[ExI] Many Worlds (was: A Simulation Argument)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 16/01/2008, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote
(responding to Lee Corbin):

> But apparently you find no difficulty in supposing that the universe
> you experience suddenly halves in mass every 1/10^100 seconds, since
> earlier you declared:
>
> "it looks like you don't understand that it's like a river branching.
> The sum of the two new branches has the same material sum as the original."

It's important to point out (on my understanding of what Lee is
saying) that the worlds don't actually halve, double or undergo any
other special process at all when the "split" occurs. Say there are
two identical versions of you, A and B, contemplating a quantum coin
toss. Because A and B are identical, there is no way for you to say
that you are one or the other. After the coin toss, A sees heads and B
sees tails. From a God's eye view, the two parallel worlds of A and B
continue, with different things happening in each one. This is like
the deterministic, unitary evolution of the wave function. But from
your point of view, you have a 1/2 chance of observing that the coin
comes up heads or tails. This is like the subjective appearance of a
truly random wave function "collapse". So there is no collapse, no
splitting or duplication, and no truly random (or equivalently,
uncaused) events; but for an observer embedded in the system, it looks
as if there is.





-- 
Stathis Papaioannou