I don’t think the epsilon chance of observing now really helps. It makes the current probabilities meaningful but you still have no particular reason to insist that the current probabilities (“what happens if I were to observe this today”) matches the future probabilities (“what happens if I observe it in the future”), given that the observations are correlated.
Re death, it just doesn’t seem different to me. If I can magically increase my probability in outcome A by committing to suicide in not-A worlds, I can also increase my probability in A by duplicating myself in A worlds. You’ve set up a formalism that allows the former and not the latter, then you’re pointing to a contradiction. But they’re both about as mysterious and settled the same way. The first isn’t controversial and the second shouldn’t be either.
(The exact probabilities still depend on SSA vs SIA vs others. But the fact that they won’t match the objective probabilities seems fine.)
If I can magically increase my probability in outcome A by committing to suicide in not-A worlds
You can’t. You can increase your relative probability of seeing outcome A, conditional on you being alive. You split into: see A, see not A, be dead. Both of the later are in world not A, and you can shift their relative size, but not their total size.
It’s survivorship bias via suicide, nothing strange about it.
Any conditional duplication is (for the purposes of the scenario’s credence of heads when asked) identical to unconditionally duplicating and then killing the duplicate in room 2 on heads before awakening.
What’s more, it’s the same as just not asking the duplicate in room 2 on heads, without any killing involved.
What’s more, it doesn’t matter when that duplication happens prior to being asked, before the coin flip or after, so longer as neither knows which one is going to be asked on heads.
Sure, but then why is it strange to do the same with duplication? You’re shifting your relative probability of seeing A, by creating extra versions of you that see A.
Predicted observation. You know you’ll be observing waking up on Monday (or, at least, that every thread going on from you to will observe waking up on Monday). And yet you are not, now, currently in the epistemic state you will be on Monday, despite know exactly what you will observe.
Bbtw, death and birth/creating are opposites, and neither is really a problem in anthropic probability. The opposite of duplication is merger—much more difficult to achieve, but, yes, it has similar issues to duplication.
“The thread of my experience has forked/merged” is something probability theories were not built to deal with; unlike threads of experience ending and starting, which is can deal with fine.
Every thread going on from you will observe something in Roulette too. (The threads that die don’t go on from you, then.)
When predicting your future experiences, you automatically condition on the fact that there will be future experiences, so they won’t always match objective probabilities. And you can also adjust for some versions of you having more experiences than others.
It’s more fragile than that. E.g. suppose a coin is flipped and on tails, you’ll be given a false memory of being asked your credence for heads, and answering “100%”. On heads you’ll simply be asked the question with no memory alterations. Then in both cases you’ll be asked “are you sure?”
If you’re in the situation of remembering having been asked the question but not answering, then you must be in the heads case, and should answer “100%”. But then when you’re asked “are you sure”, you are no longer sure because you now have exactly the same sort of memories that would have had in the tails case. Your memory hasn’t been altered in this case and you have no new information, so why are you now uncertain about something you were previously rationally certain of?
I don’t think the epsilon chance of observing now really helps. It makes the current probabilities meaningful but you still have no particular reason to insist that the current probabilities (“what happens if I were to observe this today”) matches the future probabilities (“what happens if I observe it in the future”), given that the observations are correlated.
Re death, it just doesn’t seem different to me. If I can magically increase my probability in outcome A by committing to suicide in not-A worlds, I can also increase my probability in A by duplicating myself in A worlds. You’ve set up a formalism that allows the former and not the latter, then you’re pointing to a contradiction. But they’re both about as mysterious and settled the same way. The first isn’t controversial and the second shouldn’t be either.
(The exact probabilities still depend on SSA vs SIA vs others. But the fact that they won’t match the objective probabilities seems fine.)
You can’t. You can increase your relative probability of seeing outcome A, conditional on you being alive. You split into: see A, see not A, be dead. Both of the later are in world not A, and you can shift their relative size, but not their total size.
It’s survivorship bias via suicide, nothing strange about it.
Any conditional duplication is (for the purposes of the scenario’s credence of heads when asked) identical to unconditionally duplicating and then killing the duplicate in room 2 on heads before awakening.
What’s more, it’s the same as just not asking the duplicate in room 2 on heads, without any killing involved.
What’s more, it doesn’t matter when that duplication happens prior to being asked, before the coin flip or after, so longer as neither knows which one is going to be asked on heads.
So the duplication isn’t the problem.
Sure, but then why is it strange to do the same with duplication? You’re shifting your relative probability of seeing A, by creating extra versions of you that see A.
Predicted observation. You know you’ll be observing waking up on Monday (or, at least, that every thread going on from you to will observe waking up on Monday). And yet you are not, now, currently in the epistemic state you will be on Monday, despite know exactly what you will observe.
Bbtw, death and birth/creating are opposites, and neither is really a problem in anthropic probability. The opposite of duplication is merger—much more difficult to achieve, but, yes, it has similar issues to duplication.
“The thread of my experience has forked/merged” is something probability theories were not built to deal with; unlike threads of experience ending and starting, which is can deal with fine.
I don’t buy this distinction.
Every thread going on from you will observe something in Roulette too. (The threads that die don’t go on from you, then.)
When predicting your future experiences, you automatically condition on the fact that there will be future experiences, so they won’t always match objective probabilities. And you can also adjust for some versions of you having more experiences than others.
It’s more fragile than that. E.g. suppose a coin is flipped and on tails, you’ll be given a false memory of being asked your credence for heads, and answering “100%”. On heads you’ll simply be asked the question with no memory alterations. Then in both cases you’ll be asked “are you sure?”
If you’re in the situation of remembering having been asked the question but not answering, then you must be in the heads case, and should answer “100%”. But then when you’re asked “are you sure”, you are no longer sure because you now have exactly the same sort of memories that would have had in the tails case. Your memory hasn’t been altered in this case and you have no new information, so why are you now uncertain about something you were previously rationally certain of?