On Wednesday, April 30, 2014 6:19:01 AM UTC+10, jessem wrote: > > > On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 3:02 PM, John Mikes <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> *Brent(?) wrote*: >> No I never read that, but hell yeah, MWI worries me! Doesn't it worry >> you? I mean I know at one level that in a very real sense it doesn't matter >> whether it's true or not, since the other universes can never affect me, >> but at another the reality that everything happens to me that I can imagine >> is just plain terrifying. And the 'me' isn't just the versions of me that >> are still called by my name, I can't escape the conclusion that I am >> everyone and everyone is me and that *everyone's* experience is my >> experience at some level. If MWI ever does become the accepted conception >> of reality, we have a huge amount of philosophical reorientation ahead of >> us. For instance, if I take some risk (like drink-driving, a relevant topic >> on another thread), and 'get away with it', MWI suggests I am still >> responsible for other realities in which I crashed and injured or killed >> myself and/or others. My whole approach to risk management becomes quite >> different if all outcomes are realised. >> > > > In what ways would your approach to risk management need to change if > there was still some notion of different outcomes having different > "measures" that correspond to normal classical probabilities? In a MWI > context you might have a scenario where you can say "if I take action X, > then I expect in 95% of worlds outcome Y will occur, but in 5% of worlds > outcome Z will occur", but in what cases would your choice about whether to > take outcome X be any different than a one-world scenario where you can say > "if I take action X, then I expect there's a 95% probability outcome Y will > occur, but a 5% probability outcome Z will occur"? Can you think of any > specific examples where this would change your decision? > > The MWI advocate David Deutsch had a quote about choices and morality in > the article at > http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17122994.400-taming-the-multiverse.html<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fmg17122994.400-taming-the-multiverse.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHLgOxHGWRd2GSdekeyzx2koll2Jw>which > made sense to me: > > "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of > universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives. When you succeed, > all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do > for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things > happen." > > Jesse >
Sorry Brent that people seem to be taking these as your remarks. Actually jesse on reflection I agree with you that from a rational point of view, one should make the same decision in either interpretation. The difference in perspective is a non-rational one, but non-rational perspectives can still matter. It's almost impossible to shake the familiar notion that "I'll either get away with this or I won't" in relation to some specific risk one takes, because from the 1p perspective, that is always true. Knowing (if MWI is ever "proved") that in fact one's future is a weighted distribution of all possibilities, all of which we will experience, might change the way one relates to choice and experience. It drives home responsibility because there is no "getting away with" in an absolute sense. But then again, I believe that thinking about the absolute perspective from the 1p-perspective is always a mistake, in that subjective responses are always 1p and bound up with the qualia, which don't apply to the absolute. Therefore the terror I experience thinking about MWI, and also the sense of it changing my feelings about choice, are probably part of that same confusion of levels. Only God knows how we should feel about the Absolute, or perhaps how the Absolute feels (the qualia of the Absolute). Anyway my suspicion is that MWI is only the very beginning of a new level of understanding - a "beginning of infinity" per Deutsch - so any feelings we might have about it are based on a terribly limited perspective. -- 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/d/optout.
