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>What can you do with this power to generate worlds and selves? You could become a billionaire by playing quantum Russian roulette. Quantum suicide isn't explo

>What can you do with this power to generate worlds and selves? You could become a billionaire by playing quantum Russian roulette. Quantum suicide isn't exploitable, for reasons I went over in a thread on reddit: >One thing about these quantum immortality (or modal realism, dust theory, etc.) arguments is they imply one should expect to end up in those proportion of worlds that have the highest measure in which "you" exist. And the most probable actions you should expect to remember are the highest-measure actions that leads to the perpetuation of your conscious experience. >In this way quantum suicide is not really exploitable, as the vast majority of "your" measure will be in worlds where you find quantum suicide to be unappealing. Even failed attempts will be of much smaller measure then those in which you never try. So stories like Permutation City are sort of the equivalent of stories in which magic is the result of quantum fluctuations. They don't violate any laws of physics but they focus on such a ridiculously myopic slice of possibility space that it is a little absurd, even when you condition on the continuation of conscious experience. Even if it were exploitable, this is not a reason to doubt many worlds, any more than time dilation is a reason to doubt relativity. This great comment on that piece by Sengachi is a must read: http://disq.us/p/1wnl71q http://disq.us/p/1wnl71q

echelon 8y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so heavily. You're contributing to the discussion.
akvadrako 8y ago
I agree. I think quantum immortality is real, but even if I was 100% confident, I don't see a clear way to take advantage of it beyond having a long-term outlook. If you did want to build a suicide machine, it better be perfect. If you are trying to win the lottery with say 1:10^9 odds, your machine better have less than a 1:10^18 chance of seriously injuring you but not killing you. If you are capable of building such a machine, you can become rich anyway. On top of that, it's quite selfish - if anyone out there loves you and knows you are doing this, they should hate you.
- jmnicolas 8y ago
  We need a Uber for Guillotines !
- vokep 8y ago
  This so much! The fact is, we're all already exploiting it all the time. By existing in the reality where you decide not to try quantum immortality, you open your future life up to tons of possibilities. The moment you pick up the gun to kill yourself, you already are on a path limited to "puts the gun down" "shoots self, injured but survives" and "dead". Once pulling the trigger, quantum immortality will 'save' you, with a few worlds spawned where you survive just fine, but the overwhelming chance is you'll wake up in a hospital bed with whatever's left of you. I actually know of someone who committed suicide to explore quantum immortality. They aren't hated for it since really, you don't commit suicide because of an interesting theory, you commit suicide because you're depressed. An interesting theory may be given as the reason, but it was depression and people are really sad the person is gone. (As am I)
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    If people knew that suicide attempts would surely fail in typically horrible ways, at least from their own perspective, I’m pretty sure it would put a good dent in the epidemic.
  - Viliam1234 8y ago
    We are already exploiting it by existing. I mean, the probability of a human with genes and experiences like me is astronomically small. Even the probability of existence of humanity (and nonexistence of aliens that would wipe us out) is quite small. But the multiverse is large, and here we are, and here I am.
CSMinds 8y ago
Assuming Many Worlds to be true, wouldn't exploiting it be inevitable? Decisions and choice would work somewhat differently under that model. Any decision that could possibly be made would be made. Should you try using quantum suicide to win a game of Russian Roulette? This question loses its meaning, because you do make the attempt in some universes (both successfully and unsuccessfully), in others you don't try it. I agree the potential for exploitation doesn't present a counter argument though.
whatshisface 8y ago
It's also possible that every version plays out physically but your spooky consciousness only picks one of them. Quantum suicide involves a little philosophy, it's not a direct implication of MWI.
tbabb 8y ago
I think there is a still more straightforward and robust argument against quantum immortality: The same reasoning predicts you can never fall asleep. If futures where you are not conscious are inaccessible by the anthropic principle, then dreamless sleep cannot be in your future. Most sleep is dreamless. At 4:00am this morning I will almost certainly be in this state. But being unconscious is not an experience I can have, so by the reasoning of quantum immortality, I should expect with certainty to find myself awake at 4:00am if there are any Everett universes where this is the case. And of course the same argument applies to every other moment of my entire life, and yet somehow I haven't been trapped in a state of wakefulness since the day I was born... (If sleep is breaking the rules, the substitute it in with "temporary death" if you prefer. Why I am I allowed to "fork into" the branch where I die as long as I wake up later? How does the information about my eventual revival make it to the branching point, earlier in time? Or does the revived version of me exist with measure zero? These seem plain absurdities to me). Think carefully about why many-worlds doesn't prevent you from sleeping. I think this leads to the correct answer. I think of it in terms of a phase space diagram. You are conscious in some parts of phase space. Those regions of phase space have certain measures. You should expect to find yourself in parts of phase space with large measures, and not in the parts with small measures. Like this: [1] In the diagram, increasing purple is "increasing probability consciousness." You should expect to find yourself in the purple area, not 10,000 years off the top of the diagram, deep in a white region. Quantum immortality supposes the latter, and that should be a self-evidently bad hypothesis. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ETOqKs9.png https://i.imgur.com/ETOqKs9.png
- comex 8y ago
  I don't think that's accurate. The many worlds interpretation is fundamentally an interpretation of something unobservable; if there were a way for you to observe it (by noticing you haven't been able to sleep) and 'report back' to all/most universes, it wouldn't be an interpretation anymore. (If you did a quantum suicide experiment, you might be able to 'report back' to the subset of universes where you still exist, like in Permutation City. I'm not sure that would actually be a valid demonstration of many worlds – the classical equivalent is just "something unlikely happened", and you can justify that with the anthropic principle. But in any case, that's very different from reporting back to all universes.) As for the diagram… Even in a classical universe (or just a non-many-worlds one), if you set a mechanism to have a 50% chance of killing you, you should expect to 'find yourself' alive afterwards – in the sense that if you 'find yourself' anything, that anything can only be alive. It's just that you have an equal chance of not having any further conscious experience. That doesn't apply to sleep or even temporary death, since the resulting universe would still be observable by you at some point in the future. Now, even in a classical universe, there is a possible set of values under which participating in a 'suicide lottery' could be rational! That would be, "I fundamentally don't care whether I exist or not, but I do prefer existing while being rich to existing while being poor". The many-worlds interpretation just lets you amend that to: "I don't care whether I exist or not in 'my' future, as long as someone else identical to me exists in an alternate universe." There is no reason you must or should care about someone benefitting in an inaccessible universe just because they're (very) similar to you; but there is also no reason you must not. To whose benefit you strive is an arbitrary choice, after all.
comex 8y ago
> In this way quantum suicide is not really exploitable, as the vast majority of "your" measure will be in worlds where you find quantum suicide to be unappealing. Unappealing is subjective, though. Sure, the vast majority of "your" measure will be in worlds where quantum suicide will kill you. But there is no reason you can't think of "I will be dead but some version of me will be alive in another universe" as an appealing scenario. As a thought experiment, suppose that instead of involving quantum mechanics, you were an emulated mind capable of making an exact copy of yourself in this universe. And, for some reason, someone is willing to give you money in exchange for you copying yourself and then immediately deleting one of the copies at random. In a lot of ways this looks similar to the quantum lottery scenario: "you" will split into two copies, one will end up dead, and the other will end up richer. One difference is that in the quantum scenario, you're leaving behind a whole universe without you in it, whereas in the emulation scenario, the universe will end up with one copy of you either way. But if you don't care about the universe, only yourself, then that wouldn't matter to you. Another difference is the alternative if you choose not to perform the experiment: two copies of yourself (or a self with twice as large a measure) in the quantum scenario, one in the emulation scenario. But then, as an emulation, you could just decide to copy yourself and not delete one of the copies. Normally, that would be pretty different, since the two copies of you would have to interact with each other, perhaps compete for the same resources, while two quantum copies exist fully independently of each other. But you could imagine sending one of the copies off at lightspeed to some distant place, with no intent to ever communicate with the copy again – heck, you could theoretically send the copy beyond the cosmic event horizon so that it's physically impossible to ever communicate again. There wouldn't be anything wrong with doing that – but if you decided "nah, I don't feel like it; one of me is enough for this universe", you can't say that would be irrational or suicidal. So, in the quantum scenario, why should you prefer having two of you (by not doing the experiment) over having one (by doing it)?

echelon 8y ago

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so heavily. You're contributing to the discussion.

akvadrako 8y ago

I agree. I think quantum immortality is real, but even if I was 100% confident, I don't see a clear way to take advantage of it beyond having a long-term outlook. If you did want to build a suicide machine, it better be perfect. If you are trying to win the lottery with say 1:10^9 odds, your machine better have less than a 1:10^18 chance of seriously injuring you but not killing you. If you are capable of building such a machine, you can become rich anyway. On top of that, it's quite selfish - if anyone out there loves you and knows you are doing this, they should hate you.

jmnicolas 8y ago
We need a Uber for Guillotines !
vokep 8y ago
This so much! The fact is, we're all already exploiting it all the time. By existing in the reality where you decide not to try quantum immortality, you open your future life up to tons of possibilities. The moment you pick up the gun to kill yourself, you already are on a path limited to "puts the gun down" "shoots self, injured but survives" and "dead". Once pulling the trigger, quantum immortality will 'save' you, with a few worlds spawned where you survive just fine, but the overwhelming chance is you'll wake up in a hospital bed with whatever's left of you. I actually know of someone who committed suicide to explore quantum immortality. They aren't hated for it since really, you don't commit suicide because of an interesting theory, you commit suicide because you're depressed. An interesting theory may be given as the reason, but it was depression and people are really sad the person is gone. (As am I)
- akvadrako 8y ago
  If people knew that suicide attempts would surely fail in typically horrible ways, at least from their own perspective, I’m pretty sure it would put a good dent in the epidemic.
- Viliam1234 8y ago
  We are already exploiting it by existing. I mean, the probability of a human with genes and experiences like me is astronomically small. Even the probability of existence of humanity (and nonexistence of aliens that would wipe us out) is quite small. But the multiverse is large, and here we are, and here I am.

CSMinds 8y ago

Assuming Many Worlds to be true, wouldn't exploiting it be inevitable? Decisions and choice would work somewhat differently under that model. Any decision that could possibly be made would be made. Should you try using quantum suicide to win a game of Russian Roulette? This question loses its meaning, because you do make the attempt in some universes (both successfully and unsuccessfully), in others you don't try it. I agree the potential for exploitation doesn't present a counter argument though.

whatshisface 8y ago

It's also possible that every version plays out physically but your spooky consciousness only picks one of them. Quantum suicide involves a little philosophy, it's not a direct implication of MWI.

tbabb 8y ago

I think there is a still more straightforward and robust argument against quantum immortality: The same reasoning predicts you can never fall asleep. If futures where you are not conscious are inaccessible by the anthropic principle, then dreamless sleep cannot be in your future. Most sleep is dreamless. At 4:00am this morning I will almost certainly be in this state. But being unconscious is not an experience I can have, so by the reasoning of quantum immortality, I should expect with certainty to find myself awake at 4:00am if there are any Everett universes where this is the case. And of course the same argument applies to every other moment of my entire life, and yet somehow I haven't been trapped in a state of wakefulness since the day I was born... (If sleep is breaking the rules, the substitute it in with "temporary death" if you prefer. Why I am I allowed to "fork into" the branch where I die as long as I wake up later? How does the information about my eventual revival make it to the branching point, earlier in time? Or does the revived version of me exist with measure zero? These seem plain absurdities to me). Think carefully about why many-worlds doesn't prevent you from sleeping. I think this leads to the correct answer. I think of it in terms of a phase space diagram. You are conscious in some parts of phase space. Those regions of phase space have certain measures. You should expect to find yourself in parts of phase space with large measures, and not in the parts with small measures. Like this: [1] In the diagram, increasing purple is "increasing probability consciousness." You should expect to find yourself in the purple area, not 10,000 years off the top of the diagram, deep in a white region. Quantum immortality supposes the latter, and that should be a self-evidently bad hypothesis. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ETOqKs9.png https://i.imgur.com/ETOqKs9.png

comex 8y ago
I don't think that's accurate. The many worlds interpretation is fundamentally an interpretation of something unobservable; if there were a way for you to observe it (by noticing you haven't been able to sleep) and 'report back' to all/most universes, it wouldn't be an interpretation anymore. (If you did a quantum suicide experiment, you might be able to 'report back' to the subset of universes where you still exist, like in Permutation City. I'm not sure that would actually be a valid demonstration of many worlds – the classical equivalent is just "something unlikely happened", and you can justify that with the anthropic principle. But in any case, that's very different from reporting back to all universes.) As for the diagram… Even in a classical universe (or just a non-many-worlds one), if you set a mechanism to have a 50% chance of killing you, you should expect to 'find yourself' alive afterwards – in the sense that if you 'find yourself' anything, that anything can only be alive. It's just that you have an equal chance of not having any further conscious experience. That doesn't apply to sleep or even temporary death, since the resulting universe would still be observable by you at some point in the future. Now, even in a classical universe, there is a possible set of values under which participating in a 'suicide lottery' could be rational! That would be, "I fundamentally don't care whether I exist or not, but I do prefer existing while being rich to existing while being poor". The many-worlds interpretation just lets you amend that to: "I don't care whether I exist or not in 'my' future, as long as someone else identical to me exists in an alternate universe." There is no reason you must or should care about someone benefitting in an inaccessible universe just because they're (very) similar to you; but there is also no reason you must not. To whose benefit you strive is an arbitrary choice, after all.

comex 8y ago

> In this way quantum suicide is not really exploitable, as the vast majority of "your" measure will be in worlds where you find quantum suicide to be unappealing. Unappealing is subjective, though. Sure, the vast majority of "your" measure will be in worlds where quantum suicide will kill you. But there is no reason you can't think of "I will be dead but some version of me will be alive in another universe" as an appealing scenario. As a thought experiment, suppose that instead of involving quantum mechanics, you were an emulated mind capable of making an exact copy of yourself in this universe. And, for some reason, someone is willing to give you money in exchange for you copying yourself and then immediately deleting one of the copies at random. In a lot of ways this looks similar to the quantum lottery scenario: "you" will split into two copies, one will end up dead, and the other will end up richer. One difference is that in the quantum scenario, you're leaving behind a whole universe without you in it, whereas in the emulation scenario, the universe will end up with one copy of you either way. But if you don't care about the universe, only yourself, then that wouldn't matter to you. Another difference is the alternative if you choose not to perform the experiment: two copies of yourself (or a self with twice as large a measure) in the quantum scenario, one in the emulation scenario. But then, as an emulation, you could just decide to copy yourself and not delete one of the copies. Normally, that would be pretty different, since the two copies of you would have to interact with each other, perhaps compete for the same resources, while two quantum copies exist fully independently of each other. But you could imagine sending one of the copies off at lightspeed to some distant place, with no intent to ever communicate with the copy again – heck, you could theoretically send the copy beyond the cosmic event horizon so that it's physically impossible to ever communicate again. There wouldn't be anything wrong with doing that – but if you decided "nah, I don't feel like it; one of me is enough for this universe", you can't say that would be irrational or suicidal. So, in the quantum scenario, why should you prefer having two of you (by not doing the experiment) over having one (by doing it)?