...you’re saying that you’d ignore a truth on principle just because it’s weird.
I am saying that my trust in one interpretation of quantum mechanics isn’t enough. It might be reasonable to accept MWI, without additional empirical evidence, as the interpretation that makes the most sense given the evidence. But quantum suicide would be something that is based on that inference as a logical implication, which is justified by P(Y|X) ≈ 1, then P(X∧Y) ≈ P(X). And what I am saying is that I believe that we should draw a line somewhere when it comes to such logical implications. Because, even if they don’t have to pay rent in future anticipations, the actions that such implications demand might be solely justified by the expected utility of the logical implications while our confidence is only as strong as our trust in the last step that required actual evidence.
what I am saying is that I believe that we should draw a line somewhere when it comes to such logical implications
I’m all for drawing lines when we have evidence against things, like we do for the proposition that suicide is harmless. But if you want to make up some hypothetical world where it “makes sense,” that suicide is harmless, then presumably we wouldn’t have that balance of evidence, since one generally includes the evidence when judging what makes sense.
So if you’re not judging on the evidence in this hypothetical world, you’re judging based on the aesthetic properties of the proposition, basically. It’s just not a good way to do things, because a non-human spontaneously giving birth to the first human is quite un-aesthetic, don’t you think?
One reason why it makes sense that we should always reject the harmlessness of suicide may be that humans are bad at hypotheticals. Propositions that we associate with low probability will drag that association with them into the darndest of places.
I am saying that my trust in one interpretation of quantum mechanics isn’t enough. It might be reasonable to accept MWI, without additional empirical evidence, as the interpretation that makes the most sense given the evidence. But quantum suicide would be something that is based on that inference as a logical implication, which is justified by P(Y|X) ≈ 1, then P(X∧Y) ≈ P(X). And what I am saying is that I believe that we should draw a line somewhere when it comes to such logical implications. Because, even if they don’t have to pay rent in future anticipations, the actions that such implications demand might be solely justified by the expected utility of the logical implications while our confidence is only as strong as our trust in the last step that required actual evidence.
I’m all for drawing lines when we have evidence against things, like we do for the proposition that suicide is harmless. But if you want to make up some hypothetical world where it “makes sense,” that suicide is harmless, then presumably we wouldn’t have that balance of evidence, since one generally includes the evidence when judging what makes sense.
So if you’re not judging on the evidence in this hypothetical world, you’re judging based on the aesthetic properties of the proposition, basically. It’s just not a good way to do things, because a non-human spontaneously giving birth to the first human is quite un-aesthetic, don’t you think?
One reason why it makes sense that we should always reject the harmlessness of suicide may be that humans are bad at hypotheticals. Propositions that we associate with low probability will drag that association with them into the darndest of places.