Consider this setup: you decide whether to buy ice cream now or chocolate later (chocolate ice cream unfortunately not being an option). Your mind will go through various considerations and analyses, and will arrive at a definite conclusion.
However, it’s actually determined what your decision is—any Laplacian demon could deduce it from looking at your brain. It’s all pretty clear, and quantum events are not enough to derail it (barring very very low measure stochastic events). So from the universe’s perspective, you’re not choosing anything, not shifting measure from anything to anything.
But you can’t know your own decision before making it. So you have the impression of free will, and are using an appropriate decision theory. Most of these work “as if” your own decision determines which (logical) world will exist, and hence which world will get the increased measure. Or, if your prefer, you know that the world you decide on will get increased measure in the future, you are simply in ignorance of which one it will be. So you have to balance “ice cream before the increased measure” with “chocolate after the increased measure”, even though you know one of these is impossible.
However, it’s actually determined what your decision is—any Laplacian demon could deduce it from looking at your brain. It’s all pretty clear, and quantum events are not enough to derail it (barring very very low measure stochastic events). So from the universe’s perspective, you’re not choosing anything, not shifting measure from anything to anything.
The logical structure of my decision still controls what world gets the measure. From Timeless Control:
Surely, if you can determine the Future just by looking at the Past, there’s no need to look at the Present?
The problem with the right-side graph is twofold: First, it violates the beautiful locality of reality; we’re supposing causal relations that go outside the immediate neighborhoods of space/time/configuration. And second, you can’t compute the Future from the Past, except by also computing something that looks exactly like the Present; which computation just creates another copy of the Block Universe (if that statement even makes any sense), it does not affect any of the causal relations within it.
This is basically the same point as the one I keep making and you keep missing: The universe/Laplacian demon/whatever is adding quantum measure, in order to select the same world to add measure to that was selected by your decision, it has to duplicate the causal structure of your decision and the resulting world. (And since within this computation the same things happen for the same reasons as in the selected world, by the generalized anti zombie principle, the computation is adding measure to that world even at times before your model says it adds quantum measure.)
The universe/Laplacian demon/whatever is adding quantum measure, in order to select the same world to add measure to that was selected by your decision,
The demon is not adding quantum measure, or selecting anything. Every Everett branch is getting its measure multiplied—nobody’s choice determines where the measure goes.
At least, from the outside perspective, for someone who knows what everyone else’s choices are/will be (and whose own choices are not relevant), nobody’s choice is determining where the measure goes. From the insider perspective, for someone who doesn’t know their own decision—well, that depends on their decision theory, and how they treat measure.
Consider this setup: you decide whether to buy ice cream now or chocolate later (chocolate ice cream unfortunately not being an option). Your mind will go through various considerations and analyses, and will arrive at a definite conclusion.
However, it’s actually determined what your decision is—any Laplacian demon could deduce it from looking at your brain. It’s all pretty clear, and quantum events are not enough to derail it (barring very very low measure stochastic events). So from the universe’s perspective, you’re not choosing anything, not shifting measure from anything to anything.
But you can’t know your own decision before making it. So you have the impression of free will, and are using an appropriate decision theory. Most of these work “as if” your own decision determines which (logical) world will exist, and hence which world will get the increased measure. Or, if your prefer, you know that the world you decide on will get increased measure in the future, you are simply in ignorance of which one it will be. So you have to balance “ice cream before the increased measure” with “chocolate after the increased measure”, even though you know one of these is impossible.
The logical structure of my decision still controls what world gets the measure. From Timeless Control:
This is basically the same point as the one I keep making and you keep missing: The universe/Laplacian demon/whatever is adding quantum measure, in order to select the same world to add measure to that was selected by your decision, it has to duplicate the causal structure of your decision and the resulting world. (And since within this computation the same things happen for the same reasons as in the selected world, by the generalized anti zombie principle, the computation is adding measure to that world even at times before your model says it adds quantum measure.)
The demon is not adding quantum measure, or selecting anything. Every Everett branch is getting its measure multiplied—nobody’s choice determines where the measure goes.
At least, from the outside perspective, for someone who knows what everyone else’s choices are/will be (and whose own choices are not relevant), nobody’s choice is determining where the measure goes. From the insider perspective, for someone who doesn’t know their own decision—well, that depends on their decision theory, and how they treat measure.
Do you also disagree with , http://lesswrong.com/lw/g9n/false_vacuum_the_universe_playing_quantum_suicide/ btw? Because that’s simply the same problem in reverse.