Re: Is a Person One or Many?

From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2008 - 20:47:20 MDT


On 13/03/2008, John K Clark <johnkclark@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> > there is no magical process telling you that
> > there are 100 other copies of
> > you or what those copies are up to.
>
> If the environment those other copies live in is so similar to mine that
> they have not diverged then I know exactly what all those other copies
> are up to.

But you don't know that unless you have external information. If you
are one of 3 identical copies, let's say in cubicles numbered 1 to 3,
each seeing red you don't know how many copies there are and you don't
know which one of the copies you are. But if one of them, say the one
in the third cubicle, starts seeing green, there is a 1/3 chance that
you will be the copy that diverges and a 2/3 chance that you won't.
Roughly speaking, this is how probabilities work in the MWI of QM: if
an event is twice as likely there will be twice as many copies of you
that see that event. Otherwise, every binary event would have a
probability of 50/50, and that is obviously not the case.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


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