On 18 July 2016 at 11:54, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
I have said several times that probability is a problem for the Everettian > or MWI view. This is not a problem of defining a measure over a possible > infinite number of worlds -- though that is certainly a problem that has > not really been solved -- but the main difficulty lies in the observation > that probability makes little sense in a situation in which everything > possible does happen. So there is no workable notion of probability in the > Everettian multiverse. > > Standard quantum mechanics gets around this in a fairly straightforward > way: the "other worlds" in which alternative outcomes occur are disjoint, > with no possible future interaction with the world in which we find > ourselves. Such alternative outcomes can thus be safely ignored because > they can have no possible effect on the observer or on his future > evolution. Decoherence ,and the irreversibility of completed experimental > outcomes, thus reduce QM to an effective collapse situation -- there is no > physical collapse, but FAPP the other worlds have vanished from existence. > You seem to be saying that if the copies in the other worlds effectively vanish due inaccessibility, this is fundamentally different with regard to personal identity compared to the case of duplication within the one world. I don't see why that should be so. It may solve some practical problems, such as which copy gets the possessions of the original, but these are not fundamental problems with personal identity. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
