From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Aug 01 1997 - 07:29:40 MDT
At 03:00 AM 8/1/97 +0000, Nicholas Bostrom wrote:
> as time
>goes by, the proportion of mind slices in Ct that would see quantum
>mechanical predictions verified experimentally would quickly become
>completely negligable; and yet, miraculously, it constantly turns
>out that I am in Ct! The improbabiliy that this should happen is the
>improbability that the Everett interpretation is true, if there is no
>way to escape this conclusion.
It's worse than this, if David Hodgson's objection is correct in THE MIND
MATTERS (1991). He notes:
`The absurdity is highlighted when one considers that in some situations
quantum mechanical probabilities can be given by irrational numbers (not
expressible as a fraction), so that in those cases... the determination of
the number of worlds to be created would have to be the result of some
approximation chosen by Nature.' (p. 338)
I have never seen this objection met; on the other hand, Hodgson's book was
well received by QT-canny people such as Paul Davies.
Damien Broderick
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