If there were two planet earths, totally identical in all respects and with identical populations doing identical things ... what would YOU do if you could land your spaceship on one of them and had only five minutes to do something or change something? If you knew you would soon be returning to the other (unchanged) earth.
Would you run around looking for someone you could quickly help? Would you waste your time looking for something different from the other earth you know? Would you do something selfish, knowing that you would be gone in 5 minutes anyway?
There's no correct answer. BUt it makes you think about your own life, because really our lives do consist of many short little actions and we don't always make the most of those opportunities, or experiment enough.
I honestly don't know how to maximse those five minutes, even if I could decide exactly where to land. Or would it not be worth doing anything at all?
Would you run around looking for someone you could quickly help? Would you waste your time looking for something different from the other earth you know? Would you do something selfish, knowing that you would be gone in 5 minutes anyway?
There's no correct answer. BUt it makes you think about your own life, because really our lives do consist of many short little actions and we don't always make the most of those opportunities, or experiment enough.
I honestly don't know how to maximse those five minutes, even if I could decide exactly where to land. Or would it not be worth doing anything at all?
So I'd spend the 5 minutes figuring out a way of rendezvousing with my other self on the journey back (assuming other me has the same plan). Only when we both return to the same Earth, or one of us fails to complete the journey do the two Earth's have any real chance of diverging. Making the two Earth's non-identical is the only thing worth doing.