On 01 May 2014, at 03:55, Pierz wrote:
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]> 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
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.
Exactly, and even more so that we can never be sure of any of our
theories/assumption. Doubly so in "theology".
We can use practical knowledge to reduce harm, and try to avoid
wishful thinking in our theories, but we shouldn't fear truth per se,
especially because we cannot be sure about it. We can take pleasure in
the contemplation, and learn to not judge the others.
Bruno
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