On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 1:04 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > What do you think about identifying what one finds as an observer as a > probability of being one of the leaves of the branching MWI tree, i.e. > interpreting self-location uncertainty by probability. I see no problem > with looking at those leaves as an ensemble and one's experience as an > element (a sequence of results) as a probabilistic sample from this > ensemble. The fact that no one can "see" the ensemble is like any > probability example in which the ensemble is usually just hypothetical, > i.e. what could have happened (or what Kastner calls "possibility space"). > This is Sean's self-locating uncertainty. The problem is that the ensemble within which one is to self-locate has to be divided up according to the Born rule. You can do this, as you suggested, by having multiple branches in ratios according to the Born probabilities -- a possibility that I do not think can be achieved because of the limitation on the number of possible bit strings for binary outcomes. The other possibility is Sean's idea of branch weights, or 'thicknesses'. But that does not appear to multiply the number of members of the ensemble according to the Born probabilities. Sean is essentially saying "Just assume the appropriate probability distribution over the ensemble, then self-select." That does not really solve any problem -- it is just begging the question. So I can still see problems with these approaches, particularly when the probability one infers from the data on the selected branch has to agree with the probability distribution over branches -- can't see it, to tell the truth. Bruce -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRoA1_JQhDYFU12rSAQHwk6gN_9HyZHqRTbF-tRBBvQpw%40mail.gmail.com.
