When Einstein overthrew the Newtonian version of gravity, apples didn’t stop falling, planets didn’t swerve into the Sun. Every new theory of physics must capture the successful predictions of the old theory it displaced; it should predict that the sky will be blue, rather than green.
So don’t think that many-worlds is there to make strange, radical, exciting predictions. It all adds up to normality.
Which means that your ethics should not depends on the potential existence of other worlds we have no way of interacting with. In other words, while it might well be simpler (for some people) to reason your ethics by using the many worlds paradigm, the outcome of this reasoning should not depend on the number of worlds.
So, I’ve been thinking about this, and say I and everyone I know believes that it’s possible to be the first one, absolutely, to whistle a tune. This is, for our strange culture, an important ethical belief. That belief is part of what I would call ‘normality’. Now, some jerk comes a long and proves MW, and so I learn that for any tune I would consider novel, odds are that it’s been whistled before in another world (I’m taking this example from EY in the sequences). So, depending on my normal, MW may add up to normality, and it may not. In a much more obvious sense, if my normal is Newtonian physics, MW doesn’t add up to normality either.
So what does adding up to normal mean? Consider that my other stupid question. Egan’s law seems to go un-argued for and unexplained. If it just means what the paragraph you cite says, then MW may well abolish or come into conflict with our ethical ideas, since apparently it comes into conflict with all kinds of other ideas (like false physical theories) and none of this requires the destruction of the solar system or flying apples.
It means that if you do not observe pink unicorns daily, no new weird and wonderful theory should claim that you should have. Or, as EY puts it “apples didn’t stop falling, planets didn’t swerve into the Sun”. Another name for this is the correspondence principle.
If your ethics requires for you to be the first tune whistler in the multiverse, not just in this world, it’s not a useful ethics.
If your ethics requires for you to be the first tune whistler in the multiverse, not just in this world, it’s not a useful ethics.
The usefulness of the ethics (if that’s the right standard to apply to an ethical idea) is not relevant to the example.
That is, unless you want to posit (and we should be super, super clear about this) that there is an a priori principle that any ethics capable of being contradicted by a true physical theory is not useful. But I very much doubt you want to say that.
I think modern physics pretty obviously doesn’t add up to normality in a number of cases. Long debates about cryonics took place because part of many people’s normal understanding of personal identity (an ethical category if there ever was one) involved a conception of material constituants like atoms such that there can be my atoms versus your atoms. This just turned out to be nonsense, as we discovered through investigation of physics. The fact that atoms no more have identities qua particular instances than do numbers overturned some element of normality.
Given cases like that, how does one actually argue for Egan’s law? It’s not enough to just state it.
It means that if in your branch you are the first one to whistle the tune, there is no one else in your branch to contradict you. (Just as you would expect in One World.) In some other branch someone else was first, and in that branch you don’t think that you were the first, so again no conflict.
if my normal is Newtonian physics
Then “adding up to normal” means that even when Einstein ruins your model, all things will behave the same way as they always did. Things that within given precision obeyed the Newtonian physics, will continue to do it. You will only see exceptions in unusual situations, such as GPS satellites. (But if you had GPS satellites before Einstein invented his theory, you would have seen those exceptions too. You just didn’t know that would happen.)
In case of morality it means that if you had a rule “X is good” because it usually has good consequences (or because it follows the rules, or whatever), then “X is good” even with Many Worlds. The exception is if you try to apply moral significance to a photon moving through a double slit.
An explanation may change: for example it was immoral to say “if the coin ends this side up, I will kill you”, and it is still immoral to do so, but the previous explanation was that “it is bad to kill people with 50% probability” and the new explanation is “it is bad to kill people in 50% of branches” (which means killing them with 50% probability in a random branch).
Okay, so on reflection, I think the idea that it all adds up to normality is just junk. It doesn’t mean anything. I’ll try to explain:
A: MW comes into conflict with this ethical principle.
B: It can’t come into conflict. Physics always adds up to normality.
A: Really? Suppose I see an apple falling, and you discover that there’s no such thing as an apple, but that what we called apples are actually a sub-species of blueberries. Now I’ve learned that I’ve in fact never seen an apple fall, since by ‘apple’ I meant the fruit of an independent species of plant. So, normality overturned.
B: No, that’s not an overturning of normality, that’s just a change of explanation. What you saw was this greenish round thing falling, and you explained this as an ‘apple’. Now your explanation is different, but the thing you observed is the same.
A: Ah, but lets say science discovers that the green round thing I saw isn’t green at all. In fact, green is just the color that bounces off the thing. If it’s any color, it’s the color of the wavelengths of light it absorbs. Normality overturned.
B: But that’s just what being ‘green’ now means. What you saw was some light your receptors in way that varied over time, and you explained this as a green thing moving. The observation, the light hitting your eye over time, is the same. The explanation has shifted.
A: Now say that it turns out that (bear with me) there is no motion or time. What I thought was some light hitting my retina over time is just my own brain co-evolving with a broader wave-function. Now that’s overturning normality.
B: No, what you experienced qualitatively is the same, but the explanation has changed.
A: What did I experience qualitatively?
B: If you’re willing to go into plausible but hypothetical discoveries, I can’t give it any description that is basic enough that it can’t be ‘overturned’. Even ‘experience’ is probably overturnable.
A: That’s why ‘it all adds up to normality’ is junk. By that standard, nothing is normal. If anything I can describe as a phenomenon is normal, then it can be overturned under that description.
Which means that your ethics should not depends on the potential existence of other worlds we have no way of interacting with. In other words, while it might well be simpler (for some people) to reason your ethics by using the many worlds paradigm, the outcome of this reasoning should not depend on the number of worlds.
So, I’ve been thinking about this, and say I and everyone I know believes that it’s possible to be the first one, absolutely, to whistle a tune. This is, for our strange culture, an important ethical belief. That belief is part of what I would call ‘normality’. Now, some jerk comes a long and proves MW, and so I learn that for any tune I would consider novel, odds are that it’s been whistled before in another world (I’m taking this example from EY in the sequences). So, depending on my normal, MW may add up to normality, and it may not. In a much more obvious sense, if my normal is Newtonian physics, MW doesn’t add up to normality either.
So what does adding up to normal mean? Consider that my other stupid question. Egan’s law seems to go un-argued for and unexplained. If it just means what the paragraph you cite says, then MW may well abolish or come into conflict with our ethical ideas, since apparently it comes into conflict with all kinds of other ideas (like false physical theories) and none of this requires the destruction of the solar system or flying apples.
It means that if you do not observe pink unicorns daily, no new weird and wonderful theory should claim that you should have. Or, as EY puts it “apples didn’t stop falling, planets didn’t swerve into the Sun”. Another name for this is the correspondence principle.
If your ethics requires for you to be the first tune whistler in the multiverse, not just in this world, it’s not a useful ethics.
The usefulness of the ethics (if that’s the right standard to apply to an ethical idea) is not relevant to the example.
That is, unless you want to posit (and we should be super, super clear about this) that there is an a priori principle that any ethics capable of being contradicted by a true physical theory is not useful. But I very much doubt you want to say that.
I think modern physics pretty obviously doesn’t add up to normality in a number of cases. Long debates about cryonics took place because part of many people’s normal understanding of personal identity (an ethical category if there ever was one) involved a conception of material constituants like atoms such that there can be my atoms versus your atoms. This just turned out to be nonsense, as we discovered through investigation of physics. The fact that atoms no more have identities qua particular instances than do numbers overturned some element of normality.
Given cases like that, how does one actually argue for Egan’s law? It’s not enough to just state it.
It means that if in your branch you are the first one to whistle the tune, there is no one else in your branch to contradict you. (Just as you would expect in One World.) In some other branch someone else was first, and in that branch you don’t think that you were the first, so again no conflict.
Then “adding up to normal” means that even when Einstein ruins your model, all things will behave the same way as they always did. Things that within given precision obeyed the Newtonian physics, will continue to do it. You will only see exceptions in unusual situations, such as GPS satellites. (But if you had GPS satellites before Einstein invented his theory, you would have seen those exceptions too. You just didn’t know that would happen.)
In case of morality it means that if you had a rule “X is good” because it usually has good consequences (or because it follows the rules, or whatever), then “X is good” even with Many Worlds. The exception is if you try to apply moral significance to a photon moving through a double slit.
An explanation may change: for example it was immoral to say “if the coin ends this side up, I will kill you”, and it is still immoral to do so, but the previous explanation was that “it is bad to kill people with 50% probability” and the new explanation is “it is bad to kill people in 50% of branches” (which means killing them with 50% probability in a random branch).
Okay, so on reflection, I think the idea that it all adds up to normality is just junk. It doesn’t mean anything. I’ll try to explain:
A: MW comes into conflict with this ethical principle.
B: It can’t come into conflict. Physics always adds up to normality.
A: Really? Suppose I see an apple falling, and you discover that there’s no such thing as an apple, but that what we called apples are actually a sub-species of blueberries. Now I’ve learned that I’ve in fact never seen an apple fall, since by ‘apple’ I meant the fruit of an independent species of plant. So, normality overturned.
B: No, that’s not an overturning of normality, that’s just a change of explanation. What you saw was this greenish round thing falling, and you explained this as an ‘apple’. Now your explanation is different, but the thing you observed is the same.
A: Ah, but lets say science discovers that the green round thing I saw isn’t green at all. In fact, green is just the color that bounces off the thing. If it’s any color, it’s the color of the wavelengths of light it absorbs. Normality overturned.
B: But that’s just what being ‘green’ now means. What you saw was some light your receptors in way that varied over time, and you explained this as a green thing moving. The observation, the light hitting your eye over time, is the same. The explanation has shifted.
A: Now say that it turns out that (bear with me) there is no motion or time. What I thought was some light hitting my retina over time is just my own brain co-evolving with a broader wave-function. Now that’s overturning normality.
B: No, what you experienced qualitatively is the same, but the explanation has changed.
A: What did I experience qualitatively?
B: If you’re willing to go into plausible but hypothetical discoveries, I can’t give it any description that is basic enough that it can’t be ‘overturned’. Even ‘experience’ is probably overturnable.
A: That’s why ‘it all adds up to normality’ is junk. By that standard, nothing is normal. If anything I can describe as a phenomenon is normal, then it can be overturned under that description.