Wei_Dai comments on Quantum Russian Roulette - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Christian_Szegedy 18 September 2009 08:49AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 18 September 2009 10:26:39AM *  4 points [-]

If you assume 3, average utilitarianism says you should kill anyone who has below average utility, since that raises the average. So in the end you kill everyone except the one person who has the highest utility. There is no need for assumption 2 at all.

BTW, are you aware of any of the previous literature and discussion on quantum suicide and immortality?

See also http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=215

Comment author: thomblake 18 September 2009 06:40:21PM 1 point [-]

If you assume 3, average utilitarianism says you should kill anyone who has below average utility, since that raises the average. So in the end you kill everyone except the one person who has the highest utility.

You really need to also assume killing people doesn't decrease utility for those who are left, which usually doesn't work too well for humans...

Comment author: SforSingularity 18 September 2009 12:54:08PM 1 point [-]

Which is why we do not really believe in average utilitarianism...

Comment author: Psychohistorian 18 September 2009 07:59:45PM 2 points [-]

It is possible to kill someone without invoking any negative experiences.

Average utilitarianism requires more, it requires that it is possible to have a policy of systematically killing most people that does not result in negative experiences. This does not seem meaningfully possible for any agents that are vaguely human, so this is a straw man objection to average utilitarianism, and a pretty bad one at that.

Comment author: Christian_Szegedy 18 September 2009 06:33:36PM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the links. They look interesting.

The base idea seems identical to the quantum suicide scenarios. Although I did not know about them, my only contribution is to put up a convincing concrete scenario, where suicide offers a benefit to each players.