There is, of course, a difference between being duplicated so that there are
multiple copies of you in the one Universe, as in teleportation, and being
duplicated along with the rest of the Universe as a result of MWI branching.
In the former case your relative measure increases and problems will arise
when it comes to deciding who will get the spouse, house, bank account etc.
In the latter case your relative measure stays the same because everything
else is duplicated along with you and nothing will seem to have changed. You
agree that in the teleportation example if your duplicate is instantaneously
annihilated the moment he comes into being, you will continue living with
probability 1, as if the duplication had not taken place. On the other hand,
in the MWI branching example, you would argue that if your duplicate in one
of the branches is annihilated, then your subjective probability of survival
is 1/2.
Now, suppose that instead of just you the entire Earth, or Galaxy, or
Universe is duplicated along with you, while as before your duplicate (and
only he) is annihilated the moment he comes into being on the new Earth (or
Galaxy, or Universe). It could be argued that your measure relative to the
rest of the Universe (or that part of it which is duplicated) has now
decreased. Is your expectation of survival in this case more like the
original teleportation example, or more like the MWI branching example?
Stathis Papaioannou
Saibal Mitra writes:
>This doubling of the absolute measure is important. In another posting you
>wrote about being teleported to many places and then being annihilated
>everywhere except at the original place. This won't affect the probability
>of being alive at the original place. But in a QC experiment where you have
>many outcomes, all leading to death except one, the probability of
>experiencing that branch is very small.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
>To: <smitra.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
>Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 11:38 AM
>Subject: Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow
>
>
> > Well, I did actually intend my example to be analogous to the Tegmark QS
> > experiment. Are you saying that if there is only one world and magically
>an
> > identical, separate world comes into being this is fundamentally
>different
> > to what happens in quantum branch splitting? It seems to me that in both
> > cases the relative measure of everything in the world stays the same,
>even
> > though in absolute terms there is double of everything.
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
> >
> >
> > Saibal Mitra writes:
> >
> > >Correction, I seem to have misunderstood Statis' set up. If you really
> > >create a new world and then create and kill the person there then the
> > >probability of survival is 1. This is different from quantum mechanical
> > >branch splitting.
> > >
> > >To see this, consider first what would have happened had the person not
> > >been
> > >killed. Then his measure would have doubled. But because he is killed
>in
> > >one
> > >of the two copies of Earth, his measure stays the same. In a quantum
> > >suicide
> > >experiment his measure would be reduced by a factor two.
> >
> > > > If on the basis of a coin toss the world splits, and in one branch I
>am
> > > > instantaneously killed while in the other I continue living, there
>are
> > > > several possible ways this might be interpreted from the 1st person
> > > > viewpoint:
> > > >
> > > > (a) Pr(I live) = Pr(I die) = 0.5
> > > >
> > > > (b) Pr(I live) = 1, Pr(I die) = 0
> > > >
> > > > (c) Pr(I live) = 0, Pr(I die) = 1
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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>
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Received on Sat Dec 03 2005 - 23:53:22 PST