This thought experiment can help us to find situations in nature when similar things have already happened.
It can? Depending on what you mean by “similar”, either we can find them without this thought experiment or they don’t exist and this doesn’t help. Your example is absolutely not similar in the key area of individual continuity.
For example, impossibility of sleep – a weird idea that if quantum immortality is true, I will not be able to fall asleep.
One interesting thing about the impossibility of sleep is that it doesn’t work here on Earth because humans actually start having night dreams immediately as they go into sleep state. So there is no last moment of experience when I become asleep. Despite popular misconception, such dreams don’t stop during deep stages of sleep, just become less complex and memorable. (Do we have dreams under general anesthesia is unclear and depends on the depth and type of anesthesia. During normal anesthesia some brain activity is preserved, but high dose barbiturates can temporarily stop it; also, an analogue of impossibility of sleep can be anesthesia awareness – under MWI it is more likely.)
It could be explained by anthropic effects: if two copies of me are born in the two otherwise identical worlds, one of which has protection from impossibility of sleep via constant dreaming – and another not, I will eventually find myself in the world with such protection as its share will grow relative to QI survivors. Such effects, if strong can be observed in advance – see our post about “future anthropic shadow”.
This meta effect can be used instead of the natural experiments.
If we observe that some natural experiment is not possible because of some peculiar property of our world, it means that we somehow were naturally selected against that natural experiment.
It means that continuity of consciousness is important and the world we live in is selected to preserve it
It can? Depending on what you mean by “similar”, either we can find them without this thought experiment or they don’t exist and this doesn’t help. Your example is absolutely not similar in the key area of individual continuity.
For example, impossibility of sleep – a weird idea that if quantum immortality is true, I will not be able to fall asleep.
One interesting thing about the impossibility of sleep is that it doesn’t work here on Earth because humans actually start having night dreams immediately as they go into sleep state. So there is no last moment of experience when I become asleep. Despite popular misconception, such dreams don’t stop during deep stages of sleep, just become less complex and memorable. (Do we have dreams under general anesthesia is unclear and depends on the depth and type of anesthesia. During normal anesthesia some brain activity is preserved, but high dose barbiturates can temporarily stop it; also, an analogue of impossibility of sleep can be anesthesia awareness – under MWI it is more likely.)
It could be explained by anthropic effects: if two copies of me are born in the two otherwise identical worlds, one of which has protection from impossibility of sleep via constant dreaming – and another not, I will eventually find myself in the world with such protection as its share will grow relative to QI survivors. Such effects, if strong can be observed in advance – see our post about “future anthropic shadow”.
This meta effect can be used instead of the natural experiments.
If we observe that some natural experiment is not possible because of some peculiar property of our world, it means that we somehow were naturally selected against that natural experiment.
It means that continuity of consciousness is important and the world we live in is selected to preserve it