I commented on the original on Facebook when it came out, and while you take a much more reasoned approach to explaining the situation, I found some value in riffing on the emotional punch of the original. Namely, I like that it clearly exposes that anthropics and quantum immortality are two sides of the same coin, and if you admit one you have to admit the other. This was not the author’s original intent, since they were trying to show that there is some unclear place where anthropics bleeds in to un-intuitive reasoning, but if you accept something compatible with MWI and not all possible universes being equally likely then it seems we must accept quantum immortality, anthropics, and other “weird” conclusions based on the supposed existence of other branches.
I commented on the original on Facebook when it came out, and while you take a much more reasoned approach to explaining the situation, I found some value in riffing on the emotional punch of the original. Namely, I like that it clearly exposes that anthropics and quantum immortality are two sides of the same coin, and if you admit one you have to admit the other. This was not the author’s original intent, since they were trying to show that there is some unclear place where anthropics bleeds in to un-intuitive reasoning, but if you accept something compatible with MWI and not all possible universes being equally likely then it seems we must accept quantum immortality, anthropics, and other “weird” conclusions based on the supposed existence of other branches.
Nah, you only get quantum immortality if you condition on future events rather than just present ones.