Not as far as I can see. Timelines fork—every time you buy a ticket there’s a timeline where you don’t. And every time you don’t there is a timeline where you do.
That seems to be an argument from infinity—that since 1⁄4 of an infinite number is exactly the same as 1⁄2 of an infinite number, there is no reason to prefer a set of timelines where 1⁄2 of you buy tickets to a set where 1⁄4 of you do.
You could also say that every time you approach a lottery counter, there’s a timeline where you step all the way up to it and one where you don’t; and once you’ve stepped up, there’s a timeline where you make the actual purchase and one where you don’t—and, thus, that for every 4 timelines where you start stepping towards a lottery counter, you only buy a ticket in one of them.
Under MWI everything that could happen actually does happen. This means that you can’t change anything summed up across all timelines. You can only change things in one timeline, but when you do another timeline nets it out.
An important item here seems to be the ‘can’ in ‘everything that can happen’; as opposed to things that /can’t/ happen. If a meteor has been orbiting for millions of years in a course that leads it so that, tomorrow night, it lands on my house, there is very little that the various differences across the timelines can do so that it’s not going to land on my house. Any timelines in which I’m anywhere near my house at that time—and that’s going to be most of them—are ones where I’m going to end up dead. However you want to divvy up the timelines involved, there will be a greater proportion of them where I’m dead than I’m alive.
This is the same reasoning which leads to the conclusion that quantum suicide/immortality is a bad idea to try out; and that it’s generally a good idea to maximize the swathe of timelines in which future-you remains alive and healthy. There may be a net sum to all those infinitesimal timelines when added up—but that sum isn’t necessarily going to be ‘0’.
That’s the predestination argument, isn’t it? Whatever the choices available to multi-me are, it’s impossible for me to compute them all, which provides sufficient uncertainty for something resembling free will to apply. I don’t know whether any given future-me will even have the option to buy a lottery ticket, let alone what the consequences of making that choice one way or the other might be; and so I might as well treat any given timeline as one in which that version of me can make decisions which affect his particular future.
Whatever the choices available to multi-me are, it’s impossible for me to compute them all, which provides sufficient uncertainty for something resembling free will to apply.
That’s irrelevant in this context. What matters is that under MWI you don’t make a choice, in different branches you make all choices possible for you. You can change things in a particular timeline, but you can’t change the sum of everything in all timelines.
How confident are you that this conclusion, that MWI means choice is meaningless, is the correct interpretation of it? What odds would you be willing to wager on it? What evidence do you base it on?
The proposition is not testable so I can’t see how there could be a wager. The evidence is the usual evidence for MWI—either none or the whole of quantum mechanics, depending on your point of view :-)
But think about it—if (as the MWI says) every time you face a choice you make all possible choices in different branches, what could you possibly do that would affect the set of all branches?
Think of Tic-Tac-Toe’s game-tree; that’s a set of all possible choices that can be made in different branches of the game. Once you have an idea of the shape of the results those choices, such as “putting an X here causes me to lose more often than I win”, you can make your choice based on that information so that you /don’t/ choose the portions of the tree with the worst outcomes, thus narrowing the range of potential futures to ones which are better. Instead of spreading your future probability across 26,830 distinct timelines, in which you win less than half, you could spread your future across, say, 10,000 distinct timelines, in which you win 3/4s of them. (Numbers are just illustrative, not actually the real odds involved.)
Chess has a much more complicated game-tree; real life has an even more complicated game-tree; but the same principles should apply.
you can make your choice based on that information so that you /don’t/ choose the portions of the tree with the worst outcomes
Nope. Every time this-you chooses a particular portion of the tree, other-yous choose all the other portions of the tree. You narrow “the range of potential futures” in one specific timeline, you cannot narrow the range of possible futures in all timelines.
I’m not worried about the range of /all/ timelines, only those timelines which proceed into the future from this moment. (And now, the ones from this moment. Etc.)
Let’s say that I decide to use a quantum randomizer to pick my first move in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, and then play to win, or at least draw; and then I do just that. While it may be a fact that in /some/ timelines I’ll change my mind and not play to win, in the /majority/ of timelines which proceed from that spot, I will continue to play to win.
Hm… how about a different approach. You seem to be arguing that if I’m about to roll some dice, then all possible rolls are going to happen. I’m not arguing against that. What I’m arguing is that some rolls are more likely than others—the classic bell curve—and that by choosing to roll, say, 3d8 instead of 3d6, it’s possible to manipulate the shape of that bell curve, so that a the timelines are divvied up into different proportions than otherwise. Or maybe I use loaded dice, or scribble extra pips on, or just plan old fake-roll a die and set it to a certain number, or otherwise adjust the odds in my favor. Maybe I’ll even change the probability distribution from a simple bell curve to two distinct bell curves, where the maximum probability is rolling a 3 or 18, with next-to-no probability of rolling anything in between. Sure, there will be a /small portion/ of timelines where I don’t cheat, but in the /greater portion/ of timelines where I /do/ cheat, the /sub portion/ where I get the results I desire will be high—much higher than would be expected by simply assuming the standard distribution.
(If anyone else reading this wants to jump in, and either explain to me how I’m getting Lumifer’s idea wrong, or can do a better job explaining the idea I’m trying to get across, feel free...)
by choosing to roll, say, 3d8 instead of 3d6, it’s possible to manipulate the shape of that bell curve
It’s turtles all the way down.
This-you chose to roll 3d8 and other-you chose to roll 3d6 and yet more of other-yous chose to roll 1d10, 7d36, etc. etc. Yes, you manipulated the bell curve but in other timelines it also got manipulated, albeit in a different way. When you step in one direction, yes, the timelines spreading out from that step are biased in that direction. But the step itself, when you made it another-you also made a step, in a different direction, and biased another bunch of timelines in that different direction.
The set of all possible futures is the set of all possible futures—you cannot change it.
I think I’ve run out of different ways to try to explain what I’m trying to get across; so we seem to have hit the door-wall debate limit. (“This is a door.” “Yes, but /this/ is a wall.” “Yes, but /this/...”)
If I were to try to explain our difference to an outsider, I might describe your position as being that as there are an infinite number of timelines, any sub-portion of them also contains an infinite number of timelines, and thus any given infinity is equally as important as any other, so there’s no reason to prefer any one bundle of timelines over another. Would you say that that’s valid? If not, could you explain where I’m going wrong? And if so, would you be willing to try to describe the idea I’ve been trying to explain?
Not as far as I can see. Timelines fork—every time you buy a ticket there’s a timeline where you don’t. And every time you don’t there is a timeline where you do.
That seems to be an argument from infinity—that since 1⁄4 of an infinite number is exactly the same as 1⁄2 of an infinite number, there is no reason to prefer a set of timelines where 1⁄2 of you buy tickets to a set where 1⁄4 of you do.
You could also say that every time you approach a lottery counter, there’s a timeline where you step all the way up to it and one where you don’t; and once you’ve stepped up, there’s a timeline where you make the actual purchase and one where you don’t—and, thus, that for every 4 timelines where you start stepping towards a lottery counter, you only buy a ticket in one of them.
Basically, yes.
Under MWI everything that could happen actually does happen. This means that you can’t change anything summed up across all timelines. You can only change things in one timeline, but when you do another timeline nets it out.
An important item here seems to be the ‘can’ in ‘everything that can happen’; as opposed to things that /can’t/ happen. If a meteor has been orbiting for millions of years in a course that leads it so that, tomorrow night, it lands on my house, there is very little that the various differences across the timelines can do so that it’s not going to land on my house. Any timelines in which I’m anywhere near my house at that time—and that’s going to be most of them—are ones where I’m going to end up dead. However you want to divvy up the timelines involved, there will be a greater proportion of them where I’m dead than I’m alive.
This is the same reasoning which leads to the conclusion that quantum suicide/immortality is a bad idea to try out; and that it’s generally a good idea to maximize the swathe of timelines in which future-you remains alive and healthy. There may be a net sum to all those infinitesimal timelines when added up—but that sum isn’t necessarily going to be ‘0’.
Since you can do only things which can happen, you actions are unable to change the set of things which will happen to multi-you across all timelines.
That’s the predestination argument, isn’t it? Whatever the choices available to multi-me are, it’s impossible for me to compute them all, which provides sufficient uncertainty for something resembling free will to apply. I don’t know whether any given future-me will even have the option to buy a lottery ticket, let alone what the consequences of making that choice one way or the other might be; and so I might as well treat any given timeline as one in which that version of me can make decisions which affect his particular future.
That’s irrelevant in this context. What matters is that under MWI you don’t make a choice, in different branches you make all choices possible for you. You can change things in a particular timeline, but you can’t change the sum of everything in all timelines.
How confident are you that this conclusion, that MWI means choice is meaningless, is the correct interpretation of it? What odds would you be willing to wager on it? What evidence do you base it on?
The proposition is not testable so I can’t see how there could be a wager. The evidence is the usual evidence for MWI—either none or the whole of quantum mechanics, depending on your point of view :-)
But think about it—if (as the MWI says) every time you face a choice you make all possible choices in different branches, what could you possibly do that would affect the set of all branches?
Think of Tic-Tac-Toe’s game-tree; that’s a set of all possible choices that can be made in different branches of the game. Once you have an idea of the shape of the results those choices, such as “putting an X here causes me to lose more often than I win”, you can make your choice based on that information so that you /don’t/ choose the portions of the tree with the worst outcomes, thus narrowing the range of potential futures to ones which are better. Instead of spreading your future probability across 26,830 distinct timelines, in which you win less than half, you could spread your future across, say, 10,000 distinct timelines, in which you win 3/4s of them. (Numbers are just illustrative, not actually the real odds involved.)
Chess has a much more complicated game-tree; real life has an even more complicated game-tree; but the same principles should apply.
Nope. Every time this-you chooses a particular portion of the tree, other-yous choose all the other portions of the tree. You narrow “the range of potential futures” in one specific timeline, you cannot narrow the range of possible futures in all timelines.
I’m not worried about the range of /all/ timelines, only those timelines which proceed into the future from this moment. (And now, the ones from this moment. Etc.)
Let’s say that I decide to use a quantum randomizer to pick my first move in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, and then play to win, or at least draw; and then I do just that. While it may be a fact that in /some/ timelines I’ll change my mind and not play to win, in the /majority/ of timelines which proceed from that spot, I will continue to play to win.
Hm… how about a different approach. You seem to be arguing that if I’m about to roll some dice, then all possible rolls are going to happen. I’m not arguing against that. What I’m arguing is that some rolls are more likely than others—the classic bell curve—and that by choosing to roll, say, 3d8 instead of 3d6, it’s possible to manipulate the shape of that bell curve, so that a the timelines are divvied up into different proportions than otherwise. Or maybe I use loaded dice, or scribble extra pips on, or just plan old fake-roll a die and set it to a certain number, or otherwise adjust the odds in my favor. Maybe I’ll even change the probability distribution from a simple bell curve to two distinct bell curves, where the maximum probability is rolling a 3 or 18, with next-to-no probability of rolling anything in between. Sure, there will be a /small portion/ of timelines where I don’t cheat, but in the /greater portion/ of timelines where I /do/ cheat, the /sub portion/ where I get the results I desire will be high—much higher than would be expected by simply assuming the standard distribution.
(If anyone else reading this wants to jump in, and either explain to me how I’m getting Lumifer’s idea wrong, or can do a better job explaining the idea I’m trying to get across, feel free...)
It’s turtles all the way down.
This-you chose to roll 3d8 and other-you chose to roll 3d6 and yet more of other-yous chose to roll 1d10, 7d36, etc. etc. Yes, you manipulated the bell curve but in other timelines it also got manipulated, albeit in a different way. When you step in one direction, yes, the timelines spreading out from that step are biased in that direction. But the step itself, when you made it another-you also made a step, in a different direction, and biased another bunch of timelines in that different direction.
The set of all possible futures is the set of all possible futures—you cannot change it.
I think I’ve run out of different ways to try to explain what I’m trying to get across; so we seem to have hit the door-wall debate limit. (“This is a door.” “Yes, but /this/ is a wall.” “Yes, but /this/...”)
If I were to try to explain our difference to an outsider, I might describe your position as being that as there are an infinite number of timelines, any sub-portion of them also contains an infinite number of timelines, and thus any given infinity is equally as important as any other, so there’s no reason to prefer any one bundle of timelines over another. Would you say that that’s valid? If not, could you explain where I’m going wrong? And if so, would you be willing to try to describe the idea I’ve been trying to explain?