I think maybe I haven’t been clear. To an independent observer the chances of any one contestant winning is 1⁄16. But for any one contestant the chances of winning are supposedly much higher. Indeed, the chances of winning are supposed to be at 1. Thats the whole point of the exercise, right? From your own subjective experience you’d guaranteed to win as you won’t experience the worlds in which you lose. I’ve been labeling the chance of winning as 1⁄16 but in the original formation in which the 15 losers always die that isn’t the probability contestant should be considering. They should consider the probability of them experiencing winning the money to be 1. After all, if they considered the probability to be 1⁄16 it wouldn’t be worth playing.
My criticism was that once you throw in any probability that the killing mechanism fails the odds get shifted against playing. This is true even if an independent observer will only see the mechanism failing in a very small number of worlds because the losing contestant will survive the mechanism in 100% of worlds she experiences. And if most killing mechanisms are most likely to fail in a way that injures the contestant then the contestant should expect to experience injury.
As soon as we agree there is a world in which the contestant loses and survives then the contestants should stop acting as if the probability of winning the money is 1. For the purposes of the contestants the probability of experiencing winning is now 1⁄16. The probability of experiencing losing is 15⁄16 and the probability of experiencing injury is some fraction of that. This is the case because the 15⁄16 worlds which we thought the contestants could not experience are now guaranteed to be experienced by the contestants (again, even though an outsider observer will likely never see them).
Consider the quantum coin flips as a branching in the wave function between worlds in which Contestant A wins and worlds in which Contestant A loses. Under the previous understanding of the QRR game it didn’t matter what the probability of winning was. So long as all the worlds in the branch of worlds in which Contestant A loses are unoccupied by contestant A there was no chance she would not experience winning. But as soon as a single world in the losing branch is occupied the probability of Contestant A waking up having lost is just the probability of her losing.
Lets play a variant of Christians’s QRR. This variant is the same as the original except that the losing contestants are woken up after the quantum coin toss and told they lost. Then they are killed painlessly. Shouldn’t my expected future experience going in by 1) about 15:16 chance that I am woken up and told I lost AND 2) If (1) about a 1:1 chance that I experience a world in which I lost and the mechanism failed to kill me. If those numbers are wrong, why? If they are right, did waking people up make that big a difference? How do they relate to the low odds you all are giving for surviving and losing?
Lets play a variant of Christians’s QRR. This variant is the same as the original except that the losing contestants are woken up after the quantum coin toss and told they lost. Then they are killed painlessly. Shouldn’t my expected future experience going in by 1) about 15:16 chance that I am woken up and told I lost AND 2) If (1) about a 1:1 chance that I experience a world in which I lost and the mechanism failed to kill me. If those numbers are wrong, why? If they are right, did waking people up make that big a difference? How do they relate to the low odds you all are giving for surviving and losing?
Consider the quantum coin flips as a branching in the wave function between worlds in which Contestant A wins and worlds in which Contestant A loses. Under the previous understanding of the QRR game it didn’t matter what the probability of winning was. So long as all the worlds in the branch of worlds in which Contestant A loses are unoccupied by contestant A there was no chance she would not experience winning. But as soon as a single world in the losing branch is occupied the probability of Contestant A waking up having lost is just the probability of her losing.
Given QI, we declared p(wake up) to be 1. That being the case I assert p(wake up having lost) = (15/16 epsilon)/(1/16 + epsilon15⁄16).
It seems to me that you claim that p(wake up having lost) = 15⁄16. That is not what QI implies.
I think maybe I haven’t been clear. To an independent observer the chances of any one contestant winning is 1⁄16. But for any one contestant the chances of winning are supposedly much higher. Indeed, the chances of winning are supposed to be at 1. Thats the whole point of the exercise, right? From your own subjective experience you’d guaranteed to win as you won’t experience the worlds in which you lose. I’ve been labeling the chance of winning as 1⁄16 but in the original formation in which the 15 losers always die that isn’t the probability contestant should be considering. They should consider the probability of them experiencing winning the money to be 1. After all, if they considered the probability to be 1⁄16 it wouldn’t be worth playing.
My criticism was that once you throw in any probability that the killing mechanism fails the odds get shifted against playing. This is true even if an independent observer will only see the mechanism failing in a very small number of worlds because the losing contestant will survive the mechanism in 100% of worlds she experiences. And if most killing mechanisms are most likely to fail in a way that injures the contestant then the contestant should expect to experience injury.
As soon as we agree there is a world in which the contestant loses and survives then the contestants should stop acting as if the probability of winning the money is 1. For the purposes of the contestants the probability of experiencing winning is now 1⁄16. The probability of experiencing losing is 15⁄16 and the probability of experiencing injury is some fraction of that. This is the case because the 15⁄16 worlds which we thought the contestants could not experience are now guaranteed to be experienced by the contestants (again, even though an outsider observer will likely never see them).
Consider the quantum coin flips as a branching in the wave function between worlds in which Contestant A wins and worlds in which Contestant A loses. Under the previous understanding of the QRR game it didn’t matter what the probability of winning was. So long as all the worlds in the branch of worlds in which Contestant A loses are unoccupied by contestant A there was no chance she would not experience winning. But as soon as a single world in the losing branch is occupied the probability of Contestant A waking up having lost is just the probability of her losing.
Lets play a variant of Christians’s QRR. This variant is the same as the original except that the losing contestants are woken up after the quantum coin toss and told they lost. Then they are killed painlessly. Shouldn’t my expected future experience going in by 1) about 15:16 chance that I am woken up and told I lost AND 2) If (1) about a 1:1 chance that I experience a world in which I lost and the mechanism failed to kill me. If those numbers are wrong, why? If they are right, did waking people up make that big a difference? How do they relate to the low odds you all are giving for surviving and losing?
No difference.
Given QI, we declared p(wake up) to be 1. That being the case I assert p(wake up having lost) = (15/16 epsilon)/(1/16 + epsilon15⁄16).
It seems to me that you claim that p(wake up having lost) = 15⁄16. That is not what QI implies.