Yes. For example, you don’t bother arguing about untestables. Is MWI true? Who cares, unless you can construct a testable prediction out of this model, it is not even a meaningful question. What about Tegmark 4? Same thing.
You may care about different worlds to different extents, with “truth” of a possible world being the degree of caring. In that case, it may be useful for evaluating (the relative weights of) consequences of decisions, which may be different for different worlds, even if the worlds can’t be distinguished based on observation.
And that’s another “actionable difference”. I care about possible/counter-factual worlds only to the degree they can become actual. I don’t worry about potential multiple copies of me in the infinite universe, because “what if they are me?”, not until there is a measurable effect associated with it.
Heh, my intuition is the opposite. What I felt but so far refrained from saying today was “Stop arguing about whether reality exists or not! it doesn’t change anything.” It seems we agree on that at least.
Is there any actionable difference between the two viewpoints?
Yes. For example, you don’t bother arguing about untestables. Is MWI true? Who cares, unless you can construct a testable prediction out of this model, it is not even a meaningful question. What about Tegmark 4? Same thing.
You may care about different worlds to different extents, with “truth” of a possible world being the degree of caring. In that case, it may be useful for evaluating (the relative weights of) consequences of decisions, which may be different for different worlds, even if the worlds can’t be distinguished based on observation.
And that’s another “actionable difference”. I care about possible/counter-factual worlds only to the degree they can become actual. I don’t worry about potential multiple copies of me in the infinite universe, because “what if they are me?”, not until there is a measurable effect associated with it.
Heh, my intuition is the opposite. What I felt but so far refrained from saying today was “Stop arguing about whether reality exists or not! it doesn’t change anything.” It seems we agree on that at least.