Upon futher reflection, I’m not sure I believe Wallace’s argument that, in quantum physics the way we know it, the number of observers is ill-defined.
Yes, decoherence is continuous. But by the time you get all the way up to objects the size of neurons “firing” or “not firing”, I’m not sure there’s much influence being transmitted between worlds—or that the intermediate states represent conscious entities (non-mangled worlds?). I’m not even sure I could construct a continuous spectrum of conscious Ebborian brains. Operations like Max(A, B) would be prohibited. Sure, our underlying physics is continuous—a coin can always balance on its edge—but to construct an intermediate between two coherent conscious minds, every coin has to land on its edge; in addition to having tiny and perhaps-mangled amplitude, I’m not sure that intermediate still represents a person.
Upon futher reflection, I’m not sure I believe Wallace’s argument that, in quantum physics the way we know it, the number of observers is ill-defined.
Yes, decoherence is continuous. But by the time you get all the way up to objects the size of neurons “firing” or “not firing”, I’m not sure there’s much influence being transmitted between worlds—or that the intermediate states represent conscious entities (non-mangled worlds?). I’m not even sure I could construct a continuous spectrum of conscious Ebborian brains. Operations like Max(A, B) would be prohibited. Sure, our underlying physics is continuous—a coin can always balance on its edge—but to construct an intermediate between two coherent conscious minds, every coin has to land on its edge; in addition to having tiny and perhaps-mangled amplitude, I’m not sure that intermediate still represents a person.