When playing with nukes, wouldn’t that leave a lot of copies of you dying in agony from radiation poisoning or something when the nuke fizzles? Got any data on the reliability of nukes?
The MWI version of the Murphy’s law states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, at least in some of the worlds”.
Specifically, given that an attempted suicide is a classical event, the number of “quantum splits” required for it to happen is at least of the order of the Avogadro’s number. There is no way to create a classical device reliable enough to ensure the odds of its malfunction are less than 1:10^23.
On the bright side, you can probably decrease the odds of malfunction to that of the background noise, i.e. your device would be as unlikely to malfunction as to be destroyed by a stray meteor strike, or by any other of the improbable events plaguing Wile E. Coyote.
I hope that that thinking does you no harm. I know there have been moments in my life when I might have pressed a ‘cease to exist’ button if I’d had one :(
You would only continue to exist in those instances in which you didn’t press the button and since ceasing to exist has no side effects like pain, you could never remember having pressed the button in any instance. The only result that would have had is that the more depressed instance sof yours would have been more likely to press the button, which would mean that you would, ironically, actually be happier in total as the less happy instances would have disappeared.
I wonder if that line of reasoning could be applied? Hover your hand over the detonator of a nuke in front of you. All instances that walk away will necessarily be happy enough not to want to cease to exist. Thus, a nuke would make you a happier person :-)
disclaimer: The logic of the above paragraph may be intentionally flawed for the sake of sheer weirdness.
All instances that walk away will necessarily be happy enough not to want to cease to exist. Thus, a nuke would make you a happier person :-)
You are not nearly pessimistic enough. It could, for instance, make you a more cowardly person, or a person more prone to sudden stroke or heart attack, or any number of other things.
When playing with nukes, wouldn’t that leave a lot of copies of you dying in agony from radiation poisoning or something when the nuke fizzles? Got any data on the reliability of nukes?
This post made me spend entirely too much time thinking about the most foolproof ways of committing suicide.
No such thing as foolproof.
The MWI version of the Murphy’s law states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, at least in some of the worlds”.
Specifically, given that an attempted suicide is a classical event, the number of “quantum splits” required for it to happen is at least of the order of the Avogadro’s number. There is no way to create a classical device reliable enough to ensure the odds of its malfunction are less than 1:10^23.
On the bright side, you can probably decrease the odds of malfunction to that of the background noise, i.e. your device would be as unlikely to malfunction as to be destroyed by a stray meteor strike, or by any other of the improbable events plaguing Wile E. Coyote.
Yes. This is why thinking about it at all is probably too much—I keep coming up with ways it could go horribly wrong.
I hope that that thinking does you no harm. I know there have been moments in my life when I might have pressed a ‘cease to exist’ button if I’d had one :(
You would only continue to exist in those instances in which you didn’t press the button and since ceasing to exist has no side effects like pain, you could never remember having pressed the button in any instance. The only result that would have had is that the more depressed instance sof yours would have been more likely to press the button, which would mean that you would, ironically, actually be happier in total as the less happy instances would have disappeared.
I wonder if that line of reasoning could be applied? Hover your hand over the detonator of a nuke in front of you. All instances that walk away will necessarily be happy enough not to want to cease to exist. Thus, a nuke would make you a happier person :-)
disclaimer: The logic of the above paragraph may be intentionally flawed for the sake of sheer weirdness.
You are not nearly pessimistic enough. It could, for instance, make you a more cowardly person, or a person more prone to sudden stroke or heart attack, or any number of other things.
This topic has actually come up recently.
I was thinking that you would be standing directly next to the nuke.