I’m not following your objection to quantum immortality, I will note that it also almost guarantees a version of yourself living forever but developing and maintaining a strong belief in “The Dark Lord Santa”. There is little difference between annihilation and any other state, the idea that there is a universe where x did or did not happen.
If you’re resting your argument on that then you can’t draw a line around one state and claim it’s special.
My objection is to the subjective experience of immortality. The multiple worlds gives rise to the illusion of probability. where it seems to us that quantum outputs are chosen randomly (because the vast majority of us experience arbitrary sequences when performing a series of quantum measurements). It is proposed that we should expect ourselves to find ourselves eventually living far beyond our natural years because of this observer selection effect. I would counter that that expectation comes from a naive view of selfhood that treats it like an all-or-nothing thing rather than something far slipperier.
I don’t deny that some timelines have versions of me that may “live forever”.
My objection is that it’s irrelevant: It doesn’t provide any useful information or anything that should guide your behavior because if every possible scenario is played out there’s little difference between choosing to go for chemo and jumping off a bridge.
We’re stuck with 1 subjective timeline. The other trousers of time aren’t really relevant to us.
I’m not quite grasping what you’re trying to get it here. Please do elaborate and clarify!
When you say “It’s irrelevant” and “it doesn’t provide any useful information or anything that should guide your behavior” what are you referring to?
Choosing to go for chemo and jumping off a bridge should have different results, The difference between the two results would be the basis for the decision. I don’t see how fragile universe hypothesis or MWI should undermine that.
As for the relevance of other timelines, I have four answers:
MWI allows for quantum interactions with other timelines which means they’re directly relevant
MWI provides for multiple future timelines for me, despite the fact these future mes will not have a “me-ness” relationship with each other. All future versions of me are relevant to current me.
Exploring this concept may result in theoretical predictions that are testable and eventually provide pragmatic benefits
I would like to understand what exists and why. I would like the Truth regardless of pragmatic benefits associated with it,
irrelevant to decision-making. The idea that out of the [finite number so large that it’s probably hard to express even with Knuth’s up-arrow notation] possible future me’s there’s likely some which live an insanely long time or [reach any other state] isn’t useful.
MWI may be useful to physicists and mathematicians but it’s not the kind of relevant that means anything to normal decision making. Unless your job is programming a quantum computer it’s totally irrelevant to your life.
You do not get to good results by saying “well one of the future me’s will do fine in the MW’s”
It implies that there is a future you for whom by random chance all genetic degradation will fail to happen and that random motion of molecules will replenish all his Telomeres at once halting aging while around him by pure chance gasses happen to separate into lower entropy states etc.
Though lets not forget the future you who’s cell walls all suddenly burst by chance at the same time.
But that’s not useful to you. Banking on one or the other or using it as a reason to not worrying about something doesn’t help you.
I’m not following your objection to quantum immortality, I will note that it also almost guarantees a version of yourself living forever but developing and maintaining a strong belief in “The Dark Lord Santa”. There is little difference between annihilation and any other state, the idea that there is a universe where x did or did not happen.
If you’re resting your argument on that then you can’t draw a line around one state and claim it’s special.
My objection is to the subjective experience of immortality. The multiple worlds gives rise to the illusion of probability. where it seems to us that quantum outputs are chosen randomly (because the vast majority of us experience arbitrary sequences when performing a series of quantum measurements). It is proposed that we should expect ourselves to find ourselves eventually living far beyond our natural years because of this observer selection effect. I would counter that that expectation comes from a naive view of selfhood that treats it like an all-or-nothing thing rather than something far slipperier.
I don’t deny that some timelines have versions of me that may “live forever”.
My objection is that it’s irrelevant: It doesn’t provide any useful information or anything that should guide your behavior because if every possible scenario is played out there’s little difference between choosing to go for chemo and jumping off a bridge.
We’re stuck with 1 subjective timeline. The other trousers of time aren’t really relevant to us.
I’m not quite grasping what you’re trying to get it here. Please do elaborate and clarify!
When you say “It’s irrelevant” and “it doesn’t provide any useful information or anything that should guide your behavior” what are you referring to?
Choosing to go for chemo and jumping off a bridge should have different results, The difference between the two results would be the basis for the decision. I don’t see how fragile universe hypothesis or MWI should undermine that.
As for the relevance of other timelines, I have four answers:
MWI allows for quantum interactions with other timelines which means they’re directly relevant
MWI provides for multiple future timelines for me, despite the fact these future mes will not have a “me-ness” relationship with each other. All future versions of me are relevant to current me.
Exploring this concept may result in theoretical predictions that are testable and eventually provide pragmatic benefits
I would like to understand what exists and why. I would like the Truth regardless of pragmatic benefits associated with it,
irrelevant to decision-making. The idea that out of the [finite number so large that it’s probably hard to express even with Knuth’s up-arrow notation] possible future me’s there’s likely some which live an insanely long time or [reach any other state] isn’t useful.
MWI may be useful to physicists and mathematicians but it’s not the kind of relevant that means anything to normal decision making. Unless your job is programming a quantum computer it’s totally irrelevant to your life.
You do not get to good results by saying “well one of the future me’s will do fine in the MW’s”
It implies that there is a future you for whom by random chance all genetic degradation will fail to happen and that random motion of molecules will replenish all his Telomeres at once halting aging while around him by pure chance gasses happen to separate into lower entropy states etc.
Though lets not forget the future you who’s cell walls all suddenly burst by chance at the same time.
But that’s not useful to you. Banking on one or the other or using it as a reason to not worrying about something doesn’t help you.