Anders Sandberg: Does the recent LHC breakdown prove quantum immortality?

Before you read this post you might want to brush up on the whole quantum immortality argument.

Okay, you know how the Large Hadron Collider had to be shut down because of of a helium leak? Well, what if this is evidence that we're about to witness a successive chain of events that will result in the LHC never having the opportunity to destroy the Earth as we know it?

It's a classic case of anthropic principle meets the Many World Hypothesis. We can't observe our non-existence; we can only observe our ongoing existence, no matter how improbable or absurd.

Given that the LHC was only recently ignited, can we already make this inference?

Well, leave it to Anders Sandberg to crunch the numbers and do an analysis: "Bayes, Moravec and the LHC: Quantum Suicide, Subjective Probability and Conspiracies."

And it looks like Eliezer Yudkowsky and friends are having a similar conversation at Overcoming Bias.

Quick summary of their opinions: We can't jump to this conclusion. Yet.