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HopeFox comments on Exterminating life is rational - Less Wrong
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Here's a possible problem with my analysis:
Suppose Omega or one of its ilk says to you, "Here's a game we can play. I have an infinitely large deck of cards here. Half of them have a star on them, and one-tenth of them have a skull on them. Every time you draw a card with a star, I'll double your utility for the rest of your life. If you draw a card with a skull, I'll kill you."
How many cards do you draw?
I'm pretty sure that someone who believes in many worlds will keep drawing cards until they die. But even if you don't believe in many worlds, I think you do the same thing, unless you are not maximizing expected utility. (Unless chance is quantized so that there is a minimum possible possibility. I don't think that would help much anyway.)
So this whole post may boil down to "maximizing expected utility" not actually being the right thing to do. Also see my earlier, equally unpopular post on why expectation maximization implies average utilitarianism. If you agree that average utilitarianism seems wrong, that's another piece of evidence that maximizing expected utility is wrong.
Sorry if this question has already been answered (I've read the comments but probably didn't catch all of it), but...
I have a problem with "double your utility for the rest of your life". Are we talking about utilons per second? Or do you mean "double the utility of your life", or just "double your utility"? How does dying a couple of minutes later affect your utility? Do you get the entire (now doubled) utility for those few minutes? Do you get pro rata utility for those few minutes divided by your expected lifespan?
Related to this is the question of the utility penalty of dying. If your utility function includes benefits for other people, then your best bet is to draw cards until you die, because the benefits to the rest of the universe will massively outweigh the inevitability of your death.
If, on the other hand, death sets your utility to zero (presumably because your utility function is strictly only a function of your own experiences), then... yeah. If Omega really can double your utility every time you win, then I guess you keep drawing until you die. It's an absurd (but mathematically plausible) situation, so the absurd (but mathematically plausible) answer is correct. I guess.