Branching Is Not Justice: What Many-Worlds Can and Cannot Say About Cosmic Fairness
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The thought that every choice is lived out somewhere can make an Everettian universe appear fair: perhaps each person eventually experiences every alternative and thereby receives the consequences of every decision. This analytical essay reconstructs that intuition as the author's starting point and examines its separate physical, metaphysical, and normative commitments. Everettian branching does not establish that every conceivable choice occurs, that attention selects a branch, or that will changes branch weights. Physical measurement concerns interactions and experimental arrangements; it supplies no support for conscious control of outcomes. Nor does branching establish one subject who experiences all successors' lives. Even granting suitable personal continuity, causation, responsibility, and desert remain distinct: undergoing an outcome cannot establish that it is deserved, and suffering alone establishes neither fault nor consent. Drawing especially on Dekker's arguments about appropriate consequences and Qureshi-Hurst's treatment of identity and responsibility, the essay offers a clarifying synthesis rather than a novel result. What survives is a conditional account of responsibility toward branching successors and an ordinary account of how expectations can influence conduct. Neither establishes cosmic fairness, but both preserve practical reasons for care.
Author: Aria Parsa, Macan
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225257601
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