On 3/27/2014 12:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-03-27 5:39 GMT+01:00 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>: On 3/26/2014 9:03 PM, LizR wrote:On 27 March 2014 16:33, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: I don't think you can infer anything about gender preference for "triple or bust" vs "maintain what we've got" from evolutionary biology. Well OK, but what I've read (and indeed observed and experienced throughout my life) indicates that people, and most animals who care for their young, employ strategies which could (roughly) be described as male-risky, female-play-it-safe (or at least safer). E.g. it's the male grasshoppers who keep me awake with their racket, the male birds who wake me in the morning with THEIR racket, peacocks with the big showy tails, male bower birds who expend the energy to make the bowers - all males employing (relatively) risky strategies to attract females. (Because, you see, we're just naturally fabulous and you guys have to make the running. Sorry!) Kent's idea would be to look around and see whether people were overwhelmingly type A or type B. If MWI is true they should be type B, if false type A. Yes, I realise what he was saying. I don't think it makes much sense, because it would require people to believe in the existence of a multiverse before they could formulate a reproductive strategy involving that knowledge, and the idea of a multiverse has only existed for about 50 years.Not "believe in", just believe MWI is possibly true. But they wouldn't actually have to have any opinion; that's just a way to explain it. Presumably evolution would have already made the choice and we'd all be overwhelmingly either A type or B type, whether we knew it or not. The problem would be finding out which we are if it's just in our genes and not necessarily consciously available. I'd say more of problem for the test is that the aren't really two choices which are passed on genetically. There's really nothing to limit one to just replacement even if there's only one universe.Otherwise, I'd expect people to act as though they are in a single universe, regardless of whether that is so, because that's how things appear to be. I'd expect genes to exhibit a similar strategy - they aren't (can't be) "interested" in what happens in a parallel world which can't communicate with the one they're in. There shouldn't be any split along gender line. Well there is, at least in my experience (and in various books, articles, nature documentaries and so on that I've come across). Indeed, apart from a few die-hard feminists I don't know of anyone who still adheres to the notion that people are "blank slates" and that gender roles are purely assigned by culture (humans exhibit sexual dimorphism, and brain scans indicate that it doesn't magically stop at our necks. Plus, why would blank-slatism only be true of us, but not the rest of the animal/fish/insect kingdom where it - often blatantly - isn't the case?) Anyway, that's why I don't think one can sensibly analyse an entire species' reproductive strategy to see if it was A or B (or something else), because reproductive strategies tend to be gender specific. It seems like a daft idea - maybe it's a guy thing? ;-)I don't understand your reasoning. Sure guys are less risk averse. But A vs B is pure win-or-lose depending on whether MWI is true or not. If MWI is true then strategy B is the winner no matter whether you're male or female...and not by a little bit or just probabilistically, but exponentially, overwhelmingly better. If MWI is false and there's just one universe then B is an absolute, zero survivors loser.The thing is even if MWI is true or not... strategy A or B are simply "idea" with no referent in the reality (even as possibility)... the 0.5 probability of going extinct at the next gen simply refer to nothing real in our reality, same thing for the "steady" reproduction... so I can't see how an idea pulled from a hat could possibly "test" anything...
I agree. I just thought it was an interesting idea that 'natural selection' might act differently in multiverse than a universe. The example made up by Kent seems highly unrealistic - but then people keep saying that in the multiverse everything happens and infinitely many times.
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