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GuySrinivasan comments on A Much Better Life? - Less Wrong
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I think I see your point, but let me ask you this: Do you think that today in 2010 it's possible to harm Isaac Newton? What would you do right now to harm Isaac Newton and how exactly would that harm manifest itself?
Very probably. I don't know what I'd do because I don't know what his preferences were. Although... a quick Google search reveals this quote:
I find it likely, then, that he preferred us not to obstruct advances in science in 2010 than for us to obstruct advances in science in 2010. I don't know how much more, maybe it's attenuated a lot compared to the strength of lots of his other preferences.
The harm would manifest itself as a higher measure of 2010 worlds in which science is obstructed, which is something (I think) Newton opposed.
(Or, if you like, my time-travel-causing e.g. 1700 to be the sort of world which deterministically produces more science-obstructed-2010s than the 1700 I could have caused.)
Ok, so you are saying that one can harm Isaac Newton today by going out and obstructing the advance of science?
Yep. I'll bite that bullet until shown a good reason I should not.
I suppose that's the nub of the disagreement. I don't believe it's possible to do anything in 2010 to harm Isaac Newton.
Is this a disagreement about metaphysics, or about how best to define the word 'harm'?
A little bit of both, I suppose. One needs to define "harm" in a way which is true to the spirit of the prisoner's dilemma. The underlying question is whether one can set up a prisoner's dilemma between a past version of the self and a future version of the self.