At first glance, it seems like the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI) might have significant ethical implications. After all, MWI implies that there are many more sentient beings in the world than one would think given a naive classical view, indeed a much greater number of them. And so it seems quite plausible, at least on the face of it, that ethical considerations pertaining to MWI should dominate everything else in expectation, even if we place only a small credence on this interpretation being true. In this post, I shall outline some reasons why this may in fact not be the case, at least with respect to two commonly supposed implications: 1) extreme caution, and 2) exponentially greater value over time. However, questions concerning the ethical implications of our best physical theories and their interpretations remain open and worth exploring.
Would Branching Worlds Imply Extreme Caution?
“I still recall vividly the shock I experienced on first encountering this multiworld concept [MWI]. The idea of 10100 slightly imperfect copies of oneself all constantly splitting into further copies, which ultimately become unrecognizable, is not easy to reconcile with common sense.”
This is a common way to introduce the implications of MWI, and it seems plausible that this radically different conception of reality, if true, should lead us to change our actions in significant ways. In particular, it may seem intuitive that it should lead us to act more cautiously, as David Pearce argues:
So one should always act “unnaturally” responsibly, driving one’s car not just slowly and cautiously, for instance, but ultracautiously. This is because one should aim to minimise the number of branches in which one injures anyone, even if leaving a trail of mayhem is, strictly speaking, unavoidable. If a motorist doesn’t leave a (low-density) trail of mayhem, then quantum mechanics is false. This systematic re-evaluation of ethically acceptable risk needs to be adopted world-wide.
Yet, while intuitive, I would argue that this actually does not follow. For although it may be true that we should generally act much more cautiously than we do, this conclusion is not influenced by MWI, for various reasons.
First, if one is trying to reduce suffering, one should not “aim to minimise the number of branches in which one injures anyone”, but rather seek to reduce as much suffering as possible (in expectation) in the world. At an intuitive level, these may seem equivalent, yet they are not. The former is in fact impossible, as we are bound to injure others, even assuming the existence of just one world, whereas the latter — reducing the greatest amount of suffering possible throughout all branches — is possible by definition.
In particular, this argument for being highly cautious ignores the fact that such caution also carries risks — e.g. extreme caution might increase the probability that we will bring about more suffering by omission, by rendering our efforts to reduce suffering less effective. And these other risks may well be much larger, and thus result in the realization of a larger amount of suffering in a larger measure of branches. In other words, since it is far from clear that being ultracautious is the best way to reduce suffering in expectation throughout all branches, it is far from clear that we should practice such ultracaution in light of MWI.
Second, and quite relatedly, I would argue that, whether we live in many worlds or one, we should seek to minimize expected suffering regardless. For if we happened to exist in one world, a small probability of a very bad outcome would be equally worth avoiding, in expectation, as it would be if we happened to live in a quantum multiverse. Whether we do just one or an arbitrarily large number of “trials”, we should still pursue the same action: that which reduces the most suffering in expectation.
Third, any argument of the kind made above concerning how all slightly probable outcomes will be realized can also be made by assuming that the multiverse of inflation exists. Thus, if one already believes that we live in a spatially infinite, or indeed “merely” extremely large universe, then the radical conclusions supposed to follow from MWI would already be implied by that belief alone (as we shall see below, many prominent proponents of MWI actually consider MWI not only equivalent but identical with the multiverse of inflation). And if one does not think a spatially very large universe should change how we act, then why think that a large, in many ways equivalent, quantum universe should? As argued above, it seems that no radical conclusions should follow either way. One world or many, we should still do what seems best in expectation.
Another way to arrive at the same conclusion is by embracing Stuart Armstrong’s Anthropic Decision Theory, according to which we, as altruists aiming to reduce suffering, should act the same way regardless of how many similar copies of us there may be in the world.
Would Branching Worlds Imply More Value Later?
Following Bryce DeWitt’s quote about rapidly splitting copies, one can reasonably wonder whether MWI implies that the net amount of value in the world, and hence the value of our actions’ impact on the world, is increasing exponentially over time. Indeed, if we naively interpret DeWitt’s claim to mean that the number of sentient beings that exists is multiplied by 10100 just about every second, this would imply that the value of the very last second of the existence of sentient life should massively dominate every thing else. If this interpretation of MWI is correct, it would have extremely significant ethical implications. Yet is it? It would seem not. Here is Max Tegmark:
Does the number of universes exponentially increase over time? The surprising answer is no. From the bird perspective, there is of course only one quantum universe. From the frog perspective, what matters is the number of universes that are distinguishable at a given instant—that is, the number of noticeably different Hubble volumes. Imagine moving planets to random new locations, imagine having married someone else, and so on. At the quantum level, there are 10 to the 10118 universes with temperatures below 108 kelvins. That is a vast number, but a finite one.
From the frog perspective, the evolution of the wave function corresponds to a never-ending sliding from one of these 10 to the 10118 states to another. Now you are in universe A, the one in which you are reading this sentence. Now you are in universe B, the one in which you are reading this other sentence. Put differently, universe B has an observer identical to one in universe A, except with an extra instant of memories.
Thus, it seems one should think about MWI in terms of an intertwining rope rather than a branching tree. A good way to gain intuition about it may be to think in terms of the multiverse of inflation instead. Indeed, according to prominent proponents of MWI, the many-worlds of quantum mechanics and the multiverse of inflation are not only closely related notions but indeed the same thing, cf. (Aguirre & Tegmark, 2010; Nomura, 2011; Bousso & Susskind, 2011). In that case, not only is thinking about copies of ourselves in worlds spatially far away from us a great way to gain intuition about MWI; it is the correct way to think about it.
And when we think about it in these terms, it suddenly all becomes quite straightforward and intuitive, at least relatively speaking. For on the inflationary model, there are copies of us in the universe located far away with whom we share our entire history from the big bang up until now. Yet as time progresses, and more different outcomes become possible, the distance to the copies of us that share our exact history becomes ever greater, at a rapid pace, cf. (Garriga & Vilenkin, 2001). Thus, there is indeed a rapid branching in a very real sense, only, this branching consists in departing from “nearby” copies of us who had been just like us up until this point. No new worlds are really added. The “other worlds” were always there, and then merely went their separate ways.
Hence, given the assumptions made here, the number of sentient beings in our world does not in fact increase exponentially in the way naively supposed above, unless one keeps on aggregating over an exponentially larger fraction of the space that already existed. (There is, however, an exponential increase in the number of new universes created by inflating regions of the universe, assuming inflationary theory is correct. Yet this process does not create an exponentially greater number of sentient beings from our point in space and time, i.e. Earth, 13.8 billion years after the big bang. Rather, these new worlds are all created “from scratch”.) In short, MWI does not appear to imply greater value later.
In sum, I have argued that we seem to have good reason to maintain something akin to one-world common sense in most of our decisions (decisions that might influence the creation of new universes would be an exception). This conclusion may, however, be strongly biased given that it comes from a brain that very much wants to preserve common sense.
Magnus Vinding 