View Single Post
  #9  
Old 01-02-2019, 01:47 PM
cosmicfish cosmicfish is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2015
Posts: 477
Default

It's similar to the Trolley Problem, but let me give you a variant.

Imagine that you are in a room, with an innocent person strapped to an electric chair, and that you have the switch and the sole decision to kill them or free them. Individually, the decision to throw the switch or not is your personal moral decision, with real consequence for that person and the world. With me so far?

Now imagine that there is another room, with another innocent person in another electric chair and someone else holding that switch. Whatever decision you make, they will make the opposite - if you spare your innocent, the other innocent dies, but if you kill yours then the other goes free. Your personal morality may compel you to choose one way or the other, but the net result will always be the same - one dead innocent person, one innocent person freed.

This is what infinite universes means - you can make your personal moral decisions but in the grand scheme they are meaningless. Your choices merely decide which reality you personally experience without actually changing the sum total of reality. If you know that this is the case, then does your morality have any meaning? All of your options are simultaneously realized, so you really don't have options per se - the combined infinity remains the same.

The joy of the person you saved exists simultaneously with the pain of the person you killed in another universe. The probability curve, sampled infinitely, does not vary.

If you are aware of this, like if for example you were a member of an organization predicated on the existence of time travel and the ensuing revelation of infinite parallel universes, then your decisions are ones of comfort rather than meaning. You choose to experience the joy and, perhaps, try to ignore the reality that there is equal pain that you are simply choosing not to see.
Reply With Quote