I’d argue that it’s reasonable to place a $0 utility on my existence in other Everett branches; while theoretically I know they exist, theoretically there is something beyond the light-barrier at the edge of the visible universe. It’s existence is irrelevant, however, since I will never be able to interact with it.
Perhaps a different way of phrasing this—say I had a duplicating machine. I step into Booth B, and then an exact duplicate is created in booths A and C, while the booth B body is vapourized. For reasons of technobabble, the booth can only recreate people, not gold bullion, or tasty filet mignons. I then program the machine to ‘dissolve’ the booth C version into three vats of the base chemicals which the human body is made up of, through an instantaneous and harmless process. I then sell these chemicals for $50 on ebay. (Anybody with enough geek-points will know that the Star Trek teleporters work on this principle).
Keep in mind that the universe wouldn’t have differentiated into two distinct universes, one where I’m alive and one where I’m dead, if I hadn’t performed the experiment (technically it would still have differentiated, but the two results would be anthropically identical). Does my existence in another Everett branch have moral significance? Suffering is one thing, but existence? I’m not sure that it does.
I think this depends on the answers to problems in anthropics and consciousness (the subjects that no one understands). The aptness of your thought experiment depends on Everett branching being like creating a duplicate of yourself, rather than dividing your measure) or “degree-of-consciousness” in half. Now, since I only have the semipopular (i.e., still fake) version of QM, there’s a substantial probability that everything I believe is nonsense, but I was given to understand that Everett branching divides up your measure, rather than duplicating you: decoherence is a thermodynamic process occuring in the universal wavefunction; it’s not really about new parallel universes being created. Somewhat disturbingly, if I’m understanding it correctly, this seems to suggest that people in the past have more measure than we do, simply by virtue of being in the past …
this seems to suggest that people in the past have more measure than we do
One Everett branch in the past has more measure than one Everett branch now. But the total measures over all Everett branches containing humans differ only by the probability of an existential disaster in the intervening time. The measure is merely spread across more diversity now, which doesn’t seem all that disturbing to me.
Hopefully this conversation doesn’t separate into decoherence—though we may well have already jumped the shark. :)
First of all, I want to clarify something: do you agree that duplicating myself with a magical cloning booth for the $50 of mineral extracts is sensible, while disagreeing with the same tactic using Everett branches?
Secondly, could you explain how measure in the mathematical sense relates to moral value in unknowable realites (I confess, I remember only half of my calculus).
Thirdly, following up on the second, I was under the “semipopular (i.e., still fake) version of QM” idea that differing Everett branches were as unreal as something outside of my light cone. (This is a great link regarding relativity—sorry I don’t know how to html: http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/ )
For the record, I’m not entirely certain that differeing Everett branches of myself have 0 value; I wouldn’t want them to suffer but if one of the two of us stopped existing, the only concern I could justify to myself would be concern over my long-suffering mother. I can’t prove that they have zero value, but I can’t think of why they wouldn’t.
could you explain how measure in the mathematical sense relates to moral value in unknowable realites
Well, I know that different things are going to happen to different future versions of me across the many worlds. I don’t want to say that I only care about some versions of me, because I anticipate being all of them. I would seem to need some sort of weighing scheme. You’ve said you don’t want your analogues to suffer, but you don’t mind them ceasing to exist, but I don’t think you can do that consistently. The real world is continuous and messy: there’s no single bright line between life and death, between person and not-a-person. If you’re okay with half of your selves across the many worlds suddenly dying, are you okay with them gradually dropping into a coma? &c.
“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).
Evidence to support your idea- whenever I make a choice, in another branch, ‘I’ made a the other decision, so if I cared equally about all future versions of myself, the I’d have no reason to choose one option over another.
If correct, this shows I don’t care equally about currently parallel worlds, but not that I don’t care equally about future sub-branches from this one.
Whenever I make a choice, there are branches that made another choice. But not all branches are equal. The closer my decision algorithm is to deterministic (on a macroscopic scale), the more asymmetric the distribution of measure among decision outcomes. (And the cases where my decision isn’t close to deterministic are precisely the ones where I could just as easily have chosen the other way—where I don’t have any reason to pick one choice.)
Thus the thought experiment doesn’t show that I don’t care about all my branches, current and future, simply proportional to their measure.
I’d argue that it’s reasonable to place a $0 utility on my existence in other Everett branches; while theoretically I know they exist, theoretically there is something beyond the light-barrier at the edge of the visible universe. It’s existence is irrelevant, however, since I will never be able to interact with it.
Perhaps a different way of phrasing this—say I had a duplicating machine. I step into Booth B, and then an exact duplicate is created in booths A and C, while the booth B body is vapourized. For reasons of technobabble, the booth can only recreate people, not gold bullion, or tasty filet mignons. I then program the machine to ‘dissolve’ the booth C version into three vats of the base chemicals which the human body is made up of, through an instantaneous and harmless process. I then sell these chemicals for $50 on ebay. (Anybody with enough geek-points will know that the Star Trek teleporters work on this principle).
Keep in mind that the universe wouldn’t have differentiated into two distinct universes, one where I’m alive and one where I’m dead, if I hadn’t performed the experiment (technically it would still have differentiated, but the two results would be anthropically identical). Does my existence in another Everett branch have moral significance? Suffering is one thing, but existence? I’m not sure that it does.
I think this depends on the answers to problems in anthropics and consciousness (the subjects that no one understands). The aptness of your thought experiment depends on Everett branching being like creating a duplicate of yourself, rather than dividing your measure) or “degree-of-consciousness” in half. Now, since I only have the semipopular (i.e., still fake) version of QM, there’s a substantial probability that everything I believe is nonsense, but I was given to understand that Everett branching divides up your measure, rather than duplicating you: decoherence is a thermodynamic process occuring in the universal wavefunction; it’s not really about new parallel universes being created. Somewhat disturbingly, if I’m understanding it correctly, this seems to suggest that people in the past have more measure than we do, simply by virtue of being in the past …
But again, I could just be talking nonsense.
One Everett branch in the past has more measure than one Everett branch now. But the total measures over all Everett branches containing humans differ only by the probability of an existential disaster in the intervening time. The measure is merely spread across more diversity now, which doesn’t seem all that disturbing to me.
Hopefully this conversation doesn’t separate into decoherence—though we may well have already jumped the shark. :)
First of all, I want to clarify something: do you agree that duplicating myself with a magical cloning booth for the $50 of mineral extracts is sensible, while disagreeing with the same tactic using Everett branches?
Secondly, could you explain how measure in the mathematical sense relates to moral value in unknowable realites (I confess, I remember only half of my calculus).
Thirdly, following up on the second, I was under the “semipopular (i.e., still fake) version of QM” idea that differing Everett branches were as unreal as something outside of my light cone. (This is a great link regarding relativity—sorry I don’t know how to html: http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/ )
For the record, I’m not entirely certain that differeing Everett branches of myself have 0 value; I wouldn’t want them to suffer but if one of the two of us stopped existing, the only concern I could justify to myself would be concern over my long-suffering mother. I can’t prove that they have zero value, but I can’t think of why they wouldn’t.
Well, I know that different things are going to happen to different future versions of me across the many worlds. I don’t want to say that I only care about some versions of me, because I anticipate being all of them. I would seem to need some sort of weighing scheme. You’ve said you don’t want your analogues to suffer, but you don’t mind them ceasing to exist, but I don’t think you can do that consistently. The real world is continuous and messy: there’s no single bright line between life and death, between person and not-a-person. If you’re okay with half of your selves across the many worlds suddenly dying, are you okay with them gradually dropping into a coma? &c.
“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).
Evidence to support your idea- whenever I make a choice, in another branch, ‘I’ made a the other decision, so if I cared equally about all future versions of myself, the I’d have no reason to choose one option over another.
If correct, this shows I don’t care equally about currently parallel worlds, but not that I don’t care equally about future sub-branches from this one.
Whenever I make a choice, there are branches that made another choice. But not all branches are equal. The closer my decision algorithm is to deterministic (on a macroscopic scale), the more asymmetric the distribution of measure among decision outcomes. (And the cases where my decision isn’t close to deterministic are precisely the ones where I could just as easily have chosen the other way—where I don’t have any reason to pick one choice.)
Thus the thought experiment doesn’t show that I don’t care about all my branches, current and future, simply proportional to their measure.