UnholySmoke comments on The Anthropic Trilemma - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2009 01:47AM

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Comment author: UnholySmoke 13 October 2009 01:19:00PM 0 points [-]

I wonder whether you can hold to any meaningful 'individual', whether the difference be bit-wise or no.

Indeed, that's what I'm driving at.

Harking back to my earlier comment, changing a single bit and suddenly having a whole new person is where my problem arises. If you change that bit back, are you back to one person? I might not be thinking hard enough, but my intuition doesn't accept that. With that in mind, I prefer to bite that bullet than talk about degrees of person-hood.

Comment author: gwern 14 October 2009 12:38:50AM 0 points [-]

If you change that bit back, are you back to one person? I might not be thinking hard enough, but my intuition doesn't accept that.

Here's an intuition for you: you take the number 5 and add 1 to it; then you subtract 1 from it; don't you have what you started with?

With that in mind, I prefer to bite that bullet than talk about degrees of person-hood.

Well, I can't really argue with that. As long as you realize you're biting that bullet, I think we're still in a situation where it's just dueling intuitions. (Your intuition says one thing, mine another.)