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Z_M_Davis comments on The Anthropic Trilemma - Less Wrong
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To condense my response to a number of comments here:
It seems to me that there's some level on which, even if I say very firmly, "I now resolve to care only about future versions of myself who win the lottery! Only those people are defined as Eliezer Yudkowskys!", and plan only for futures where I win the lottery, then, come the next day, I wake up, look at the losing numbers, and say, "Damnit! What went wrong? I thought personal continuity was strictly subjective, and I could redefine it however I wanted!"
You reply, "But that's just because you're defining 'I' the old way in evaluating the anticipated results of the experiment."
And I reply, "...I still sorta think there's more to it than that."
To look at it another way, consider the Born probabilities. In this case, Nature seems to have very definite opinions about how much of yourself flows where, even though both copies exist. Now suppose you try to redefine your utility function so you only care about copies of yourself that see the quantum coin land heads up. Then you are trying to send all of your measure to the branch where the coin lands up heads, by exercising your right to redefine personal continuity howsoever you please; whereas Nature only wants to send half your measure there. Now flip the coin a hundred times. I think Nature is gonna win this one.
Tired of being poor? Redefine personal continuity so that tomorrow you continue as Bill Gates and Bill Gates continues as you - just better hope Gates doesn't swap again the next day.
It seems to me that experience and anticipation operate at a more primitive level than my utility function. Perhaps I am wrong. But I would like a cleaner demonstration of how I am wrong, than pointing out how convenient it would be if there were no question.
Of course it must be a wrong question - it is unanswerable, therefore, it is a wrong question. That is not the same as there being no question.
But all the resulting observers who see the coin come up tails aren't you. You just specified that they weren't. Who cares what they think?
If I jumped off a cliff and decided not to care about hitting the ground, I would still hit the ground. If I played a quantum lottery and decided not to care about copies who lost, almost all of me would still see a screen saying "You lose". It seems to me that there is a rule governing what I see happen next, which does not care what I care about. I am asking how that rule works, because it does so happen that I care about it.
You-now doesn't want to jump off the cliff because, among all the blobs of protoplasm that will exist in 5 minutes, you-now cares especially about one of them: the one that is causally connected in a certain way to the blob that is you-now. You-now evidently doesn't get to choose the nature of the causal connection that induces this concern. That nature was probably fixed by natural selection. That is why all talk about "determining to be the person who doesn't jump off the cliff" is ineffectual.
The question for doubters is this. Suppose, contrary to your intuition, that matters were just as I described. How would what-you-are-experiencing be any different? If you concede that there would be no difference, perhaps your confusion is just with how to talk about "your" future experiences. So then, what precisely is lost if all such talk is in terms of the experiences of future systems causally connected to you-now in certain ways?
Of course, committing to think this way highlights our ignorance about which causal connections are among these "certain ways". But our ignorance about this question doesn't mean that there isn't a determinate answer. There most likely is a determinate answer, fixed by natural selection and other determinants of what you-now cares about.