“Well, I know that different things are going to happen to different future versions of me across the many worlds.”
From what I understand, the many-worlds occur due to subatomic processes; while we’re certain to find billions of examples along the evolutionary chain that went A or B due to random-decaying-netronium-thing (most if not all of which will alter the present day), contemporary history will likely remain unchanged; for there to be multiple future-histories where the Nazis won (not Godwin’s law!), there’d have to be trillions of possible realities, each of which is differentiated by a reaction here on earth; and even if these trillions do exist, then it still won’t matter for the small subset in which I exist.
The googleplex of selves which exist down all of these lines will be nearly identical; the largest difference will will be that one set had a microwave ‘ping’ a split-second earlier than the other.
I don’t know that two googleplexes of these are inherently better than a single googleplex.
As for coma—is it immediate, spontaneous coma, with no probability of ressurection? If so, then it’s basically equivalent to painless death.
It just seems kind of oddly discontinuous to care about what happens to your analogues except death. I mention comas only in an attempt to construct a least convenient possible world with which to challenge your quantum immortalist position. I mean—are you okay with your scientist-stage-magician wiping out 99.999% of your analogues, as long as one copy of you exists somewhere? But decoherence is continuous: what does it even mean, to speak of exactly one copy of you? Cf. Nick Bostrom’s “Quantity of Experience” (PDF).
“Well, I know that different things are going to happen to different future versions of me across the many worlds.”
From what I understand, the many-worlds occur due to subatomic processes; while we’re certain to find billions of examples along the evolutionary chain that went A or B due to random-decaying-netronium-thing (most if not all of which will alter the present day), contemporary history will likely remain unchanged; for there to be multiple future-histories where the Nazis won (not Godwin’s law!), there’d have to be trillions of possible realities, each of which is differentiated by a reaction here on earth; and even if these trillions do exist, then it still won’t matter for the small subset in which I exist.
The googleplex of selves which exist down all of these lines will be nearly identical; the largest difference will will be that one set had a microwave ‘ping’ a split-second earlier than the other.
I don’t know that two googleplexes of these are inherently better than a single googleplex.
As for coma—is it immediate, spontaneous coma, with no probability of ressurection? If so, then it’s basically equivalent to painless death.
It just seems kind of oddly discontinuous to care about what happens to your analogues except death. I mention comas only in an attempt to construct a least convenient possible world with which to challenge your quantum immortalist position. I mean—are you okay with your scientist-stage-magician wiping out 99.999% of your analogues, as long as one copy of you exists somewhere? But decoherence is continuous: what does it even mean, to speak of exactly one copy of you? Cf. Nick Bostrom’s “Quantity of Experience” (PDF).