Re: Quantum Immortality and Information Flow

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:01:47 -0500

Stathis wrote:

>>Tom Caylor writes: 
>> 
>>In response to Stathis' thought experiment, to speak of an experiment
being
>>"set up" in a certain way is to base probabilities on an "irrelevant"
>>subset of the whole, at least if the multiverse hypothesis is true.
In the
>>Plenitude, there are an additional 10^100 copies still existing, when
you
>>say that 10^100 copies are being shut-down. Talking about these
additional
>>10^100 copies is just as consistent as talking about the original
10^100
>>copies (even more consistent if you consider Bruno's statement about
>cul-de-sacs. 
>> 
>> In the Plenitude, everything washes out to zero. And Bruno, I would
even
>>say that all consistent histories wash out to zero. 
> 
> Doesn't this ignore the concept of measure in the multiverse? If I
buy a lottery
> ticket there are an infinite number of versions of me who win and an
infinite
> number of versions who lose, but in some sense there have to be "more"
> losers than winners, which is why I don't buy lottery tickets. 
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou 

It seems to me that as soon as we talk about measure, it is equivalent
to talking about one (physical!) universe. This is similar to your
George Levy's taking the ratio of the lengths of two line segments.
You don't need a multiverse to do that. I think that talking of
measure in the multiverse is taking a common sense thing in a single
universe and (erroneously) trying to make it make sense in the
multiverse. I don't think it works. So yes I'm ignoring something
that doesn't work, in my view. I brought up the problem of the
additional 10^100 copies, but your bringing up the word "measure"
doesn't solve it. The reason why you don't buy lottery tickets could
just as easily be explained in a single universe.

Tom Caylor
Received on Tue Dec 13 2005 - 14:42:34 PST