I should reiterate that my note above is rather speculative, and I really haven’t thought much about this stuff.
1: Yes, I believe that’s what inflation theories generally entail.
2: I agree, it doesn’t follow that they’re short-lived.
In each pocket universe, couldn’t targeting its far future be best (assuming risk neutral expected value-maximizing utilitarianism)? And then the same would hold across pocket universes.
I guess it could be; I suppose it depends both on the empirical “details” and one’s decision theory.
Regarding options a and b, a third option could be:
c: There is an ensemble of finitely many pocket universes wherein new pocket universes emerge in an unbounded manner for eternity, where there will always be a vast predominance of (finitely many) younger pocket universes. (Note that this need not imply that any individual pocket universe is eternal, let alone that any pocket universe can support the existence of value entities for eternity.) In this scenario, for any summation between two points in “global time” across the totality of the multiverse, earlier “pocket-universe moments” will vastly dominate. That might be an argument in favor of extreme neartermism (in that kind of scenario).
But, of course, we don’t know whether we are in such a scenario — indeed, one could argue that we have strong anthropic evidence suggesting that we are not — and it seems that common-sense heuristics would in any case speak against giving much weight to these kinds of speculative considerations (though admittedly such heuristics also push somewhat against a strong long-term focus).
Thanks for your comment, Michael :)
I should reiterate that my note above is rather speculative, and I really haven’t thought much about this stuff.
1: Yes, I believe that’s what inflation theories generally entail.
2: I agree, it doesn’t follow that they’re short-lived.
I guess it could be; I suppose it depends both on the empirical “details” and one’s decision theory.
Regarding options a and b, a third option could be:
c: There is an ensemble of finitely many pocket universes wherein new pocket universes emerge in an unbounded manner for eternity, where there will always be a vast predominance of (finitely many) younger pocket universes. (Note that this need not imply that any individual pocket universe is eternal, let alone that any pocket universe can support the existence of value entities for eternity.) In this scenario, for any summation between two points in “global time” across the totality of the multiverse, earlier “pocket-universe moments” will vastly dominate. That might be an argument in favor of extreme neartermism (in that kind of scenario).
But, of course, we don’t know whether we are in such a scenario — indeed, one could argue that we have strong anthropic evidence suggesting that we are not — and it seems that common-sense heuristics would in any case speak against giving much weight to these kinds of speculative considerations (though admittedly such heuristics also push somewhat against a strong long-term focus).