If some one offered me a bet giving $0 or $100 based on a quantum coin flip I’d be willing to pay $50 for it. So it’s clear that I’m acting for the sake of my average future self, not just the best or worst outcome. Therefore I also act to avoid outcomes where I die, even if there are still some possibilities where I live. The fact that I won’t experience the “dead” outcomes is irrelevant—I can still act for the sake of things which I won’t experience.
What about the question of whether I anticipate immortality? Well if I was planning what to do after an event where I might die, I would think to myself “I only need to think about the possibility where I live, since I won’t be able to carry out any actions in the other case” which is perhaps not the same as “anticipating immortality” but it has the same effect.
I don’t think that follows exactly. Specifically, that “you’re acting for the sake of things which you won’t experience”.
You are correct in your pricing of quantum flips according to payoffs adjusted by the Born rule.
But the payoffs from your dead versions don’t count, assuming you can only find yourself in non-dead continuations. I don’t know if this is a position (Bostrom or Carroll have almost surely written about it) or just outright stupidity, but it seems to me that this assumption (of only finding yourself alive) shrinks your ensemble of future states, leaving your decision theoretic judgements to only deal with the alive ones
If I’m offered a bet of being given $0 or $100 over two flips of a fair quantum coin, with payoffs:
|00> → $0
|11> → $100
|01> → certain immediate death
|10> → certain immediate death
I’d still price it at $50, rather than $25.
You could say, a little vaguely, that the others are physical possibilities, but they’re not anthropic possibilities.
As for “I can still act for the sake of things which I won’t experience” in general, where you care about dead versions, apart from you being able to experience such, you might find Living in Many Worlds helpful, specifically this bit:
Are there horrible worlds out there, which are utterly beyond your ability to affect? Sure. And horrible things happened during the 12th century, which are also beyond your ability to affect. But the 12th century is not your responsibility, because it has, as the quaint phrase goes, “already happened”. I would suggest that you consider every world which is not in your future, to be part of the “generalized past”.
If you care about other people finding you dead and mourning you though, then the case would be different, and you’d have to adjust your payoffs accordingly.
Note again though, this should have nothing necessarily to do with QM (all of this would hold in a large enough classical universe).
As for me, personally, I don’t think I buy immortality, but then I’d have to modus tollens out a lot of stuff (like stepping into a teleporter, or even perhaps the notion of continuity).
If some one offered me a bet giving $0 or $100 based on a quantum coin flip I’d be willing to pay $50 for it. So it’s clear that I’m acting for the sake of my average future self, not just the best or worst outcome. Therefore I also act to avoid outcomes where I die, even if there are still some possibilities where I live. The fact that I won’t experience the “dead” outcomes is irrelevant—I can still act for the sake of things which I won’t experience.
What about the question of whether I anticipate immortality? Well if I was planning what to do after an event where I might die, I would think to myself “I only need to think about the possibility where I live, since I won’t be able to carry out any actions in the other case” which is perhaps not the same as “anticipating immortality” but it has the same effect.
I don’t think that follows exactly. Specifically, that “you’re acting for the sake of things which you won’t experience”.
You are correct in your pricing of quantum flips according to payoffs adjusted by the Born rule.
But the payoffs from your dead versions don’t count, assuming you can only find yourself in non-dead continuations. I don’t know if this is a position (Bostrom or Carroll have almost surely written about it) or just outright stupidity, but it seems to me that this assumption (of only finding yourself alive) shrinks your ensemble of future states, leaving your decision theoretic judgements to only deal with the alive ones
If I’m offered a bet of being given $0 or $100 over two flips of a fair quantum coin, with payoffs:
|00> → $0
|11> → $100
|01> → certain immediate death
|10> → certain immediate death
I’d still price it at $50, rather than $25.
You could say, a little vaguely, that the others are physical possibilities, but they’re not anthropic possibilities.
As for “I can still act for the sake of things which I won’t experience” in general, where you care about dead versions, apart from you being able to experience such, you might find Living in Many Worlds helpful, specifically this bit:
If you care about other people finding you dead and mourning you though, then the case would be different, and you’d have to adjust your payoffs accordingly.
Note again though, this should have nothing necessarily to do with QM (all of this would hold in a large enough classical universe).
As for me, personally, I don’t think I buy immortality, but then I’d have to modus tollens out a lot of stuff (like stepping into a teleporter, or even perhaps the notion of continuity).