[extropy-chat] Mangled Worlds

[Robin Hanson]

At 09:33 PM 2/23/2006, Hal Finney wrote:
> > http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8766.html
>... The scary part is the possibility that the mangled worlds actually allow
>a moment of existence before everyone in them is killed.  These mangled
>worlds are forking off from the "main" branches at every instant.  By some
>arguments, they are enormously more numerous than the main-branch worlds.
>If so, it's very likely that our next instant of experience will be death
>in a mangled world.  One would hope that these deaths are instantaneous.
>But it's also possible that they are not, ...
>Meanwhile the main branches carry on, oblivious.  The mangled worlds
>would be like sparks thrown off from the main branches, brief but
>far more numerous than the main branch worlds themselves.  The most
>common experience for each individual, no matter how long he has lived,
>would be sudden, violent death, repeated at every instant of his life,
>an almost infinite number of times.

I'm not sure you have the details right, though I don't think you 
will find the right details
much more comforting.   Mangled worlds are not small because they are mangled,
they become mangled as they become too small.   At each split, some 
children are
larger than others, but the only thing that makes a world mangled is 
falling below
a certain crucial size threshold.   Most worlds are near that border, 
so most children
cross that border.   But yes, the moment of mangling may be the most common
human experience, though fortunately an experience almost never remembered.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323