...a magical box you can step into that will create a perfect copy of you. Said box will also magically destroy copies that enter it and press the ‘destruct’ button.
This thought always gets me thinking. When I come across variations of the above thought experiment it makes me wonder if a magical box is even necessary. Are copies of me being destroyed as I type? Haven’t I died an infinite number of deaths from the time I started typing till now? Couldn’t me hitting the return key at the end of this sentence be sufficient to replicate the copy/kill box a la MWI?
I am having a hard time distinguishing what MWI says about my death at branch points, and simultaneously copy/kill yourself in a copy machine.
I think having an explicit box, which allows for two or more simultaneous copies of you to exist and look at each other, is pretty important. Just being created and destroyed in the normal course of things, when everything looks normal, doesn’t have the same impact.
My interpretation is that MWI says precisely nothing about you at branch points, because you don’t die there—or rather, I don’t necessarily consider a single branch point change to be sufficient to make me not ‘me’. Further, creating a copy, or multiple copies, doesn’t mean anything died in my view.
This thought always gets me thinking. When I come across variations of the above thought experiment it makes me wonder if a magical box is even necessary. Are copies of me being destroyed as I type? Haven’t I died an infinite number of deaths from the time I started typing till now? Couldn’t me hitting the return key at the end of this sentence be sufficient to replicate the copy/kill box a la MWI?
I am having a hard time distinguishing what MWI says about my death at branch points, and simultaneously copy/kill yourself in a copy machine.
Was that also your point or am I mistaken?
I think having an explicit box, which allows for two or more simultaneous copies of you to exist and look at each other, is pretty important. Just being created and destroyed in the normal course of things, when everything looks normal, doesn’t have the same impact.
My interpretation is that MWI says precisely nothing about you at branch points, because you don’t die there—or rather, I don’t necessarily consider a single branch point change to be sufficient to make me not ‘me’. Further, creating a copy, or multiple copies, doesn’t mean anything died in my view.