Once you find out you lost, do you kill yourself in order to be the one to win the lottery ticket? NO! Killing yourself wouldn’t magically transform you to the copy that won the lottery ticket, it would just make you dead.
I must be still missing your point. 4⁄5 of you would be dead, but only the branches where you survive matter. No “magical transportation” required.
Did you not read the sentence where my hypothetical is placed in a single world, no “branches”? Can you for the moment answer the question in the world in which there are no branches?
In fact forget the multiple copies altogether, think about a pair of twins. Should one twin kill themselves if the other twin won the lottery, just because 1⁄2 of them would be dead but “only the twin which survives” matters?
Should one twin kill themselves if the other twin won the lottery
Ah, now I understand your setup. Thank you for simplifying it for me. So the issue here is whether to count multiple copies as one person or separate ones, and your argument with twins is pretty compelling… as far as it goes. Now consider the following experiment (just going down the LCPW road to isolate the potential belief-in-belief component of the MWI):
The lottery is setup in a way that you either win big (the odds are small, but finite) or you die instantly and painlessly the rest of the time, with very high reliability, to avoid the “live but maimed” cop-out. Would you participate? There is no problem with twins: no live-but-winless copies ever exist in this scenario.
Same thing in a fantasy-like setting: there are two boxes in front of you, opening one will fulfill your dreams (in the FAI way, no tricks), opening the other will destroy the world. There is no way to tell which one is which. Should you flip a coin and open a box at random?
You value your life (and the world) much higher than simply fulfilling your dreams, so if you don’t believe in the MWI, you will not go for it. If you believe the MWI, then the choice is trivial: one regular world before, one happy world after.
What would you do?
Again, there are many standard cop-outs: “but I only believe in the MWI with 99% probability, not enough to bet the world on it”, etc. These can be removed by a suitable tweaking of the odds or the outcomes. The salient feature is that there is no more multiple-copies argument.
If you believe the MWI, then the choice is trivial: one regular world before, one happy world after.
I think this is where you’re losing people. Why isn’t it “one regular world before, 999999 horrifying wastelands and 1 happy world after”? (or, alternately, “one horrifying wasteland with .999999 of the reality fluid and one happy world with .000001 of the reality fluid”?
The lottery is setup in a way that you either win big (the odds are small, but finite) or you die instantly and painlessly the rest of the time, with very high reliability, to avoid the “live but maimed” cop-out.
I’d need to understand how consciousness works, in order to understand if “I” would continue in this sense. Until then I’m playing it cautious, even if MWI was certain.
What would you do? but I only believe in the MWI with 99% probability, not enough to bet the world on it”, etc. These can be removed by a suitable tweaking of the odds or the outcomes.
That’s not as easy as you seem to think. If I believe in MWI with my current estimation of about 85%, and you think you can do an appropriate scenario for me by merely adjusting the odds or outcomes, then do you think you can do do an appropriate scenario even for someone who only believes in MWI with 10% probability, or 1% probability, or 0.01% probability? What’s your estimated probability for the MWI?
Plus I think you overestimate my capacity to figure out what I would do if I didn’t care if anyone discovered me dead. There probably were times in my life where I would have killed myself if I didn’t care about other people discovering me dead, even without hope of a lottery ticket reward.
I agree, certainly 85% is not nearly enough. (1 chance out of 7 that I die forever? No, thanks!) I think this is the main reason no one takes quantum immortality seriously enough to set up an experiment: their (probably implicit) utility of dying is extremely large and negative, enough to outweigh any kind of monetary payoff. Personally, I give the MWI in some way a 50⁄50 chance (not enough data to argue one way or the other), and a much smaller chance to its literal interpretation of worlds branching out every time a quantum measurement happens, making quantum immortality feasible (probably 1 in a million, but the error bars are too large to make a bet).
Unfortunately, you are apparently the first person who admitted to their doubt in the MWI being the reason behind their rejection of experimental quantum suicide. Most other responses are still belief-in-belief.
To who? The branches in which I end up dead one way or another certainly matter to me. (Which is fortunate, since I don’t have any real hope of continuing to live for infinity.)
I’m supposed to know this? My thought process went: 1. The branch in which I currently live (and all its descendants) matters to me; 2. I assign a very low probability to not dying eventually; 3. Believing 2 does not seem to affect 1 at all.
If you really believe that, there’s no need for a lottery ticket. Just kill yourself in every single world where you’re not the richest person in the world. Thus the only branch were you survive will be the one in which you’re the richest person in the world.
(Assuming an every conceivable outcome is physically realised version of MWI, but then, the lottery ticket gedankenexperiment does that as well.)
I must be still missing your point. 4⁄5 of you would be dead, but only the branches where you survive matter. No “magical transportation” required.
Did you not read the sentence where my hypothetical is placed in a single world, no “branches”? Can you for the moment answer the question in the world in which there are no branches?
In fact forget the multiple copies altogether, think about a pair of twins. Should one twin kill themselves if the other twin won the lottery, just because 1⁄2 of them would be dead but “only the twin which survives” matters?
Ah, now I understand your setup. Thank you for simplifying it for me. So the issue here is whether to count multiple copies as one person or separate ones, and your argument with twins is pretty compelling… as far as it goes. Now consider the following experiment (just going down the LCPW road to isolate the potential belief-in-belief component of the MWI):
The lottery is setup in a way that you either win big (the odds are small, but finite) or you die instantly and painlessly the rest of the time, with very high reliability, to avoid the “live but maimed” cop-out. Would you participate? There is no problem with twins: no live-but-winless copies ever exist in this scenario.
Same thing in a fantasy-like setting: there are two boxes in front of you, opening one will fulfill your dreams (in the FAI way, no tricks), opening the other will destroy the world. There is no way to tell which one is which. Should you flip a coin and open a box at random?
You value your life (and the world) much higher than simply fulfilling your dreams, so if you don’t believe in the MWI, you will not go for it. If you believe the MWI, then the choice is trivial: one regular world before, one happy world after.
What would you do?
Again, there are many standard cop-outs: “but I only believe in the MWI with 99% probability, not enough to bet the world on it”, etc. These can be removed by a suitable tweaking of the odds or the outcomes. The salient feature is that there is no more multiple-copies argument.
I think this is where you’re losing people. Why isn’t it “one regular world before, 999999 horrifying wastelands and 1 happy world after”? (or, alternately, “one horrifying wasteland with .999999 of the reality fluid and one happy world with .000001 of the reality fluid”?
I’d need to understand how consciousness works, in order to understand if “I” would continue in this sense. Until then I’m playing it cautious, even if MWI was certain.
That’s not as easy as you seem to think. If I believe in MWI with my current estimation of about 85%, and you think you can do an appropriate scenario for me by merely adjusting the odds or outcomes, then do you think you can do do an appropriate scenario even for someone who only believes in MWI with 10% probability, or 1% probability, or 0.01% probability? What’s your estimated probability for the MWI?
Plus I think you overestimate my capacity to figure out what I would do if I didn’t care if anyone discovered me dead. There probably were times in my life where I would have killed myself if I didn’t care about other people discovering me dead, even without hope of a lottery ticket reward.
I agree, certainly 85% is not nearly enough. (1 chance out of 7 that I die forever? No, thanks!) I think this is the main reason no one takes quantum immortality seriously enough to set up an experiment: their (probably implicit) utility of dying is extremely large and negative, enough to outweigh any kind of monetary payoff. Personally, I give the MWI in some way a 50⁄50 chance (not enough data to argue one way or the other), and a much smaller chance to its literal interpretation of worlds branching out every time a quantum measurement happens, making quantum immortality feasible (probably 1 in a million, but the error bars are too large to make a bet).
Unfortunately, you are apparently the first person who admitted to their doubt in the MWI being the reason behind their rejection of experimental quantum suicide. Most other responses are still belief-in-belief.
To who? The branches in which I end up dead one way or another certainly matter to me. (Which is fortunate, since I don’t have any real hope of continuing to live for infinity.)
Why do they matter to you?
I’m supposed to know this? My thought process went: 1. The branch in which I currently live (and all its descendants) matters to me; 2. I assign a very low probability to not dying eventually; 3. Believing 2 does not seem to affect 1 at all.
Why does your life matter to you?
Lol.… no?
If you really believe that, there’s no need for a lottery ticket. Just kill yourself in every single world where you’re not the richest person in the world. Thus the only branch were you survive will be the one in which you’re the richest person in the world.
(Assuming an every conceivable outcome is physically realised version of MWI, but then, the lottery ticket gedankenexperiment does that as well.)