That is the intuition behind the common rationalist/utilitarian/EA view that human lives don’t decline in moral worth with distance. So why should they decline with lower quantum mechanical measure?
For the same reason that they decline with classical measure. Two people are worth more than one. And with classical probability measure. A 100% chance of someone surviving something is better than a 50% chance.
They are not the same things though. Quantum mechanical measure isn’t actually a head count, like classical measure. The theory doesn’t say that—it’s an extraneous assumption. It might be convenient if it worked that way, but that would be assuming your conclusion.
QM measure isn’t probability—the probability of something occurring or not—because all possible branches occur in MWI.
Another part of the problem stems from the fact that what other people experience is relevant to them, whereas for a probability calculation, I only need to be able to statistically predict my own observations. Using QM to predict my own observations, I can ignore the question of whether something has a ten percent chance of happening in the one and only world, or a certainty of happening in one tenth of possible worlds. However, these are not necessarily equivalent ethically.
They are not the same things though. Quantum mechanical measure isn’t actually a head count, like classical measure. The theory doesn’t say that—it’s an extraneous assumption. It might be convenient if it worked that way, but that would be assuming your conclusion.
QM measure isn’t probability—the probability of something occurring or not—because all possible branches occur in MWI.
So whence the Born probabilities, that underly the predictions of QM? I am not well versed in QM, but what is meant by quantum mechanical measure, if not those probabilities?
For the same reason that they decline with classical measure. Two people are worth more than one. And with classical probability measure. A 100% chance of someone surviving something is better than a 50% chance.
They are not the same things though. Quantum mechanical measure isn’t actually a head count, like classical measure. The theory doesn’t say that—it’s an extraneous assumption. It might be convenient if it worked that way, but that would be assuming your conclusion.
QM measure isn’t probability—the probability of something occurring or not—because all possible branches occur in MWI.
Another part of the problem stems from the fact that what other people experience is relevant to them, whereas for a probability calculation, I only need to be able to statistically predict my own observations. Using QM to predict my own observations, I can ignore the question of whether something has a ten percent chance of happening in the one and only world, or a certainty of happening in one tenth of possible worlds. However, these are not necessarily equivalent ethically.
So whence the Born probabilities, that underly the predictions of QM? I am not well versed in QM, but what is meant by quantum mechanical measure, if not those probabilities?