I think that virtually every specialist would give you more or less the same answer as interstice, so I don’t see why it’s an open question at all. Sure, constructing a fully rigorous “eyeball operator” is very difficult, but defining a fully rigorous bridge rule in a classical universe would be very difficult as well. The relation to anthropics is more or less spurious IMO (MWI is just confused), but also anthropics is solvable using the infra-Bayesian approach to embedded agency. The real difficulty is understanding how to think about QM predictions about quantities that you don’t directly observe but that your utility function depends on. However, I believe that’s also solvable using infra-Bayesianism.
My own most recent pet theory is that the process of branching is deeply linked to thermalization, so to find model systems we should look to things modeling the flow of heat/entropy—e.g. a system coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures.
I agree that the problem doesn’t seem too hard, and that there are a bunch of plausible-seeming theories. (I have my own pet favorites.)
I think that virtually every specialist would give you more or less the same answer as interstice, so I don’t see why it’s an open question at all. Sure, constructing a fully rigorous “eyeball operator” is very difficult, but defining a fully rigorous bridge rule in a classical universe would be very difficult as well. The relation to anthropics is more or less spurious IMO (MWI is just confused), but also anthropics is solvable using the infra-Bayesian approach to embedded agency. The real difficulty is understanding how to think about QM predictions about quantities that you don’t directly observe but that your utility function depends on. However, I believe that’s also solvable using infra-Bayesianism.
My own most recent pet theory is that the process of branching is deeply linked to thermalization, so to find model systems we should look to things modeling the flow of heat/entropy—e.g. a system coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures.
^_^
Also, thanks for all the resource links!