[ExI] Let's play What If.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 10/26/2010 11:04 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> Under a many worlds view, a 1/million probability of being tortured
>> amounts to you being duplicated (at least) a million times and
>> 1/million of those copies being tortured. From my selfish point of
>> view that is subjectively the same as the single world case: I will
>> find myself as one, and only one, of the copies
>
> No you won't. You're changing the rules. If there are a million copies to be
> made, you remain the original instance who was there all along and can have
> no risk of being tortured. Well, that's what you told us.

But if the copies are fungible then it is probably best to say that
the original/copy distinction is meaningless. That is what is supposed
to happen under the MWI, and the result is that you feel that you end
up one of the versions of yourself with probability proportional to
that version's frequency. As I understand your position this is
impossible: you think you will end up as the original with probability
1 and as a copy with probability 0. So what do you think would happen
if the MWI is correct and there is no original?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou