to approach consciousness this way, as opposed to through neuroscience? Neuroscience has been making some real progress lately; what is it that you think this approach could add?

I can't help but notice that the "self-monad" looks a lot like a "soul" in a thin, crispy quantum shell. What are the differences? Are there differences? Dressing it up this way allows you to do math with the monad. Does that math tell you anything? Especially, can any testable prediction come out of this?

You describe how to think like a quantum monadologist. If you answer these questions, I'll be able to decide if thinking like a quantum monadologist is worth attempting.

Babylon 5?

I've always found "Just be yourself" to be particularly unhelpful advice.

"Just be Brad Pitt" is better advice, but still not helpful.

You know, I like this article, but I just have to say: "taskification" is an ugly, ugly word.