If I were to build a death machine it would be based on high explosives. I would encase my head in a mound of C4 clay (or perhaps a less stable material). The machine could fail, most likely at the detonator, but it’s difficult to imagine how it could maim me.
I believe that is the point they are trying to illustrate. If you are trying to QS your way to one in several million events then you had better start imagining pretty hard and consider every possible unexpected event of that order of improbability, including black swans. You can influence the relative probability of various failure modes but you must acknowledge that the failure modes become magnified alongside the win outcome.
This consideration is probably not a problem when playing a simple low-n roulette. It becomes insurmountable when you are trying to brute force 4096 bit encryption. You just have to hope the machine breaks gracefully instead of doing something unexpectedly bad.
you had better start imagining pretty hard and consider every possible unexpected event of that order of improbability, including black swans
With QS you must guard yourself against all local Everett branches. Those branches could conceivably contain black swans, like a few electrons tunneling out of a circuit preventing a CPU from performing correctly. Even that is a 1:1,000,000,000 or more event. But they will not contain something macroscopic.
If I look around and notice no one nearby, I might say “I am only 99% confident that there isn’t anyone near.” If I then sample all local branches (with a device that has a 1:1,000,000 fail rate), killing myself in those branches that no one appears, what is the probability that I will find myself in a branch with another person nearby? I would say about 1%. The presence or absence of another person should behave classically for the small numbers we are talking about. Quantum probabilities are different than my own Bayesian probabilities.
In short, while some failure modes will become more common, others will not.
In short, while some failure modes will become more common, others will not.
I agree (for the same reasons you specified.) It becomes even more complicated when trying to account for a probability distribution over possible quantum configurations that could lead to your own subjective state. Because culling from the futures of some possible current states makes the other possible ’now’s considered to be more relevant there are additional failure modes that become even more likely to be relevant.
If I were to build a death machine it would be based on high explosives. I would encase my head in a mound of C4 clay (or perhaps a less stable material). The machine could fail, most likely at the detonator, but it’s difficult to imagine how it could maim me.
I believe that is the point they are trying to illustrate. If you are trying to QS your way to one in several million events then you had better start imagining pretty hard and consider every possible unexpected event of that order of improbability, including black swans. You can influence the relative probability of various failure modes but you must acknowledge that the failure modes become magnified alongside the win outcome.
This consideration is probably not a problem when playing a simple low-n roulette. It becomes insurmountable when you are trying to brute force 4096 bit encryption. You just have to hope the machine breaks gracefully instead of doing something unexpectedly bad.
With QS you must guard yourself against all local Everett branches. Those branches could conceivably contain black swans, like a few electrons tunneling out of a circuit preventing a CPU from performing correctly. Even that is a 1:1,000,000,000 or more event. But they will not contain something macroscopic.
If I look around and notice no one nearby, I might say “I am only 99% confident that there isn’t anyone near.” If I then sample all local branches (with a device that has a 1:1,000,000 fail rate), killing myself in those branches that no one appears, what is the probability that I will find myself in a branch with another person nearby? I would say about 1%. The presence or absence of another person should behave classically for the small numbers we are talking about. Quantum probabilities are different than my own Bayesian probabilities.
In short, while some failure modes will become more common, others will not.
I agree (for the same reasons you specified.) It becomes even more complicated when trying to account for a probability distribution over possible quantum configurations that could lead to your own subjective state. Because culling from the futures of some possible current states makes the other possible ’now’s considered to be more relevant there are additional failure modes that become even more likely to be relevant.
I agree. I think even with our modern technology we can create a suicide machine that will have a very very high chance of working.