Richard, I am going to assume … that you assign an Everett branch in which you painless wink out of existence a value of zero (neither desirable or undesirable)
I’d rather say that people who find quantum suicide desirable have a utility function that does not decompose into a linear combination of individual utility functions for their individual Everett branches—even if they had to deal with a terrorist attack on all of these branches, say. Surely everybody here would find an outcome undesirable where all of their future Everett branches wink out of existence. So if somebody prefers one Everett branch winking out and one continuing to exist to both continuing to exist, you can only describe their utility function by looking at all the branches, not by looking at the different branches individually. (Did that make sense?)
Richard, I am going to assume … that you assign an Everett branch in which you painless wink out of existence a value of zero (neither desirable or undesirable)
I’d rather say that people who find quantum suicide desirable have a utility function that does not decompose into a linear combination of individual utility functions for their individual Everett branches—even if they had to deal with a terrorist attack on all of these branches, say. Surely everybody here would find an outcome undesirable where all of their future Everett branches wink out of existence. So if somebody prefers one Everett branch winking out and one continuing to exist to both continuing to exist, you can only describe their utility function by looking at all the branches, not by looking at the different branches individually. (Did that make sense?)