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

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

>> [We should not entertain] the idea that the universe suddenly
>> doubles in mass every 1/10^100 seconds.
> 
> Well, that's what I thought, but in the past few days I've tried to
> find clarification on this and the accounts I've read from various
> sources are either vague or contradictory.

Do you include Deutsch's book "The Fabric of Reality"? The
branching into smaller and smaller, more and more distinguished
riveluts, is a pretty old take, I think.

> Incidentally, if the worlds differentiate rather than duplicate, does
> this worry you?

Yes, at least my friends and I have discussed how worried we 
should be. On the one hand, I don't want the total measure of 
the worlds I'm in to be small (quite the reverse), so continually
branching into finer and finer possibilities raises the question.
Generally, I don't think, however, that my measure really 
decreases very much except for the branches where I suddenly
die, or become so transformed (say into an urban criminal in
some kind of post-apocalypse nightmare) that the resulting creature
is no longer really me.

> For even if it could somehow be guaranteed that you
> never died in any branch in which you are presently alive, the process
> of differentiation means you and your near-copies would occupy an
> ever-thinning slice of the multiverse.

Why would my near-copies occupy a much smaller slice over time?
I'd still be me, even in those branches where Al Gore won, or where
I won the lottery (I don't play).

By the way, I agreed with your explanations to Damien.

Lee