I read the first link, and to me it seems that the author actually stumbles upon the right answer in the middle of the paper, only to dismiss it immediately with “we have no good way to justify it” and proceed towards things that make less sense. I am talking about what he calls the “intensity rule” in the paper.
Assuming a non-collapse interpretation, the entire idea is that literally everything happens all the time, because every particle has a non-zero amplitude at every place, but it all adds up to normality anyway, because what matters is the actual value of the amplitude, not just the fact whether it is zero or non-zero. (Theoretically, epsilon is not zero. Practically, the difference between zero and epsilon is epsilon.) Outcomes with larger amplitudes are the normal ones; the ones we should expect more. Outcomes with epsilon amplitudes are the ones we should only pay epsilon attention to.
It is possible that the furniture in my room will, due to some very unlikely synchronized quantum tunneling, transform into a hungry tiger? Yes, it is theoretically possible. (Both in Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations, by the way.) How much time should I spend contemplating such possibility? Just by mentioning it, I already spent many orders of magnitude more than would be appropriate.
The paper makes some automatic assumption about time, which I am going to ignore for the moment. Let’s assume that, because of quantum immortality, you will be alive 1000000 years from now. Which path is most likely to get you from “here” to “there”?
In any case, some kind of miracle is going to happen. But we should still expect the smallest necessary miracle. In absolute numbers, the chances of “one miracle” and “dozen miracles” are both pretty close to zero, but if we are going to assume that some miracle happened, and normalize the probabilities accordingly, “one miracle” is almost certainly what happened, and the probability of “dozen miracles” remains pretty close to zero even after the normalization. (Assuming the miracles are of comparable size, mutually independent, et cetera.)
Comparing likelihoods of different miracles is, by definition, outside of our usual experience, so I may be wrong here. But it seems to me that the horror scenario envisioned by the author requires too many miracles. (In other words, it seems optimized for shock value, not relative probability.) Suppose that in 10 years you get hit by the train, and by a miracle, a horribly disfigured fragment of you survives in an agony beyond imagination. Okay, technically possible. So, what is going to happen during the following 999990 years? It seems that further surviving in this state would require more miracles than further surviving as a healthy person. (The closer to death you are, the more unlikely it is for you to survive another day, or year.) And both these paths seem to require more miracles than being frozen now, and later resurrected and made forever young using advanced futuristic technology. Even just dying now, and being resurrected 1000000 years later, would require only one miracle, albeit a large one. If you are going to be alive in 1000000 years, you are most likely to get there by a relatively least miraculous path. I am not sure what exactly it is, but being constantly on the verge of death and surviving anyway seems too unlikely (and being frozen and later unfrozen, or uploaded to a computer, seems almost ordinary in comparison).
Now, let’s take a bit more timeless perspective here. Let’s look at the universe in its entirety. According to quantum immortality, there are you-moments in the arbitrarily distant future. Yes; but most of them are extremely thin. Most of the mass of the you-moments is here, plus or minus a few decades. (Unless there is a lawful process, such as cryonics, that would stretch a part of the mass into the future enough to change the distribution significantly. Still not as far as quantum immortality, which can probably overcome even the death heat of the universe and get so far that the time itself stops making sense.) So, according to anthropic principle, whenever you find yourself existing, you most likely find yourself in the now—I mean, in your ordinary human lifespan. (Which is, coincidentally, where you happen to find yourself right now, don’t you?) There are a few you-moments at a very exotic places, but most of them are here. Most of your life happens before your death; most instances of you experiencing yourself are the boring human experience.
Now, let’s take a bit more timeless perspective here. Let’s look at the universe in its entirety. According to quantum immortality, there are you-moments in the arbitrarily distant future. Yes; but most of them are extremely thin. Most of the mass of the you-moments is here, plus or minus a few decades.
Why does that matter?
Under single universe assumptions, there is no quantum immortality or torment, because low probability things generally don’t happen.
Under the single-mind multi-universe view—where there is one “real” you that switches tracks in proportion to their measure -- you are also unlikely to find yourself immortal or tormented. But it’s a form of dualism—it assumes that mind and matter operate by different rules.
Under actual multiversal assumptions, multi-mind+multi-world, everything that is unlikely but above zero measure is real, from an objective point of view. The question is what happens from a subjective POV. If its at all possible for consciousness to transfer between worlds, then the subjective probability of ending up very old in a low-measure world is actually high, because there as you age past a normal human lifespan, you run out of high-measure worlds where you are alive. The assumption that beings in low-measure worlds have a faint, zombie-like consciousness can still stave off QI and QT , but lacks independent motivation. Physics doens’t say how consciousness works.
If its at all possible for consciousness to transfer between worlds
I suppose it’s not.
Then you dont need the lengthy detour about measure.
Physics doens’t say how consciousness works.
It exists in brains, brains are made of atoms, and physics has a story or two about the atoms
And consciousness isn’t a common or hard higher level phenomenon. Again, the point of reductionism is to understand the higher level phenomena in terms of Lower level activity, not just to notice that big things are made of little things.
I read the first link, and to me it seems that the author actually stumbles upon the right answer in the middle of the paper, only to dismiss it immediately with “we have no good way to justify it” and proceed towards things that make less sense. I am talking about what he calls the “intensity rule” in the paper.
Assuming a non-collapse interpretation, the entire idea is that literally everything happens all the time, because every particle has a non-zero amplitude at every place, but it all adds up to normality anyway, because what matters is the actual value of the amplitude, not just the fact whether it is zero or non-zero. (Theoretically, epsilon is not zero. Practically, the difference between zero and epsilon is epsilon.) Outcomes with larger amplitudes are the normal ones; the ones we should expect more. Outcomes with epsilon amplitudes are the ones we should only pay epsilon attention to.
It is possible that the furniture in my room will, due to some very unlikely synchronized quantum tunneling, transform into a hungry tiger? Yes, it is theoretically possible. (Both in Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations, by the way.) How much time should I spend contemplating such possibility? Just by mentioning it, I already spent many orders of magnitude more than would be appropriate.
The paper makes some automatic assumption about time, which I am going to ignore for the moment. Let’s assume that, because of quantum immortality, you will be alive 1000000 years from now. Which path is most likely to get you from “here” to “there”?
In any case, some kind of miracle is going to happen. But we should still expect the smallest necessary miracle. In absolute numbers, the chances of “one miracle” and “dozen miracles” are both pretty close to zero, but if we are going to assume that some miracle happened, and normalize the probabilities accordingly, “one miracle” is almost certainly what happened, and the probability of “dozen miracles” remains pretty close to zero even after the normalization. (Assuming the miracles are of comparable size, mutually independent, et cetera.)
Comparing likelihoods of different miracles is, by definition, outside of our usual experience, so I may be wrong here. But it seems to me that the horror scenario envisioned by the author requires too many miracles. (In other words, it seems optimized for shock value, not relative probability.) Suppose that in 10 years you get hit by the train, and by a miracle, a horribly disfigured fragment of you survives in an agony beyond imagination. Okay, technically possible. So, what is going to happen during the following 999990 years? It seems that further surviving in this state would require more miracles than further surviving as a healthy person. (The closer to death you are, the more unlikely it is for you to survive another day, or year.) And both these paths seem to require more miracles than being frozen now, and later resurrected and made forever young using advanced futuristic technology. Even just dying now, and being resurrected 1000000 years later, would require only one miracle, albeit a large one. If you are going to be alive in 1000000 years, you are most likely to get there by a relatively least miraculous path. I am not sure what exactly it is, but being constantly on the verge of death and surviving anyway seems too unlikely (and being frozen and later unfrozen, or uploaded to a computer, seems almost ordinary in comparison).
Now, let’s take a bit more timeless perspective here. Let’s look at the universe in its entirety. According to quantum immortality, there are you-moments in the arbitrarily distant future. Yes; but most of them are extremely thin. Most of the mass of the you-moments is here, plus or minus a few decades. (Unless there is a lawful process, such as cryonics, that would stretch a part of the mass into the future enough to change the distribution significantly. Still not as far as quantum immortality, which can probably overcome even the death heat of the universe and get so far that the time itself stops making sense.) So, according to anthropic principle, whenever you find yourself existing, you most likely find yourself in the now—I mean, in your ordinary human lifespan. (Which is, coincidentally, where you happen to find yourself right now, don’t you?) There are a few you-moments at a very exotic places, but most of them are here. Most of your life happens before your death; most instances of you experiencing yourself are the boring human experience.
Why does that matter?
Under single universe assumptions, there is no quantum immortality or torment, because low probability things generally don’t happen.
Under the single-mind multi-universe view—where there is one “real” you that switches tracks in proportion to their measure -- you are also unlikely to find yourself immortal or tormented. But it’s a form of dualism—it assumes that mind and matter operate by different rules.
Under actual multiversal assumptions, multi-mind+multi-world, everything that is unlikely but above zero measure is real, from an objective point of view. The question is what happens from a subjective POV. If its at all possible for consciousness to transfer between worlds, then the subjective probability of ending up very old in a low-measure world is actually high, because there as you age past a normal human lifespan, you run out of high-measure worlds where you are alive. The assumption that beings in low-measure worlds have a faint, zombie-like consciousness can still stave off QI and QT , but lacks independent motivation. Physics doens’t say how consciousness works.
I suppose it’s not.
It exists in brains, brains are made of atoms, and physics has a story or two about the atoms.
Then you dont need the lengthy detour about measure.
And consciousness isn’t a common or hard higher level phenomenon. Again, the point of reductionism is to understand the higher level phenomena in terms of Lower level activity, not just to notice that big things are made of little things.