On 09 Jan 2013, at 12:10, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Hi,
let us start with the proposed QS experiment by Tegmark,
I publish this before. It made some physicists rather nervous against
me, so that I find worthy to vindicate it. I propose the comp suicide
and immortality even well before.
OK, this is only anecdote. But you can see that I made the "Tegmark
point" in my 1991 "Mechanism and Personal Identity" paper, i.e. the
point that the witnesses are increasingly astonished, and not the
experimenter, who can actually easily predict that astonishment. I
made that point to illustrate the relativity of the points of view in
the comp setting, and the fact that the HP events (the first person
white rabbits) although first person impossible, are still possible
and highly probable in the 3p view of the first person of others.
David Nyman's heuristic makes me think that they could be zombie, but
I am not sure this can work with comp. It is not an important point,
as we don't need this for the UDA.
a QS machine with a 99/100 chance of a *perfect* kill (so let's put
aside HP failure or whatever so to have either the experimenter is
killed with the given probabilities or it is not, no in between, so
in 1/100 he is not killed and perfectly well, 99/100 he is killed).
You are a witness of such experiment, and you're asked to make a bet
on the experimenter surviving (or not).
So you bet 100$, if you bet on the experimenter surviving, if he
survive, you'll get 200$, if he does not you'll lose your bet,
likewise if you bet on him die.
What you should do contrary to what seems reasonable, is to bet on
the experimenter will survive for the following reason:
If MWI is true:
1st Test: in 99/100 worlds you lose 100$ (and the bet ends here,
there is no experimenter left for a second round), in 1/100 worlds
you win 200$
2nd Test: well... you cannot play again in the 99/100 worlds where
you did lose 100$, so you start already with 200$ in your pocket for
this 2nd test, so you should do the same, no here in 99/100 worlds,
you did make a draw (you put 100$ in 1st test + 100$ win on the 1st
test - 100$ you did lose now because the experimenter is dead), in
1/100 you win again 200$, that make 300$ in your pocket.
From the 3rd test on, you can only get richer, weither the
experimenter lives from your POV or not.
In QM+collapse, if the guy luckily survive two tests, you win
money... you'll only lose money if he is killed at the first test.
So contrary to what you may think, you should bet the experimenter
should live, because in MWI, it is garanteed that you'll win money
in a lot branches after only two succeeded test, and as in QM
+collapse, only the 99/100 of the first test lose money, all the
others either make no loss or win money.
OK. But the probabilities for any amount of money that you can win
individually remains the same with MWI and collapse. MWI is just more
"fair ontologically", because all the possible winners exist, and
indeed the descendent of the two first win have got something, but
they got it with the same probability with the collapse, at each state
of the procedure. They just don't exist, in the "non lucky" collapse
scenario.
You give only a reason to prefer more, or to fear more (if you think
to the bad rare events), the MWI than collapse.
What would you say to someone telling you that he prefers collapse, as
with collapse, you have 1/100 to win some dollars, and 99/100 to lose,
but there will be only one winner possible and only one loser. And in
the MWI, there is always one winner and 99 losers! (times infinity!).
So if the question is in making more people happy and less people
unhappy, may be collapse is preferable at the start (with that kind of
reasoning).
For the witnesses, your bet is more "socially fair", but not in way
making possible for them to test MWI or ~MWI.
Bruno
Quentin
--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
