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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Your argument is backwards, most of the probability mass with conscious humans will be in those world's where immortality is nice and easy, but I know which world I live in now.

The chance of quantum fluctuations repeatedly keeping you barely alive through random chance is incredibly unlikely, far more unlikely than them resulting in a world where someone develops the necessary technology faster than you think is plausible. In his scenario you're lying "with third degree burns buried in a garbage dump", that means we need absurd quantum events happening continuously for years to prevent you dying of shock, infection, suffocation, starvation, etc. Each unlikely event multiplies the improbability further. Even under the logic of quantum immortality, this only matters if they're the only branches where you survive. Far more probable is that, for instance, quantum fluctuations in some neurons results in someone trying the right ideas to develop an AI that can do superhuman medical research or develop brain-uploading. Indeed, even if it was somehow truly unreachable through normal research, I think it would be more likely that fluctuations in a computer's RAM result in file corruption that happens to correspond to a functioning file containing correct information on the required technology. Because at least that only really has to happen once, rather than happening again and again in the conventional form of quantum immortality. Eventually the sun is going to expand into a red giant and similarly worlds where you survive through your society developing space-travel are going to dominate worlds where you survive being inside the sun through unlikely quantum events happening many times per second.

Also, more importantly I don't see why if by the Born rule I end up in a world where I am dead, I won't just be dead. There is nothing in physics that says that option is off limits; though, of course, other copies would still exist in agony.

The premise of quantum immortality is that if 1+ copies of you still exist, then you are still alive even if you no longer exist in the vast majority of worlds. If many-worlds is true and corresponds to worlds that are all "real", then there will virtually always be surviving copies. You don't "end up" in any individual world, all the copies diverging from your current self which haven't been destroyed (or altered in ways you consider incompatible with being yourself) are you.

It's not necessary to the argument but I would argue that under a sensible definition some of the copies that have already diverged are you as well. People don't consider it death when they get drunk and don't retain hours of memories. This isn't too relevant now but it's potentially relevant to a future self on the verge of death, since under that definition most of your selves that survive are ones that already diverged, rather than more obvious but unlikely quantum immortality scenarios like "in some worlds your brain is preserved in a freak accident and then used to reconstruct your mind centuries later". But ultimately these definitions are an arbitrary decision, humans intuitions regarding wanting to live aren't well-equipped to deal with multiple future selves in the first place, whether due to many-worlds or something like multiple software copies. However under many-worlds you can't just go with the "my current brain is me and copies aren't" option, because all your future selves are copies diverging from your current self.