Re: quantum suicide = deadly dumb

From: Gilles HENRI <Gilles.Henri.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 10:17:44 +0100

>From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
>> What you say is fine for 1000 Bobs and Toms but not for an infinite
>> number. The probability goes from 'negligable' to 100%. The real
>> question is whether it is possible to be one of the dead Bobs, or
>> whether yet you will always find that you are and ever will be a
>> surviving Bob.
>
> Why should it make any difference whether there are 1000 Bobs or
>infinitely many? If there is one Bob every mile on an infinite road, and
>every other Bob commits suicide today, there are only half as many Bobs
>left, even though there is still an infinite number. The set of Bobs
>would lose half its measure, and if you are a typical Bob, you are 50%
>likely to die.
> You do seem to at least realize that quantum suicide may not work
>the way Tegmark says it should. That's a good sign.
> The real question is not whether it is possible to 'be dead'. Of
>course, death implies a lack of being. Rather, the point is that the
>total measure of Bobs would decrease, and that a typical (i.e. randomly
>chosen) Bob conscious observation would be twice as likely to be before
>the suicide than after.

Jacques, your sentence " if you are a typical Bob, you are 50% likely to
die" has not the same meaning as in common life. As all worlds where you
don't exist have no signification for you, you can say by anthropic
principle that you (i.e. at least one of your possible future) are sure to
continue to live in a world where you survived suicide, unless the quantum
probability of this event is strictly zero. You are not sensitive to the
fact that you exist only in a very small fraction of the possible Universes.

Gilles
Received on Thu Nov 26 1998 - 01:19:37 PST