My own understanding of “Many Worlds” is not necessarily that everything which is possible does exist. We don’t have (yet) any real explanation of the Born probability rule, it may come out that the worlds with very very low probability just don’t “really exist”, as the mangled worlds hypothesis claims.
Actions at macroscopic level are, most of the time, not affected by quantum noise. Unless you’re very, very close to the threshold, a whole neuron firing differently in your brain has a very, very low probability (remember probability are multiplicative) which means that in most cases, all the worlds with significant Born probability (non-mangled ones) will have you acting the same (or the sociopath with a knife acting the same).
Only when a very small quantum-level event can have a huge macroscopic effect (like Schroedinger’s cat experiment) do you really have worlds with different macroscopic outcomes. And yes, you can have such “chaos theory” effects, like the butterfly effect, even we don’t artificially devise experiments that way, but they aren’t frequent.
Disclaimer : I’m a computer scientist, not a physicist nor a biologist.
This strikes me as a series of excuses for not biting a bullet. The thing is… it’s not a bullet that would need to be bitten anyway.
We don’t have (yet) any real explanation of the Born probability rule, it may come out that the worlds with very very low probability just don’t “really exist”, as the mangled worlds hypothesis claims.
Sure, it is possible that mangled worlds or something else that made quantum amplitudes discrete in some way would influence our preferences but we don’t have a solid reason for assuming this to be the case. It is worth looking at how quantum mechanics actually appears to behave and evaluating preferences accordingly.
Only when a very small quantum-level event can have a huge macroscopic effect (like Schroedinger’s cat experiment) do you really have worlds with different macroscopic outcomes. And yes, you can have such “chaos theory” effects, like the butterfly effect, even we don’t artificially devise experiments that way, but they aren’t frequent.
Sure they aren’t frequent… but the very premise of the question the post asks relies on implicit selection effects that select for specific highly improbable events. It for some reason arbitrary selects only the freakishly unlikely “live” branches and chooses not to care about “die” branches. This gets progressively more extreme the more ‘immortal’ the actor is considered to be. So sure, Schroedinger’s cat is a contrived circumstance and doesn’t happen naturally very often, but they are just the kind of event that comes into play with “immortality” selection.
Actions at macroscopic level are, most of the time, not affected by quantum noise. Unless you’re very, very close to the threshold, a whole neuron firing differently in your brain has a very, very low probability (remember probability are multiplicative) which means that in most cases, all the worlds with significant Born probability (non-mangled ones) will have you acting the same (or the sociopath with a knife acting the same).
If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that if something like “mangled worlds” holds true it may be that if someone is killed in one universe they are killed in every other universe a perfectly identical version of them exists in, because the quantum differences in those universes never add up to a big enough effect to “save” them. This seems plausible to me, and fits well with the sixth reason on my list.
Only when a very small quantum-level event can have a huge macroscopic effect (like Schroedinger’s cat experiment) do you really have worlds with different macroscopic outcomes. And yes, you can have such “chaos theory” effects, like the butterfly effect, even we don’t artificially devise experiments that way, but they aren’t frequent.
Are they that rare? People never decide what to do using quantum random number generators?
My own understanding of “Many Worlds” is not necessarily that everything which is possible does exist. We don’t have (yet) any real explanation of the Born probability rule, it may come out that the worlds with very very low probability just don’t “really exist”, as the mangled worlds hypothesis claims.
Actions at macroscopic level are, most of the time, not affected by quantum noise. Unless you’re very, very close to the threshold, a whole neuron firing differently in your brain has a very, very low probability (remember probability are multiplicative) which means that in most cases, all the worlds with significant Born probability (non-mangled ones) will have you acting the same (or the sociopath with a knife acting the same).
Only when a very small quantum-level event can have a huge macroscopic effect (like Schroedinger’s cat experiment) do you really have worlds with different macroscopic outcomes. And yes, you can have such “chaos theory” effects, like the butterfly effect, even we don’t artificially devise experiments that way, but they aren’t frequent.
Disclaimer : I’m a computer scientist, not a physicist nor a biologist.
This strikes me as a series of excuses for not biting a bullet. The thing is… it’s not a bullet that would need to be bitten anyway.
Sure, it is possible that mangled worlds or something else that made quantum amplitudes discrete in some way would influence our preferences but we don’t have a solid reason for assuming this to be the case. It is worth looking at how quantum mechanics actually appears to behave and evaluating preferences accordingly.
Sure they aren’t frequent… but the very premise of the question the post asks relies on implicit selection effects that select for specific highly improbable events. It for some reason arbitrary selects only the freakishly unlikely “live” branches and chooses not to care about “die” branches. This gets progressively more extreme the more ‘immortal’ the actor is considered to be. So sure, Schroedinger’s cat is a contrived circumstance and doesn’t happen naturally very often, but they are just the kind of event that comes into play with “immortality” selection.
If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that if something like “mangled worlds” holds true it may be that if someone is killed in one universe they are killed in every other universe a perfectly identical version of them exists in, because the quantum differences in those universes never add up to a big enough effect to “save” them. This seems plausible to me, and fits well with the sixth reason on my list.
Are they that rare? People never decide what to do using quantum random number generators?
I use a quantum coinflip app all the time. I have more nonmangled measure than any of you classical suckers!
There doesn’t seem to be a version for Android of that. :-(
(I ‘usually’ flip a virtual Italian €2 coin. The scare quotes are because I only did that once in the past year.)