On 21 February 2014 16:48, chris peck <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Liz > > > > *>>Suppose for the sake of argument that the matter transmitter sends you > to another solar system where you will live out the reminder of your life. > Maybe you committed some crime and this is the consequence, to be > "transported" :) A malfunction causes you to be duplicated and sent to both > destinations, but you will never meet your doppelganger in the other solar > system, or find out that he exists. Does this make any difference to how > you assign probabilities? If so, why?* > > My probabilities get assigned in the same way. ie: chance of seeing solar > system A is 1. I can't assign a probability of seeing Solar System B if I > don't know about the possibility of accidents. > OK, Fair enough. I didn't quite phrase my scenario as I intended. Let's also suppose you don't know which solar system you will be sent to, and that in fact the matter transmitter is supposed to send you to A or B with equal probability based on some "quantum coin flip". But by accident it duplicates you, and sends you to both. This effectively conflates the comp and MWI versions IMHO, so you can't easily disentangle them in this thought experiment. > But, > If I know that there is a small chance of the accident you describe then > the probabilities end up: > > Solar System A : 1 > Solar System B : small chance. > > Note that the probability of seeing Solar System A doesn't end up (1-small > chance) as far as I am concerned. > > Also note that in the MWI example, where small chances require a world of > their own, the probabilities end up: > > Solar System A : 1 > Solar System B : 1. > > So the probabilities work out slightly differently. I'm sure its an > unpopular view but as I see it probabilities, however small, get rounded up > to 1 in MWI scenarios. > This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always *seems* to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome. So even if you believe the MWI to give the correct explanation of probability, you will still tend to say something like "there is a 50% chance of rain tomorrow" rather than "it will both rain and not rain tomorrow". Which is I think what Bruno is getting at with the FPI. > > All the best > > Chris. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
