rwallace comments on The Moral Status of Independent Identical Copies - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Wei_Dai 30 November 2009 11:41PM

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Comment author: rwallace 01 December 2009 03:56:00AM *  4 points [-]

It is true that our intuition prefers A to B, but it is also true that our intuition evolved in an environment where people can't be copied at all, so it is not clear how much we should trust it in this kind of scenario.

Suppose Omega adds that somebody else with more money is running another 50 copies of our universe, and the continuation of those 50 copies is assured. Now doesn't it look more reasonable to be indifferent between A and B?

If Omega informs us of no such thing, what of it? Once we start having this kind of conversation, we are entitled to talk about all copies of our universe that exist anywhere in the Tegmark multiverse. Clearly, at least some of them will continue.

Have I bitten an unpalatably large bullet? To test that, consider option C: "Oh, don't worry about it, just turn off all the servers and go have a good time with the money." If we find our indifference extending across all three options, it's time to reject the train of thought by reductio ad absurdum. (Similar rejection would apply on a more practical scale to an argument that suggests quantum suicide is a good way to win the lottery.)

Fortunately that doesn't happen here: we still prefer both A and B to C. So I conclude that indifference between A and B is counterintuitive but not wrong.