Jack comments on Beauty quips, "I'd shut up and multiply!" - Less Wrong

6 Post author: neq1 07 May 2010 02:34PM

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Comment author: Jack 12 May 2010 11:52:35PM *  0 points [-]

Nice way of formulating the problem.

In variation Alpha we know beforehand of a particular event that will happen with P=1 if tails and P=1/10 if heads. Call this event "Jack wakes up and thinks a thought". So when we see that event we can conclude 1/11.

But in Beta and the remaining variations there is no such event. A clone can't tell which clone it is, going into the experiment my anticipated experience does not differ based on whether or not heads comes up. Either one of me will be woken up or 10 identical copies who don't know about each other will be woken up. "Jack wakes up and thinks a thought" happens at the same probability for heads and tails. At no point does any copy of me get new information to revise from 1/2.